The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1)

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

We Marxists believe that capitalism generates contradictions and will fall apart from them, but only if men take action. But it was not just capitalism that was contradictory. As Hegel said, tragedy was not the conflict between right and wrong but right and right, a dilemma none of us who wanted to participate in history could escape.

Some bemoan the brutalism of socialist architecture, but was the blandness of capitalist architecture any better?

Not to own the means of production can lead to premature death, but not to own the means of representation is also a kind of death.

But amnesia was as American as apple pie, and it was much preferred by Americans over both humble pie and the fraught foods of foreign intruders.

To believe her was to believe in a femme fatale, in an elected official, in little green men from outer space, in the benevolence of the police, in holy men like my father, who not only had holes in his socks but also had a hole somewhere in his soul.

After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.