Excellent podcast on the impact of wars on the collective memory of the countries involved and also of individuals. In particular, the importance of remembering not only those who died, but also the refugees, as well as understanding that the end of a war does not really have a date, since its effects remain in the memories, in the traumas, in the destructions, in the consequences.
https://vietnguyen.info/2022/npr-throughline-all-wars-are-fought-twice
#Throughline #podcast #VietThanhNguyen

Shades of the #ButlerianJihad 😁

"#MargaretAtwood, #JonathanFranzen, #JamesPatterson, #SuzanneCollins and #VietThanhNguyen are among the prominent authors endorsing the letter addressed to the CEOs of #OpenAI, #Meta, #Microsoft, #Alphabet, #IBM and #StabilityAI." #copyright

Thousands of #writers demand #AI stop using work without permission | #Technology | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/7/19/thousands-of-writers-demand-ai-stop-using-work-without-permission

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR7JjPdj/ Review of Telephone by Percival Everett and other February reads #percivaleverett #zadiesmith #MiriamToews #VietThanhNguyen #pulitzer

Viet Thanh Nguyen is a brilliant writer. There's a moment in THE SYMPATHIZER involving teenage self-pleasure with a squid that not only outdoes PORTNOY, but that uses the "obscene" nature of this incident to offer a moral relativist argument with the Vietnam War. It is a playful shit-stirring rebuke to Roth. Almost as if Nguyen is saying, "Well, Philip, what are your sensationalistic literary moments really about?" 🤣

#books #VietThanhNguyen

“Bang bang was the sound of memory’s pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend’s guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewy lover saying the most seductive words in our language, anh oi; the rattle of rice being threshed; the workingmen who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on the walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one’s shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one’s lover by the end of lovemaking, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother’s hand; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget." - Viet Thanh Nguyen

#vietthanhnguyen #thesympathizer