“The Sympathizer” by Viet Thanh Nguyen (post 1): Pulitzer Prize novel begins with nameless first-person narrator’s declaration of multiple personality

“I am a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides. Sometimes I flatter myself that this is a talent, and although it is admittedly one of a minor nature, it is perhaps also the sole talent I possess. At other times, when I reflect on how I cannot help but observe the world in such a fashion, I wonder if what I have should even be called talent. After all, a talent is something you use, not something that uses you. The talent you cannot not use, the talent that possesses you—that is a hazard, I must confess. But in the month when this confession begins, my way of seeing the world still seemed more of a virtue than a danger, which is how some dangers first appear” (1, p. 1).

He does not feel he can see both sides due to skepticism, fair-mindedness, or judiciousness, as a person with only one personality would.

He feels as though he has two minds that check, challenge, and contradict each other. And the only things that would cause that kind of subjective experience are alternate personalities.

However, multiple personality, per se, is unintentional and unacknowledged, as in most novels.

1. Viet Thanh Nguyen. The Sympathizer. New York, Grove Press, 2015.

Added later same day: I may come back to this novel in the future, and give it another chance, but today, after the opening, I did not find the narrator engaging.