The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (Vintage Departures)

The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (Vintage Departures) | Tom Bissell | Like father but not son

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The Father of All ...

	The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (Vintage Departures) Tom Bissell Vintage, 2008 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

a mysterious chorus of conversation

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.

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Like father but not son

Well-written attempt to look at the Vietnam war through the eyes of the younger generation of a veteran
s family. Unfortunately author Bissell did not really do his homework and traveled to the scene of his father's memories with an anti-war and anti-American bias. Some of his bibliographical comments tell us where he is coming from politically: For example, C. Dale Walton's excellent "The Myth of Inevitable Defeat in Vietnam" is dismissed, "Did I mention this book is nuts?" His superficial knowledge of Vietnamese culture and history is noteworthy, and his description of periods such as the Diem years is clearly inaccurate and at odds with very well-documented accounts such as Mark Moyar's "Triumph Forsaken." Also apparently missing in action were any serious efforts to see the anti-Communist, Vietnamese perspective such as might have been obtained quite readily from Vietnamese Americans who managed to escape the country. He could have spoken to Vietnamese (even some former VC) who were incarcerated for years and survived the grim "re-education" camps. Bissell seems intent on ragging even his own father to come around to his point of view and the idea that there was no such thing as an American "good guy" or positive accomplishments. Near the end of their trip, father to son: "I'm sorry. I know you want me to tell you I think the war was wrong. But I don't."

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3

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