The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1)

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

He looked at me expectantly, ready to grade me. There was little I could do for the prisoner, try as I might. Claude would eventually find the music he could not stand, and if I did not help him my reputation as a good student would lose a little of its luster. The prisoner’s only real hope of escaping from his situation lay not with me, but with the liberation of the entire south. So I said, Country music. The average Vietnamese cannot bear it. That southern twang, that peculiar rhythm, those strange stories—the music drives us a little crazy. Perfect, Claude said. So what song’s it going to be? After a little research, I procured a record from the jukebox of one of the Saigon bars popular with white soldiers. “Hey, Good Lookin’” was by the famous Hank Williams, the country music icon whose nasal voice personified the utter whiteness of the music, at least to our ears. Even someone as exposed to American culture as I shivered a little on hearing this record, somewhat scratchy from having been played so many times. Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching’s accompaniment. Beethoven’s Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he conte...

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