Word: cung
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...think you know much more than I do about what the Vietnamese call the "ban cung hoa de tri" (impoverish [the1
...South Viet Nam of the novel is governed by "President Cung," who is the double of the late Ngo Dinh Diem; an army coup against him is brewing. It is Amberley's job to bring the fiercely independent Cung and his policies under U.S. control or, failing that, to back the army coup. After open negotiations and private appeals with an obbligato of CIA skulduggery, Amberley does fail with President Cung; the coup does take place exactly along the lines of the one that deposed and murdered Diem...
...policy correct? Did Amberley carry it out wisely? Or was he to blame for impetuosity and arrogance that made it impossible for Cung to cooperate-and thus did he cause Cung's death? If Amberley had behaved more in accord with his own inner vision of his true Zen self, would the outcome have been different? Crushed between the millstones of public events and his private convictions of failure, Amberley agonizes in self-doubt, comes near to "psychotic" collapse, at length quits public life to find peace in a Zen monastery...
Religious Alarums. Almost from the beginning, the reader is writhing in doubt too, but of another kind. Author West is an Australian, widely traveled in the Far East, who knew Ngo Dinh Diem and came to admire him. "Cung," visualized as a remote and complex man, is a half-created shadow who is nonetheless the only real hero of the book...