A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain

I am just a businessman, not a poet. It is the poet who is supposed to see things so clearly and to remember. Perhaps it is only the poets who can die well. Not the rest of us. I drove from my home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to the airport in Houston, Texas, to pick up my wife’s grandfather. And what is it that I experienced on that trip? What is it that struck me as I got off the interstate highway in Beaumont, knowing the quick route to the airport as I do? I was driving through real towns in Texas. One was named China, another Nome. One was Liberty. If I was a man who believed in symbols and omens, I would have smiled at this. I was passing through Liberty to pick up my wife’s grandfather, whose own liberty my wife and I and the man’s nephew in San Francisco had finally won, after many years of trying. He was arriving this very day from the West Coast after living thirteen years under communist rule in our home country of Vietnam. Perhaps a poet would think of those things – about Liberty, Texas, and my wife’s grandfather – a write a memorable poem. Though maybe not. I am ignorant of these matters. Maybe it is only the bird taking flight or the frog jumping into the pond that the poet is interested in. (The Trip Back, pg. 29)

Robert Olen Butler’s short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, concerns the juxtaposition  between cultures, between countries (in this case Vietnam and the United States), between the immigrant and the established. Each story is narrated by a different immigrant from Vietnam with the exception of the last – which is a reversal of theme so to speak. The stories are filled with a nostalgia for what was lost – a country, a father, a child, a way of life. There are war stories, ghost stories, love stories, and just plain everyday life stories all infused with a haunting, a lingering much like the scent in the title. There are absences, shadows in these stories – that which is missing is very present – a contradiction that is solved by the quality of Butler’s writing.

The story quoted above is about a man traveling to the Houston airport to pick-up his wife’s grandfather. Along the way he remembers the country he came from, he thinks about the country he now lives in and works as a businessman, he also thinks of his wife’s stories of her grandfather. He and his wife have what seems to be a typical Vietnamese husband and wife relationship; typical, at least for the stories in this collection. The relationship is reserved; the signs of affection are subtle and most often unspoken. When things go awry in the story, how will the husband react? The answer was both surprising and satisfying.

Most of the stories take place in Louisiana, a place that is like Vietnam and different at the same time:

We ended up here in the flat bayou land of Louisiana, where there are rice paddies and where the water and the land are in the most delicate balance with each other, very much like the Mekong Delta, where I grew up. (Crickets, pg. 60)

The father in this story sees the similarities in the landscape and tries to use those to connect with his very American son. In another story, the memory of apples in Vietnam, the uniqueness of eating an American fruit in an East Asian country is contrasted with the readily availability of apples in America – all of which serves as a backdrop for a truly lovely romance.

Although there is the linger backdrop of the war and displacement in these stories, there is also recognition of the reality of life – a seeping recognition that suddenly bursts into your awareness:

Except I had unconsciously noticed things, so when Thuy spoke to me and then, soon after, the two of them walked away from the hotel together on the eve of Ly’s induction into the Army. I realized with a shock that I actually had come to understand slowly all along. Like suddenly noticing that you are old. The little things gather for a long time, but one morning you look in the mirror and you understand them in a flash. (Preparation, pg. 149)

There were a few stories that seemed a little weaker to me. Butler includes one longer story, The American Couple, that didn’t seem as tight as the others. Perhaps if I had read it separately, I would have had a different reaction. All in all I enjoyed reading Butler’s stories and think they are definitely suitable for any reader as well as making a good discussion for a book group who is looking for something other than a novel to read.

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