Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Overview

Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award
Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction
A New York Times Book Review “The Year in Reading” Selection

All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. From the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Sympathizer comes a searching exploration of the conflict Americans call the Vietnam War and Vietnamese call the American War—a conflict that lives on in the collective memory of both nations.

“[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War…As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.”
—Kate Tuttle, Los Angeles Times

“In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war…[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.”
—Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review

“Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674979840
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	11/20/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	198,800
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Viet Thanh Nguyen is Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Just Memory 4

Ethics

1 On Remembering One's Own 23

2 On Remembering Others 47

3 On the Inhumanities 71

Industries

4 On War Machines 103

5 On Becoming Human 129

6 On Asymmetry 156

Aesthetics

7 On Victims and Voices 193

8 On True War Stories 223

9 On Powerful Memory 251

Just Forgetting 279

Epilogue 301

Notes 307

Works Cited 330

Acknowledgments 353

Credits 357

Index 361

Editorial Reviews

Readers will discover the roots of Nguyen’s powerful fiction in this profoundly incisive and bracing investigation into the memory of war and how war stories are shaped and disseminated…Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.

Booklist (starred review) - Donna Seaman

By taking the reader on a sweeping and sobering global tour of artifacts, places, art, texts, and monuments associated with Vietnam, Nguyen argues that our cultural need to reflect accurately upon our history and fully absorb its lessons is forever at war with the impossibility of ever fully knowing the truth, or retelling it accurately…Cautioning that we cannot remember what we do not see, he lists the ways in which the U.S. has failed to fully recognize its own role in Vietnam, let alone the Vietnamese citizens it ostensibly went to Vietnam to protect…It’s fitting that Nothing Ever Dies has emerged at a moment when the U.S. and most of Europe are fiercely questioning America’s ability to reconcile with the past. Nguyen might say that the only way we can truly acknowledge the past is to contend with how fallible our memories actually are.

Vox - Aja Romano

Beautifully written, powerfully argued, thoughtful, provocative.

Marilyn B. Young

Impassioned yet forensic.

The Australian - Peter Pierce

In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war…[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.

Literary Review - Jonathan Mirsky

In this elegantly written book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Nguyen offers a comprehensive, balanced analysis of how the Vietnam War has been remembered and forgotten—both privately and collectively…Examining a medley of cultural forms—novels, monuments, cemeteries, souvenirs, video games, photography, museum exhibits, and movies—Nguyen calls attention to the inequality in the industrial production of memory and to the power of art to disable future wars. One of the book’s most original—and perhaps controversial—arguments is that to avoid simplifying the other, people need to recognize both their humanity and their ever-present inhumanity and those of others as well.

Choice - Y. L. Espiritu

A penetrating analysis by the Pulitzer Prize–winning Nguyen on how the Vietnam War has been remembered by the countries and people that have been most affected by it.

Listener

In Nothing Ever Dies, Nguyen has written a powerful meditation on the manner in which memories are produced, cultivated, even empowered and subdued…He’s a lucid and robust voice for the forgotten—forgotten people, forgotten places, and forgotten memories most of all…Nothing Ever Dies is one man’s powerful entreaty to a country which has seen nearly endless conflict (one war running upon the next) for generations.

PopMatters - Matthew Snider

[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War…As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.

Los Angeles Times - Kate Tuttle

[Nguyen] produces close readings of the novels, films, monuments, and prisons that form ‘the identity of war’ in Vietnam, ‘a face with carefully drawn features, familiar at a glance to the nation’s people.’ Nguyen draws insights from Levinas, Ricoeur, and other philosophers, and his approach has affinities with that of hybridists such as W. G. Sebald and Maggie Nelson. The book is also notable for its inclusivity, addressing Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, and Korean experiences and the competition for narrative dominance in bookstores and box offices.

New Yorker

Nothing Ever Dies is an account of humanity at its darkest, a realm of war, memory, identity and pain that ventures from the jungles of Vietnam to the killing fields of Cambodia.

Los Angeles Times - Jeffrey Fleishman

Nothing Ever Dies provides the fullest and best explanation of how the Vietnam War has become so deeply inscribed into national memory. Nguyen’s elegant prose is at once deeply personal, sweepingly panoramic, and hauntingly evocative.

Ari Kelman

Inspired by the author’s personal odyssey, informed by his wide-ranging exploration of literature, film, and art, this is a provocative and moving meditation on the ethics of remembering and forgetting. Rooted in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, it speaks to all who have been displaced by war and revolution, and carry with them memories, whether their own or of others, private or collective, that are freighted with nostalgia, guilt, and trauma.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

Is there hope for an ethics of memory, or for peace? Nothing Ever Dies reveals that, in our collective memories of conflict, we are still fighting the Forever War. Nguyen’s distinctive voice blends ideas with family history in a way that is original, unique, exciting. A vitally important book.

Maxine Hong Kingston

05/16/2016
Vietnam-born, American-raised Nguyen (The Sympathizer), an associate professor of English and American Studies at the University of Southern California, sifts through the many guises of memory and identity in this eloquent, scholarly narrative of the Vietnam War's psychological impact on combatants and civilians. The Vietnamese who fled the battlefields have little choice but to be known by the carnage that brought them to the U.S. They grapple with their own painful memories, which shadow them or get pushed aside, while their descendants try to cope with elders refusing to share their recollections. Nguyen peruses death and destruction from multiple vantage points, including the killing caves where Vietnamese civilians were annihilated by American bombers and the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. But this is primarily a work that comes to grips with memory and identity through the arts. Where literature and film have long been dominated by American works, Nguyen brilliantly introduces a pantheon of artists, including directors Dang Nhat Minh and Bui Thac Chuyen, and writers Le Ly Hayslip and Monique Truong. This is a difficult but rewarding read; Nguyen succeeds in delivering a potent critique of the war and revealing what the memories of living have meant for the identities of the next generation. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

[Nguyen] produces close readings of the novels, films, monuments, and prisons that form ‘the identity of war’ in Vietnam, ‘a face with carefully drawn features, familiar at a glance to the nation’s people.’ Nguyen draws insights from Levinas, Ricoeur, and other philosophers, and his approach has affinities with that of hybridists such as W. G. Sebald and Maggie Nelson. The book is also notable for its inclusivity, addressing Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, and Korean experiences and the competition for narrative dominance in bookstores and box offices.
-- New Yorker

In Nothing Ever Dies, Nguyen has written a powerful meditation on the manner in which memories are produced, cultivated, even empowered and subdued…He’s a lucid and robust voice for the forgotten—forgotten people, forgotten places, and forgotten memories most of all…Nothing Ever Dies is one man’s powerful entreaty to a country which has seen nearly endless conflict (one war running upon the next) for generations.
-- Matthew Snider PopMatters

Readers will discover the roots of Nguyen’s powerful fiction in this profoundly incisive and bracing investigation into the memory of war and how war stories are shaped and disseminated…Ultimately, Nguyen’s lucid, arresting, and richly sourced inquiry, in the mode of Susan Sontag and W. G. Sebald, is a call for true and just stories of war and its perpetual legacy.
-- Donna Seaman Booklist (starred review)

Nguyen’s work is a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember and forget.
-- Kirkus Reviews

This thought-provoking book is recommended for all students of the Vietnam War and those interested in historical memory.
-- Joshua Wallace Library Journal

[An] eloquent…narrative of the Vietnam War’s psychological impact on combatants and civilians…This is primarily a work that comes to grips with memory and identity through the arts…Nguyen succeeds in delivering a potent critique of the war and revealing what the memories of living have meant for the identities of the next generation.
-- Publishers Weekly

Is there hope for an ethics of memory, or for peace? Nothing Ever Dies reveals that, in our collective memories of conflict, we are still fighting the Forever War. Nguyen’s distinctive voice blends ideas with family history in a way that is original, unique, exciting. A vitally important book.
-- Maxine Hong Kingston, author of To Be a Poet

Inspired by the author’s personal odyssey, informed by his wide-ranging exploration of literature, film, and art, this is a provocative and moving meditation on the ethics of remembering and forgetting. Rooted in the Vietnam War and its aftermath, it speaks to all who have been displaced by war and revolution, and carry with them memories, whether their own or of others, private or collective, that are freighted with nostalgia, guilt, and trauma.
-- Hue-Tam Ho Tai, editor of The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam

Nothing Ever Dies provides the fullest and best explanation of how the Vietnam War has become so deeply inscribed into national memory. Nguyen’s elegant prose is at once deeply personal, sweepingly panoramic, and hauntingly evocative.
-- Ari Kelman, author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek

Beautifully written, powerfully argued, thoughtful, provocative.
-- Marilyn B. Young, author of The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990

In Nothing Ever Dies, his unusually thoughtful consideration of war, self-deception and forgiveness, Viet Thanh Nguyen penetrates deeply into memories of the Vietnamese war…[An] important book, which hits hard at self-serving myths.
-- Jonathan Mirsky Literary Review

By taking the reader on a sweeping and sobering global tour of artifacts, places, art, texts, and monuments associated with Vietnam, Nguyen argues that our cultural need to reflect accurately upon our history and fully absorb its lessons is forever at war with the impossibility of ever fully knowing the truth, or retelling it accurately…Cautioning that we cannot remember what we do not see, he lists the ways in which the U.S. has failed to fully recognize its own role in Vietnam, let alone the Vietnamese citizens it ostensibly went to Vietnam to protect…It’s fitting that Nothing Ever Dies has emerged at a moment when the U.S. and most of Europe are fiercely questioning America’s ability to reconcile with the past. Nguyen might say that the only way we can truly acknowledge the past is to contend with how fallible our memories actually are.
-- Aja Romano Vox

Nothing Ever Dies is an account of humanity at its darkest, a realm of war, memory, identity and pain that ventures from the jungles of Vietnam to the killing fields of Cambodia.
-- Jeffrey Fleishman Los Angeles Times

A penetrating analysis by the Pulitzer Prize–winning Nguyen on how the Vietnam War has been remembered by the countries and people that have been most affected by it.
-- Listener

In this elegantly written book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Nguyen offers a comprehensive, balanced analysis of how the Vietnam War has been remembered and forgotten—both privately and collectively…Examining a medley of cultural forms—novels, monuments, cemeteries, souvenirs, video games, photography, museum exhibits, and movies—Nguyen calls attention to the inequality in the industrial production of memory and to the power of art to disable future wars. One of the book’s most original—and perhaps controversial—arguments is that to avoid simplifying the other, people need to recognize both their humanity and their ever-present inhumanity and those of others as well.
-- Y. L. Espiritu Choice

[A] gorgeous, multifaceted examination of the war Americans call the Vietnam War—and which Vietnamese call the American War…As a writer, [Nguyen] brings every conceivable gift—wisdom, wit, compassion, curiosity—to the impossible yet crucial work of arriving at what he calls ‘a just memory’ of this war.
-- Kate Tuttle Los Angeles Times

Impassioned yet forensic.
-- Peter Pierce The Australian

From the Publisher

A necessary corrective to our way of thinking about our wars.

The Intercept - Peter Maass

[Nguyen] produces close readings of the novels, films, monuments, and prisons that form ‘the identity of war’ in Vietnam, ‘a face with carefully drawn features, familiar at a glance to the nation’s people.’ Nguyen draws insights from Levinas, Ricoeur, and other philosophers, and his approach has affinities with that of hybridists such as W. G. Sebald and Maggie Nelson. The book is also notable for its inclusivity, addressing Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, and Korean experiences and the competition for narrative dominance in bookstores and box offices.

New Yorker

03/01/2016
What does it mean to remember a war? Nguyen (English, Univ. of Southern California; The Sympathizer) explores this question through a critical analysis of the films, literature, cemeteries, statues, video games, etc. that memorialize the Vietnam War in the United States, Vietnam, and elsewhere. The author points out that America's recollection of the conflict is more familiar around the world in large part because the country's movie industry has global reach, which is not the case for Vietnam. Nguyen argues that the military-industrial complex has learned the wrong lessons from this war—that victories are not necessary to perpetuate a battle's existence. He advocates "just memory," which includes (among other things) the ability to see both the humanity and inhumanity in ourselves and others as a way to redress this. The author also examines how the conflict is recalled by Vietnamese Americans, South Koreans, Hmong, and others. VERDICT This thought-provoking book is recommended for all students of the Vietnam War and those interested in historical memory. For a work that focuses more exclusively on U.S. memory, see Patrick Hagopian's The Vietnam War in American Memory.—Joshua Wallace, Ranger Coll., TX

Library Journal

2016-01-10
A scholarly exploration of memory and the Vietnam War from an author "born in Vietnam but made in America." While Nguyen (English and American Studies & Ethnicity/Univ. of Southern California; The Sympathizer, 2015, etc.) focuses on the Vietnam War, the war that most intimately affected his Vietnamese family, his fine reflections on how to treat and preserve the memory of war "justly" extends to other neighboring wars such as those in Cambodia, Laos, Korea, the Philippines, and elsewhere. The "ethics of remembering" is complicated, as the author explains while walking readers through specific parts of Vietnam, because it involves not just grieving one's nearest and dearest—e.g., visiting cemeteries of fallen family members—but feeling compassion for others, as the moving, reflective black wall of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., elicits beautifully. Nguyen stresses the importance of recognizing that we are not only the victims of horrible tragedy, but also the perpetrators: "Reminding ourselves that being human also means being inhuman is important simply because it is so easy to forget our inhumanity or to displace it onto other humans." The author also explores the "memory industries," such as Hollywood movies that cater to "young men's erotic fascination with pure sex and war movies." He looks at many examples of war memorials in Vietnam and Korea that attempt to bring the memory into the present, while books, especially novels by Vietnamese-Americans, convey senses of affirmation and redemption and allow the ghosts, literally, to speak. Grasping our essential inhumanity through art (a "true war story"), Nguyen affirms, is one way to resist the "memory industry," the ultimate goal of which is to "reproduce power and inequality." Finally, there is the role of "just" forgetting, which allows people to go on and live as well as to forgive. Essentially a critical study, Nguyen's work is a powerful reflection on how we choose to remember and forget.

Kirkus Reviews