2.7 The Novel of Revolutionary Ideas: Viet Thanh Nguyen and Colleen Lye (AV)

Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Sympathizer and its sequel The Committed, joins esteemed scholar Colleen Lye of UC-Berkeley for a candid discussion about the Asian-American novel and the role of literature and theory in radical social movements. Colleen is drawn to the mix of philosophy and suspense in Viet’s work and wonders if he considers himself a member of the theory generation–that is, writers for whom literary theory is not just a way of reading texts but an impetus to create new literary forms for grappling with ideas. Viet, schooled in deconstruction and postcolonial theory, accepts the designation with a caveat: If he is a novelist of ideas, then he is a novelist of revolutionary ideas. Inspired by Fanon’s anticolonialism and Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the double bind, Viet’s defiantly politicizing aesthetic looks to place the colonial subject, particularly the Vietnamese refugee, at the center of multiple stories of American and French imperialism.

Colleen and Viet reflect on the role of academic training in Viet’s transformation from Asian-Americanist scholar into Asian-American novelist and discuss the peculiarities of immigrant Asian identity in terms of language. Mother tongues, bilingualism, orphaned language, and adopted language all become metaphors for how Asian-American writers must balance the loss of heritage and weight of expectation with the call to self-invention. Plus, Viet reveals the not-so-wholesome treats that enabled him to complete The Sympathizer!

Mentioned in the Episode

• Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Nicholas Dames, “The Theory Generation“
• Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
• John Okada, No-No Boy
• Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Flashpoints for Asian-American Studies
• W.E.B. DuBois, “Double Consciousness”
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Double Bind”
• Ocean Vuong

Listen and Read

Audio: The Novel of Revolutionary Ideas: Viet Thanh Nguyen and Colleen Lye

10.2 Beautiful Sentences Matter. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Matt Hooley (SW) – Novel Dialogue

Can a novel with a singular voice also be a chorus? Can it reject the conventions of the novel and still be a novel? Poet, essayist, and novelist Billy-Ray Belcourt tells critic Matt Hooley how his desire to write a novel that “would sound like something else,” led him to produce A Minor Chorus, his experimental debut novel. Together they consider how Billy-Ray’s vulnerable, first-person narrator makes room for other voices, or more precisely, how it becomes “a voice that could focalize the desires of a community.” Billy-Ray discusses how his influences— queer theory, indigenous novelists, and contemporary autofiction—harmonize in his search for a new form. While author and critic trace the circuits of grief and melancholy that run from Roland Barthes to Billy-Ray, their conversation is joyful, reminding listeners that romance and intimacy sustain us and that beautiful sentences matter. His answer to this season’s signature question attests to the way that even the classroom can be refashioned, like the novel, into a chorus. Mentioned in this episode By Billy-Ray Belcourt: A Minor Chorus A History of My Brief Body This Wound is a World Also mentioned: The Summer Day “Arundhati Roy Sees Delhi as a Novel” Rachel Cusk, The Shakespeare and Company Interview “The State of the Political Novel: An Interview with Édouard Louis” “100 Things About Writing a Novel” Mourning Diary Ann Cvetkovich Joshua Whitehead Mourning and Melancholia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1. 10.2 Beautiful Sentences Matter. Billy-Ray Belcourt and Matt Hooley (SW) 43:57
2. 10.1 "Extreme Circumstances, Extreme Reactions:” Aaron Gwyn and Sean McCann (JP) 46:37
3. We Better Laugh About It: A Discussion with Álvaro Enrigue and Maia Gil’Adí 47:03
4. 9.5 Who Owns These Tools? Vauhini Vara and Aarthi Vadde (SW) 48:58
5. 9.4 “That In Between Time,” Fernanda Trías and Heather Cleary (MAT) 52:05

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