The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam

If Tom Bissell wrote a book about the care and storage of Twinkies, I'd buy it. This talented young writer illuminates humanity in all its horror and grandeur with every subject he tackles. And he does this while exploiting his own quirks to humors effect. In The Father of All Things, Bissell returns to Vietnam with his veteran father. Bissell, guided by his father's first-hand accounts, offers the most lucid description of the salient events of the Vietnam conflict and its major players a reader is apt to find. Unlike a mere history lesson, this book provides a personal tour-- layering the war, the aftermath of a Vietnam vet as a wounded family man, and a time four decades after the fall of Saigon into a compendium of personal insight that illuminates not only screw up that was the war, but the courage of soldiers who did their duty. The honesty in this accord of father and son illuminates the complexity of loving the brave wounded soldiers who do our dirty work. By the end, I loved two Bissell men.

The question of whether or not anything new is possible in books about Vietnam is a non-question. No one would dare say this about World War II or the Holocaust. And this is especially true if the book offers us a new vision: this time one of multiple points of view, humor, the passion of a young man trying to understand his laconic father, and a brilliant synthesis of historical accounts, both personal testimony and revisionist ideas. His analysis of Vietnamese communism and how it differs from the the communism of other nations is worth the price of the book. Bissell is prodigiously well read: he does not pretend to have his father's visceral understanding of the war, and he presents himself as sometimes naive and bumbling in the questioning of his father. Both men are revealed as deeply sensitive and hungry for what is true. As a Vietnam combat veteran, I can attest to the books honesty (some vets will agree with him and some won't). This is a very important book. It is often not easy to read. The depiction of his father coming to terms with what happened at My Lai is painful and ultimately cathartic. Please read this book. So much of that horrible piece of history remains undigested in the American psyche, and the young often do not care. Tom Bissell is young, hecares, and he is courageous enough to want to know.

This is a searing, honest, and yes, fair account of a young man's reconciliation with his father, against the backdrop of a return to Vietnam. The dialog Tom records is almost too good to be true, but it's coming out of his tape recorder, so there it is. The elder Bissell comes across as an ordinary, memory-laden senior citizen who happens to once have been a soldier. His drunken implosion, which the author unspools against the fall of Saigon, is a topnotch piece of psychological fiction, but is nothing that the reader catches first-hand from the rest of the book. At times it seems that Tom projects the gook-plinking hophead of media stereotype into his father, but none of that comes out in the dialog. Indeed, at certain points it's the father who has to point out to the son what a bloody horror the war was. Had Tom been around during the war, he doubtless would have been a protestor. But at this late date, the historical record is in the books. He stitches together quite good second-hand accounts of the fall of South Vietnam, and of the strange career of Ho Chih Minh (though the latter is perhaps somewhat over-basted with "nuance."). An honest fellow, he frequently admits that the North Vietnamese and the NLF were as bad as advertised, and worse than the more conventionally corrupt South. He still refuses to swallow the old wartime lies, though he proposes no way that things could have come out right. The end of the return tour, with his father raising a toast with a former ARVN his own age, ends the book on a touching and unexpected up note. Mission accomplished. A fair-use sample: "A lot of guys I went to basic with died in this place [the Citadel in Hue city]," my father said. "A lot of guys. Guys who joined up again. Guys who kept volunteering. All died right around here." He shook his head. "Like who?" I asked. "You don't know them." "Well, what were their names?" He looked at me queerly. "What do you care?" This was said with a brusque sort of inquisitiveness, not anger. I got to my feet. "I'm sorry. You're right. Just morbid curiosity." My father--the abrupt smile on his face false to anyone who knew him--turned to Hien [the guide]. "What do *you* think?" Hien regarded his shoes, which looked like small leather noses peeking out from beneath his blue slacks. "I think this is a special place for many people." My father said nothing and stood there in the wind, amid the grass. When he closed his eyes, it almost looked as though he were listening to someone.

There are thousands of books written on Vietnam. This one stands out due to its personal touch. The relationship between Bissell and his father is handled delicately and respectfully. They disagree about the war, but work to learn more about each other on this trip to Vietnam, where Bissell's father fought, led, and was changed forever. There's so much good stuff here. For those not wanting a hard-core history book...but are interested in some key questions any of us have about the war, in a section of the book Bissell actually presents formulated questions and addresses them efficiently and interestingly ("Why were the leaders of South Vietnam so corrupt and incompetent?" "Why did officials at all levels of the U.S. military and government lie so often during the war?" "Could the United States have won the war in Vietnam?"). The Mai Lai massacre is also addressed effectively, without political bent. Still, this book is about a father/son relationship...and how that relationship was forever altered by the War. There are no cheesy moments on this. In fact, you get a sense that the author becomes even more confused with his father as the journey moves forward. More good stuff - the bibliography in the back, with Bissell's commentary on certain books, is a valuable resource for further reading. Also, the final section, with extensive quotes from other sons/daughters of Vietnam veterans (from all sides of the war) provides a final, satisfying close to the book. Highly recommended.

The Father of All Things is an amazing book. A critic who complains about "anti-war" prejudice is being a little unfair himself. This book is first and foremost a personal story, and part of the story is the gap in understanding between veterans and their children. If Bissell is not an expert on Vietnamese culture, he is indisputably well-read. I cannot imagine a better educated or more open-minded surrogate for his generation in the conversation between himself and his father. Like it or not, history does not look generously on the Vietnam War. Bissell's summary of historical figures and events is informative and readable, but the heart of the story is his description of his family and his father and the trip he and his father make together. What history textbook contains lines like, "Ancient thin Vietnamese women with raisiny skin sold cans of Red Bull. Poorer old Vietnamese women sold the local Red Bull knockoff, Super Horse. Even poorer old Vietnamese women sold the Super Horse knockoff, Commando Bear"? Or, heartbreakingly, "You hate solitude until you have drunk past it, drunk until your grief becomes purely, endurably chemical and a mysterious chorus of conversation fills your skull"? I agree with The New York Times in this case; The Father of All Things is a great book.