Frank Brown Cloud

American exceptionalism?

On Viet Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, the grotesque in art, and guilt.

If I were asked to pick a work of cinema that most resembles Viet Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, the recent Vietnam War novel that reads like a mash-up of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American and George Orwell’s 1984, I would pick The Triplets of Belleville. This despite the fact that The Sympathizer includes a segment about the…

July 16, 2015

Frank Brown Cloud

All posts, The writing process

1984, American exceptionalism?, body metaphors, doublethink, extra tag added months later: 2015 Pulitzer — congratulations!, George Orwell, Graham Greene, grotesque, The Quiet American, The Sympathizer, the worst sin is to describe your sins in the passive voice, Triplets of Belleville, Viet Nguyen, Vietnam War novels, war