A Close Reading of Chapter 13 of Monique Truong "The Book of Salt": Getting Lost in Bilignin

Photo by Adele Payman on Unsplash

Have you ever gotten separated from your family? Lost from the group you were traveling with? Intentionally lost yourself in a moment, a person or something else? Felt lost not because of your geographic location but because you were completely out of your element? I have a confession. Lately, I have experienced that sensation of being out of my element. That feeling of being in a foreign environment. And try as I might, it isn’t something that I have been able to shake. I haven’t moved. I’m not in a foreign country. But, I recently started graduate school and while the experience of going to college isn’t new, or even taking graduate level classes, I still feel a bit out of my element. 

I was reading a book called “The Book of Salt” by Monique Truong recently. Published in 2003, the novel opens in 1934. Truong introduces us to Binh, a Vietnamese cook who relocates to Paris from Saigon. At this time, Saigon was a French colony. In the opening chapters, we find that in Paris, Binh becomes a live-in cook for two Mesdames (plural of Madame – I had to look it up).

As Binh, who serves as narrator, shares his story, we find that he was hired after responding to a newspaper ad: “Two American ladies wish to retain a cook —27 rue de Fleurus. See the concierge.” 

It turns out that the two American ladies he would work for would be Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Stein being the American playwright, novelist and poet. Ms. Toklas, her companion. 

With Binh's internal dialogue, Truong builds an imaginary story of one of Stein and Toklas’ real-life Vietnamese servants, a migrant, a drifter who left home at 20. We join Binh’s story when he has worked for the Mesdames for half a decade and must decide if he wants to travel with his Mesdames as they leave Paris for a trip to the U.S., their birthplace, or if he wants to return to his family in Vietnam.  

Truong takes readers on a journey into Binh’s experience as a foreigner in Paris using brief snapshots like photographs to relay his story.

Truong’s use of language in “The Book of Salt” paints a vivid picture through the images she constructs with the pen. Her use of language does a good job of bringing the reader into Binh’s experiences and memories. One such snapshot is from Chapter 13, we travel with the Mesdames and Binh to a town called Bilignin in the Rhône Valley. 

As a reader, we get the sense that Binh is not very fond of Bilignin from the opening lines of the chapter. He says:

“When I applied for the position as live-in cook, I did not know about the house in Bilignin. I assumed that the lives of these two American ladies and therefore mine would be centered in Paris on the rue de Fleurus. They did not inform me during the interview about their seasonal migration. Not that it would have made a difference to me then. Before joining their household, I thought that a home was a home, a Madame was a Madame, a city was...well, even  then I knew that Paris was a city and that many other places were not.” 

Truong doesn’t stop there. In Bilignin, it’s almost as if Binh loses himself even though in Bilignin, Binh is more of a curiosity than anything else. The farmers in the town are not threatened by him. Binh shares, “The farmers in the village are gracious enough and at first simply curious enough to invite me, the first asiatique they have ever seen, into their homes.”

Truong periodically incorporates French phrases into her writing but limits her usage. Generally speaking, as a reader, we are able to utilize the context clues to determine meaning. However, I did find myself Googling quiet a few phrases. As the statement above shows, although Binh is welcomed, into the homes of the locals, he seems to spend a lot of time during the summer intentionally trying to get lost. Lost from the ghosts that haunt him, lost in the crowd, lost from who he is. He does so by drinking heavily. Truong writes, “All the families in this area make their own wine, so drinking is never a problem, and generosity fills my glass till I thirst for just a bit of water. I have found that water at the end of these nights eases my entry back into Monday.”

Over the course of the summer, we see Binh spend a good bit of time in the bottle getting lost. So much so that his Mesdames know his routine, drunk on Sunday, sick on Monday morning. There is even a running discourse between Binh and Miss Tolkas, ““It is my health—” I lie. “But I am improving as we speak,” Miss Toklas finishes my speech for me.”” To accommodate the fact that Binh is basically useless each Monday Miss Toklas adjusts his schedule giving him Mondays off – unpaid of course.

Each Sunday Binh finds himself in the bottle, he seems to lose more of himself. At one point Truong writes, 

“The farmers in Bilignin work and drink like horses. The two activities do not seem to affect each other in any significant way. I, however, begin losing my appetite and my body weight right along with it. By the end of the summer GertrudeStein, when greeting me, finds it necessary to repeat herself: “Well, hello, Thin Thin Bin.” A cook who has no desire to eat is a lost soul. Worse, he is a questionable cook. Even when I can no longer take a sip, a bite, a morsel of any of the dishes that I am preparing for my Mesdames, I never forget that tasting is an indispensable part of cooking. The candlelight flicker of flavors, the marriage of bright acidity with profound savoriness, aromatics sparked with the suggestion of spice, all these things can change within seconds, and only a vigilant tongue can find that precious moment when there is nothing left to do but eat.”

One interesting tidbit from the novel is that Miss Stein does not go by Miss Stein or Gertrude or any other variation, but "GertrudeStein", all one word. The above excerpt from the book provides a clear snapshot of Binh’s physical and mental state in Bilignin. It's as if he is even more out of his element in Bilignin than in Paris. A foreigner. An outsider. An exile.

In "The Book of Salt", Truong also intricately uses the language of food to draw the reader into Binh’s world, a style she carries throughout the novel. This makes sense considering that Truong's idea for the novel originated from the mention of an Indochinese cook in Ms. Toklas' published cookbook "The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book", according to the publisher Houston Mifflin Co. It also makes sense that Binh's function as the colonized, a cook, is equated to his identity in a way.

As Binh’s story develops throughout the novel, we find that he carries with him scars of the past primarily from verbal abuse inflicted by his dad. An internal voice which comes out frequently to criticize Binh simply described as the “Old Man”. 

Even though Binh learned French from his brother who worked as a sous chef in a French kitchen in Saigon while growing up, there remains a language gap between Binh and French speakers. Before leaving Vietnam, Binh had worked with his brother in a French kitchen until being fired for having an inappropriate relationship with the chef according to the Madame of the house. Binh is never quite as eloquent in his French speaking out loud as he is in his own internal dialogue which he shares as narrator. 

Curiously enough, Binh does find some value in Bilignin. Binh relays, “The farmers there ask very little of me, and when they do they seem to enjoy, unlike their Parisian cousins, the sounds of the French language faltering on my tongue. Sometimes they even ask to hear a bit of Vietnamese.”

Despite his efforts to get lost, to forget. Binh never does. The chapter closes with a poignant statement. “In a matter of a few short hours, everyone in that village loses his memory. Everyone except me. Believe me, I have tried. But no matter how much I drink, I am still left with their voices, thick with alcohol, and their faces burnt raw by the sun.”

In this we see Binh's desperate attempts to get lost never really come to fruition. Unfortunately, that feeling of being out of our element. Of being different. The desire to get lost in the midst of everyone else is never something that we can ever really truly achieve. We can not run from who we are. Hide from where we've been or come from. Become who we are not. Instead, as individuals we must face who we are. Our uniqueness. Our differences. And more importantly, we must treat ourselves and others with a little kindness, compassion and mercy so no one feels the need to get lost.