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 enlarge | Author: Tom Bissell
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 565406
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
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Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 1400075432
Dewey Decimal Number: 959.7043
EAN: 9781400075430
ASIN: 1400075432
Publication Date: March 11, 2008
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A son on his father's Vietnam service May 29, 2007
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
It has been a generation since the last American soldier left Vietnam, after almost 15 years of substantial involvement in the fight to defeat the army of North Vietnam and insurgent forces. Some 3 million Americans served, 800,000 of them in combat. The names of more than 58,000 of this country's dead are etched into the stark, granite walls of Washington's Vietnam War Memorial.
In his compelling new book, THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS, journalist Tom Bissell, born in 1974, brings that painful era to life in a rich and emotionally resonant narrative constructed around the trip he took to Vietnam in November 2003 with his father. John Bissell, a Marine combat veteran, arrived in Vietnam in April 1965 and served there until he was wounded in a booby trap explosion in late 1966. Acknowledging the humility that any writer must feel approaching a subject that has been covered in more than 30,000 books, Bissell sets for himself the task of recounting "an emotional experience interwoven with established historical facts of the Vietnam War." It is, he writes, "a book about war's endless legacy."
The book is loosely and somewhat idiosyncratically organized into three sections. The first interweaves an account of the last, desperate days before the fall of Saigon with Bissell's imaginative recreation of his father's dismay as he watches those events unfold in his home in Escanaba, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The second, and longest, section poses a handful of queries, such as "Could the United States have won the war in Vietnam?" and "What was the Soviet Union actually attempting to accomplish in Vietnam?" using them as the framework upon which the book's main narrative structure is constructed. The final section, entitled "The Children of the War Speak," contains brief snippets of interviews with Bissell's anonymous contemporaries on all sides of the conflict, reflecting on the ways in which the war's legacy affected them and their families.
Bissell is a gifted writer, whose prose is enriched by a talent for selecting arresting details that will fix the scenes he describes in the mind's eye. In one gripping section near the end of the book he describes the visit he and his father made to Cu Chi, an area that featured an elaborate network of tunnels from which guerrillas launched fiendishly ingenious attacks against American soldiers based there. Another emotionally powerful portion is Bissell's terse recounting of the My Lai massacre in March 1968, which most readers will find chilling in its harrowing detail.
Foregoing any attempt either to glamorize his father's service or to demonize the vast majority of the soldiers who fought there on all sides, Bissell nevertheless portrays his father as a fundamentally decent man, reporting that John Bissell's fellow Marines even nicknamed him "Nice Guy." Like most American soldiers, he was compelled to fight by a sense of duty to his comrades rather than to some at best vaguely understood mission to stop the spread of Communism throughout Southeast Asia. If anything, Bissell is much more judgmental about himself than he is of his father, subtly questioning whether he would have had the courage to do what his father did. One darkly comic scene describing Bissell's attempt to fire an AK-47 at a shooting gallery is likely to have readers wondering the same thing.
The book could have benefited from a map tracing the route of the Bissells' journey, as well as some photographs in addition to the few family snapshots sprinkled throughout the first section. These shortcomings are counterbalanced by a useful bibliography featuring annotations by Bissell on some of the secondary sources he relied upon in this work.
At a time when the United States is embroiled in another unpopular war, the temptation to draw facile parallels with the debacle in Vietnam is almost too great to resist. For the most part, Bissell doesn't succumb to that temptation, perhaps because most thoughtful readers already will find themselves struggling to suppress the echoes of incompetence and bravado from that era that haunt us to this day.
THE FATHER OF ALL THINGS is an intensely personal book that expands outward in concentric circles from the intimate relationship between father and son to the broadest concerns of historical and geopolitical thought. "War is appetitive," Bissell writes. "It devours goodwill, landscape, cultures, mothers, and fathers --- before finally forcing us, the orphans, to pick up the pieces." If this book finds the audience it deserves, it will remind those who lived through that era of the price war exacts, and may help educate those who did not to that grim and timeless reality.
--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
 A writer of great talent - Tom Bissell May 6, 2007
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
I've read everything I can find by Tom Bissell. His writing is mesmerizing: a medley of travel log, memoir, novel, and psychological study. I think he is inordinately talented.
With this memoir, his depiction of growing up in Escanaba, Michigan, resonated deeply with me, since I grew up there too and knew his family before he was born. I think he described it well, though his was a dark impression. His honest searching and critical mind were very moving to me.
My heart went out to his father, though a young man, saddled with supporting a wife and child, two siblings, his mother and mother-in-law in his early twenties. The Bissells were peceived as very wealthy and above the ordinary worries of most of our families. They were like the Magnificent Ambersons, and we didn't know the half of it.
I also admired his retrospective on the Vietnam War. It was very well researched and presented with lucidness and poignance. I'm not much of a history reader, but the author had my full attention and understanding.
Some day this writer is going to win lots of prizes. Thanks, Tom Bissell, for a wonderful book.
A Subject Greater Than the War Itself May 5, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
"The Father of All Things" is the latest brilliant offering from one of America's great young writers.
Whereas Bissell's first book, "Chasing the Sea," alternated between his (sometimes humorous, sometimes painful) return to Uzbekistan after a failed stint in the Peace Corps and a deft history of Central Asia and the ability of its peoples to repel or outlast any and all outside powers' tries at conquest, "The Father of All Things" plumbs the depths of one family's experience in the Vietnam War, and the reverberation that war has had on the children of veterans on both sides.
To his credit, Bissell shares more of himself in the memoir sections of the book than he does in "Chasing the Sea." His relationship with his father is one of soft reconciliation after years of -- if not literal, then certainly emotional -- separation. There are courageous and heart-baring passages that would've been clumsy in the hands of a less-talented author, and you can see the warmth that Marine Captain John Bissell has for his son, even when he's teasing him about being a Communist when they go to Vietnam together, almost 40 years after John's last visit, when he was one of the first combat troops on the ground.
Yes, why another book about Vietnam? As Bissell himself states in his brief author's note: "More than thirty thousand books on Vietnam are currently in print. Why another? one might (and probably did) ask. . . . This is not really a book about the nation of Vietnam, or even the Vietnam War. It is, instead, a book about war's endless legacy. . . . When war begins, leaders inevitably frown as they promise courage and bravery, guarantee tragic sacrifice, yet vow, all the same, to see it through. What any war's igniters rarely admit are the small, terrible truths that have held firm for every war ever fought, no matter how necessary or avoidable: 'This will be horrible, and whatever happens will scar us for decades to come.' Indeed, even necessary wars can destroy the trust of a people in their leaders, just as war destroys human beings on both sides of the rifle."
To ask questions of one's government is not treason -- it is one of the highest form of citizenship. And if one's government cannot supply satisfactory answers to its citizens, it is their duty to endlessly question that government. To say this book -- or the author himself -- is anti-American couldn't be further from the truth, and proof is in the pages. Bissell has reported from both Afghanistan and Iraq, and there's a particularly harrowing passage in the book where, trapped in Mazar-i-Sharif in the early days of the 2002 American invasion, he uses a fellow journalist's satellite phone to call his father. He gets cut off in the middle of the conversation and his father, believing his youngest son has been kidnapped by the Taliban, is suddenly thrown back into his own war.
Not only does Bissell do a superb job of honoring his father and the generation of young men who fought and died in Vietnam, he also, with "The Father of All Things," salutes the 20- and 30-somethings of contemporary America, the brothers and sisters of Bicentennial Babies, who are currently fighting and dying in Afghanistan and Iraq because, as it did with their fathers in Vietnam, their country called them to their duty.
Bissell well understands the sacrifices a military man makes, as he lived with them in the form of his father. Yes, this book is about war, and specifically about the Vietnam War and its shadow, but to read it so narrowly misses the point: This is a book about a son trying to understand his father because he loves him.
An Excellent Father/Son Story... April 6, 2007
There are thousands of books written on Vietnam. This one stands out due to its personal touch. The relationship between Bissell and his father is handled delicately and respectfully. They disagree about the war, but work to learn more about each other on this trip to Vietnam, where Bissell's father fought, led, and was changed forever. There's so much good stuff here. For those not wanting a hard-core history book...but are interested in some key questions any of us have about the war, in a section of the book Bissell actually presents formulated questions and addresses them efficiently and interestingly ("Why were the leaders of South Vietnam so corrupt and incompetent?" "Why did officials at all levels of the U.S. military and government lie so often during the war?" "Could the United States have won the war in Vietnam?"). The Mai Lai massacre is also addressed effectively, without political bent. Still, this book is about a father/son relationship...and how that relationship was forever altered by the War. There are no cheesy moments on this. In fact, you get a sense that the author becomes even more confused with his father as the journey moves forward.
More good stuff - the bibliography in the back, with Bissell's commentary on certain books, is a valuable resource for further reading. Also, the final section, with extensive quotes from other sons/daughters of Vietnam veterans (from all sides of the war) provides a final, satisfying close to the book. Highly recommended.
 Embarassingly bad and embarassing March 24, 2007
15 out of 55 found this review helpful
I'm a Vietnam veteran (Army, 1968-69, Company Commander and ARVN adviser), glad to have had the opportunity to serve there, and in 1999 took my son, then 26, back with me. We had a fantastic time and it was a real eye-opener for him. I was never prouder of being his father than on that trip.
I feel very, very sorry for Mr. Bissel whose son has turned out to be such an unperceptive, unfeeling ingrate. This is an inaccurate and poorly written book of no substance and will be popular only with the antiwar lefties who have not had a change of thinking in 40 years, even after the sad sagas of the boat people and the Killing Fields in Cambodia. An overdramatized view into an ugly and ignorant heart. Avoid.
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