War Breeds Genius

“Where were you when the world stopped turnin’

That September day?

Were you in the yard with your wife and children

Or workin’ on some stage in L.A.?

Did you stand there in shock at the sight of that black smoke

Risin’ against that blue sky?

Did you shout out in anger, in fear for your neighbor

Or did you just sit down and cry?”

Country music star Alan Jackson wrote the song above, “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)”, putting words and music to the horror that befell the United States on September 11, 2001.

Take a minute.

Where were you?

What were you doing?

Who were you with?

Did you understand the full magnitude of what just happened or was happening?

Did you have a clue what the next 13 years were going to bring?

Did (Do) you have friends, family, lovers in the military that answered President George Bush’s call to end the terroristic rule of al-Qaeda and Taliban forces based in Afghanistan?

Did your loved ones make it home…?

Without delving too far into my own personal narrative, my father, two cousins, my husband, and numerous close friends have all served in Operation Enduring Freedom at some point between 2001 and 2014. We are among the lucky. Everyone came home, physically whole. We know many others who did not.

All parts of war, the heroic and patriotic beginning, the heroic and horrific middle, and the heroic and seemingly hopeless end, are awful. It is through this historic lens of war that we will delve into Monique Truong’s novel, The Book of Salt.

The Book of Salt isn’t a book about war. It doesn’t talk about military tactics nor does it discuss the tragedies of war, such as death, disease, and dismemberment. At least, not directly. Let me explain.

The main character, Binh, is a Vietnamese cook who immigrated to France in order to escape his judgmental father’s homophobia and the unfortunate love affair that informed his father to his sexual preferences. Binh eventually lands a job as a live-in cook with his “madams”, who happened to be two American women also seeking solace and enlightenment in Paris. Here Binh was immersed in a world of “otherness”. He was neither French nor American, thus he was of little substance to his madams beyond the service he provided to them. He saw everything but was never seen. He had no identity, no culture to call his own.  He was outcast, bereft, lonely, and yet king of his kitchen. There is enough in this one paragraph to nearly write a dissertation on, but that’s not my focus today.

Let’s back up to Binh’s employers, the two women who happened to be famous American author Gertrude Stein and her lifelong companion/assistant, Alice Toklas. The life of these two women in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s (the setting of The Book of Salt) is what I want to talk about.

During this time, both France and the United States were still reeling and healing from the Great War, World War I. Many Americans, those who served in the war and those who sacrificed in other ways on the homefront, became intensely disenchanted with American traditional (read "conservative") values after witnessing what they saw as unnecessary death on an astronomical magnitude. As a result, many left America, moved to Paris and became known as “The Lost Generation”. Members of this illustrious club? Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, E.E. Cummings…and Gertrude Stein. 

In this way, war, particularly World War I, shaped and molded modern American literature, in a very significant way. Without the war, there would be no Lost Generation. Gertrude Stein and her home were an integral part of the Lost Generation’s revolt, where members wrote about frivolousness, changing gender roles, morphing sexual identities, and (re)creating a fanciful past that did not include two million friends dying of dysentery and foot rot. Without this canon of work, modern American literature would look vastly different than it does today. Without the influence of the Lost Generation, there very well might not be a story about Binh.

But wait, there’s more.

The author, Monique Truong, is herself a Vietnamese immigrant, though it would be more accurate to call her a political refugee. According to her website by the same name, she and her family moved from Saigon to the United States in 1975. This was the year that South Vietnam surrendered to Communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong forces, officially ending the 21 year “conflict” that killed roughly 2,000,000 million civilians as listed in Britannica. No doubt Monique and her family witnessed horrific events of this war that catapulted them from their homeland in hopes for a better life in America. As an adult, Monique is a writer living in NYC, whose first novel, The Book of Salt, was inspired by a chance notation she read in Alice Toklas’ cookbook about the South Asian cook who lived with Toklas and her lover, Gertrude Stein. While there is still a chance that a version of Monique who never left Vietnam would have still read an American cookbook that would lead to her successful novel about Binh, I think it is fair to say that the odds would not have been in her (or our) favor.

Still with me? Because here’s the buy one, get one free special!

The book about a Vietnamese immigrant living in a home with arguably the ringleader of America’s Lost Generation, which was formed due in part to the fallout of the Great War, was written by a refugee from the Vietnam War, and was published in 2003. So, you say?

In 2003, we as a country were two years past the September 11^th tragedy that redefined history. We were in the throes of Operation Enduring Freedom, just beginning Operation Iraqi Freedom, with death notices being delivered to American families at an alarming rate. This war would rage on until its official death in 2014, though there are many still today who do not believe it is really over, despite what the official documents say.

War breeds genius. Sometimes evil, mad, and destructive. Other times, enlightening, innovative, and hopeful. In a historical way, it is the latter that brought the world The Book of Salt, and the literary world is grateful. 

My husband and I in 2016 at Joint Base San Antonio (aka Fort Sam Houston), Texas. He is set to retire in September 2021, as a combat veteran with 20 years honorable service.