The Father of all Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (review)

In the "Author's Note," Tom Bissell explains that this book is "about war's endless legacy" (xii). The legacy is mostly demonstrated through the two main characters, Tom and his father, and through Tom's examination of sound historical facts and observations of the world around him. Prompted by Vietnam's occupation of his own consciousness, Tom jumps at the professional opportunity to tour Vietnam with his father, a veteran Marine. Both men carry the weight of their individual burdens, but it is Tom whose perspective dominates the narrative.

Tom vividly draws the reader into his childhood, demonstrating how "[a]t every meal Vietnam sat down, invisibly, with our families" (101). The first two chapters embody this by weaving together fragments of history, both international and personal. One minute we are in Tom's childhood kitchen with his divorce-bound parents … and in the next, leaders of the U.S. and Vietnam play a catastrophic game of cat and mouse. At one moment, Tom imagines his father tucking the blankets around his small children … and then we see Tom and his father being escorted through the abandoned American military base at Chu Lai or the My Lai memorial.

Shrewdly organizing the comparison of these spaces, Tom sets us up for several rich moments in the oral history of his father. When Tom asks his father why he thought the U.S. could not defeat North Vietnam, the senior Bissell surprises his son with "the most human sentiment I had ever heard my father utter about the war," that "… this wasn't our country. We were a long way from home" (211, 212). Readers witness further insight into the legacy of war for veterans during another conversation in which Tom's father reveals the aloneness of each Vietnam soldier: "We didn't come here alongside the men we'd trained with, and we went home alone" (215). Through these revelations, both Tom and the readers develop a clearer understanding of his father's experience as a veteran, mostly through several dialogues that are exemplary practices in oral history.

Tom's self-ethnographical approach reveals both the strengths and potential weaknesses of The Father of All Things as an example of oral history. Tom successfully integrates informal discussions, formal interviews, pictures, letters, and his own memories to complement his historical analysis. With regard to his methodology, the context of this research is equally significant to the content of the oral history. The inherent risks in interviewing a family member could result in endangering the neutrality of that oral history, especially when his father explains to their Vietnamese tour guide that he sees his son "just enough to dislike him" (132). A neutral perspective, however, is not one of Tom Bissell's goals. Tom proudly claims this in his introduction, explaining that "[w]hat this book contains is an emotional experience interwoven with established historical facts" (xii).

We are often interrupted by his personal emotions toward his father: "Dad, I'm going to be honest and say you're freaking me out a little" (217). He is further "irritated" by his father's sense of personal failure in Vietnam but also because his father "had apparently never paused to wonder" that the American mission failed because it "was in fact wrong and immoral" (217). At the climax of their time in Vietnam together, Tom asks his father leading questions, as if he is trying to convince him that "the bad feelings" about his involvement went away as a result of "recognizing that the war was different" than he had formerly understood (347). The senior Bissell responds by saying, "I know you want me to tell you I think the war was wrong," but that time has helped him deal with his involvement. Further, the senior Bissell admits that revisiting the country has confirmed his belief that "it's best that everything turned out the...