Styles of Radical Will

by Susan Sontag

It’s all part of the Vietnamese style, which seems guided by an almost principled avoidance of “heaviness,” of making more complications than are necessary. No one can fail to credit the Vietnamese with subtlety in planning large-scale actions, as evidenced in the fabulous strategic sense of General Giap. But directness and plainness remain the rule when it comes to expressing something or making a gesture, and not out of any deeper artfulness. It was my impression that the Vietnamese, as a culture, genuinely believe that life is simple. They also believe, incredible as it may seem considering their present situation, that life is full of joy. Joy is to be discerned behind what is already so remarkable: the ease and total lack of self-pity with which people worked a backbreaking number of hours, or daily faced the possibility of their own death and the death of those they love. The phenomena of existential agony, of alienation, just don’t appear among the Vietnamese—probably in part because they lack our kind of “ego” and our endowment of free-floating guilt. Of course, it’s hard for a visitor to take all this at face value.