Critique de The Sympathizer par Josh

I think I probably need to reread the Sympathizer to fully appreciate it. I'm pretty sure there were some metaphors I missed. Some social commentary I failed to appreciate. Some stuff about race and alienation that I didn't fully get my head around.

Even on the rather superficial level of my reading, however, there was some good stuff here. The protagonist is a charming fellow with a deeply self-reflective bent, except when he's asked to kill people... he pretty much does that without putting up much of a fuss, though to his credit he is haunted by his deeds.

The book has a number of memorable, minor characters, including the unsubtly named Dr. Richard Hedd (get it?). Dr. Hedd is a distinguished (white-English) professor of Asian studies whose oeuvre seems to consist of a compilation of stereotypes about how Asians think that leads him to profundities like "The Vietnamese peasant will not object to the use of airpower, for he is apolitical, interested only in feeding himself and his family. Bombing his village will of course upset him, but the cost is outweighed ultimately by how airpower will persuade him that he is on the wrong side if he chooses communism, which cannot protect him." In the afterward, Nguyen says that Hedd is based on William Westmoreland, one of the principal architects of the war.

What I think will stick with me about the Sympathizer, even if I don't get around to rereading it (which, let's face it, I probably won't) is the portrait of these ex-soldiers who find themselves struggling to adapt to vastly diminished stations in life, e.g. the General who occupied a villa and had servants in Vietnam and after the war finds himself the proprietor of a dumpy liquor store, or the soldiers who thought they were fighting to save their country and now spend their days drinking and collecting welfare (or working minimum wage jobs).