Day 481, Quasi-Quarantine: "The Committed" Is A Worthy Continuation Of A Colonial Conversation

"While nihilists thought life was meaningless and rejected all religious and moral principles, I still believed in the principle of revolution. I also believed that nothing was full of meaning -- in short, that nothing was actually something. Wasn't that a kind of revolution in itself?"

The staggering sequel to the incredible "The Sympathizer," "The Committed" picks up the tale of the Crazy Bastard as he struggles to find a post-double agent, post-Indochinese life in Paris. After the devastating end to the previous book, Viet Than Nguyen doubles down on the protagonist's guilt and shame.

"Revolutions are always about making the impossible possible, I said. And I am a revolutionary who has found his revolution."

"You're an idiot who's crazy."

"That could also be true."

Using a fever-dream quality, this book digs into fascinating discussions of philosophical dialectics as subplots to the drug-fueled gangster ride that serves as the spine of "The Committed." Dealing in double meanings, Nguyen finds no topic taboo to parse, dissect, and question, using satire, irony, and outright humor to slightly cushion the blows.

"As for America, just think of Coca-Cola. That elixir is really something, embodying as it does the addictive, teeth-decaying sweetness of a capitalism that was no good for you no matter how it fizzled on the tongue ...

"The American Way of Life! Eat too much, work too much, buy too much, read too little, think even less, and die in poverty and insecurity."

The author continues to explore our bizarre relationships to sexuality, as well as fascinating looks at philosophical dialectics. Nguyen favors staggeringly long sentences and there's an occasional shift in point of view that causes pause, but overall this book is (another) revelation.

"The Committed" is an inspired follow-up to a seminal work on post-colonialism and stands on its own as a fierce, frantic tale of what it means -- and what it costs -- to unearth an identity alongside your place in the world.

"This, too, is the dialectic, to take the revolution seriously but not to take the revolutionaries seriously, for when revolutionaries take themselves too seriously, they cock their guns at the crack of a joke. Once that happens, it's all over, the revolutionaries have become the state, the state has become repressive, and the bullets, once used against the oppressor in the name of the people, will be used against the people in their own name. That is why the people, if they wish to survive and dodge those bullets, must be nameless."