The author writes about the real people who appear in his forthcoming novel, The Sympathizer.
I received the copyedited manuscript of my novel today. Attached to it was a style sheet where the copyeditor had made some interesting lists drawn from my novel, including key words (“chastity-locked,” “Great American novel, the,” “goddammit,” “scotch,” and “whiskey” were among them), a timeline, character names, and “real personages” that appear in the novel.
So here are those real personages, who together foreshadow many of the novel’s concerns:
Baudelaire
Beauvoir, Simone de
Borgnine, Ernest
Brando, Marlon
Buttinger, Joseph (Vietnam scholar)
Capone, Al
Chandler, Raymond
Chernyshevsky, Nikolay
Coburn, James (actor)
Columbus, Christopher
Coward, Noël
Crosby, Bing
Davis, Angela
Didion, Joan
Duc Huy (Vietnamese singer)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
FitzGerald, Frances (Vietnam War journalist; won Pulitzer)
Fonda, Jane
Ford, Gerald
Ford, Tennessee Ernie (singer)
Gable, Clark
Gabor, Zsa Zsa
Gardner, Erle Stanley (author, Perry Mason)
Gauguin, Paul
Goebbels, Joseph
Guevara, Che
Hayworth, Rita
Hedren, Tippi (actress)
Hepburn, Audrey
Heston, Charlton
Ho Chi Minh
Holden, William (actor)
Holiday, Billie
Hope, Bob
Joplin, Janis
Khanh Ly (Vietnamese pop singer)
Lee, Bruce
Lenin, V. I.
Loren, Sophia
Mao, Chairman
Marcos, Imelda
Marcos, Ferdinand
Marx, Karl
Mitchum, Robert
Murphy, Audie (decorated soldier, WWII)
Ngo Dinh Diem (first president of South Vietnam)
Nguyen Du (Vietnamese poet)
Nin, Anaïs
Nixon, Richard
Pham Duy (Vietnamese songwriter)
Phan Boi Chau (Vietnamese nationalist)
Phuong, Elvis (Vietnamese pop singer)
Presley, Elvis
Reagan, Ronald
Rooney, Mickey
Sinatra, Frank
Springfield, Dusty
Summer, Donna
Taylor, James
Thich Nhat Hanh
Thieu, President
To Huu (Vietnamese poet)
Trinh Cong Son (folk singer)
Wayne, John
West, Mae
Whitman, Walt
Williams, Hank
Williams, Tennessee
