Nothing and so be it is an essay on the Vietnam War, written by Oriana Fallaci, in New York in 1969. The book is the testimony of the time spent in Saigon, Vietnam, between 1967 and 1968, by the author as a war correspondent for “L’Europeo Magazine” with the photographer Gianfranco Moroldo.
On the eve of her departure for Vietnam as correspondent of “L’Europeo”, in the autumn of 1967, Oriana Fallaci attempted an answer to her little sister Elisabetta’s question about Life: “Life is the time that passes between the moment in which one is born, and the moment you die”. The answer seems incomplete, and the question accompanies it during the long journey. Upon arrival in Saigon, the atmosphere appears surreal. The book in the form of a diary tells the story of the author, in South Vietnam, together with journalists from the France Presse Agency and their opinions on the war, generally considered a war that has produced unnecessary deaths. Fallaci writes the interviews made to some protagonists of the war, soldiers of the National Liberation Front, soldiers of the United States army; reports two diaries written by two North Vietnamese soldiers, one unknown and the other is Le Vanh Minh, both dead.
The France Press agency is the only link with the rest of the country, and it is from that base that Fallaci moves to testify the senselessness of war. From the battle of Dak To and the siege of Saigon, the horrors of the conflict are noted in his diary every single day. There is the refusal: “Because almost nothing like war, and nothing like an unjust war, shatters the dignity of man”. By his admission, the diary does not want to tell and limit itself to the conflict in Vietnam; it wants to tell an experience. You will mainly work in the areas around Saigon. The following books will say to the experience in Hanoi and again in Saigon. Fallaci will participate in expeditions, collect interviews, recording them promptly in her notebook, will choose to experience firsthand what it feels like to be on a plane that throws napalm on people, will interview Vietcong and dictators, generals and simple soldiers.
He will ask everyone: why did you choose war? He will experience the shock of seeing children playing with corpses and will be moved by the love diaries of the Vietcong, with their poems and amorous desperations lived in war. Not to mention the mass graves, the marches, the desperate mothers in front of their dead children, the windows that collapse with bombs, the Tet offensive. And Loan, terrible General Loan, will be one of the most symbolic and central figures of the entire Vietnamese human landscape. This character will recur in his memories and his books, over and over again. He will also be the one who will show himself fragile, so much to cry in front of Fallaci. Nothing and so be it shows and generates parallels and reflections between the western feeling of Vietnam in the Sixties and the reality experienced firsthand. The diary created in the form of a novel opens its new pages with the entry on, sometimes it is specified whether it is evening or morning. Each of eleven chapters opens with a personal reflection, not least that on the fascination of war, as a preamble to the adventures that will then be shown.
This book and the author are appreciated for intellectual honesty. She starts with the intention of accusing the Americans. Still, as the story takes shape, it will be evident that she becomes part of the mechanism of greatness-baseness typical of human beings. She will show cowardice and terror, fear, uncertainty. Not only a desire for heroism, courage, faith in values, love of knowledge. This is an added value of the book. And of the person. Fallaci has very intimate prose, in some cases. The “You” he refers to is Elizabeth, the little sister.
Oriana is both author and protagonist – Her desire to understand, his feeling incapable of embracing “in full” a reality as deeply touching and upsetting as war seems evident. When, after a year, Fallaci returns to her Tuscany and finds little Elisabetta, she has an answer. “Life is a death sentence. And precisely because we are condemned to death, we must go through it thoroughly, fill it without wasting a step, without falling asleep for a second, without fear of making a mistake, of breaking, we who are men, neither angels nor beasts, but men. Published in 1969, “Nothing and so be it” is considered a classic of literature, a war novel that is a hymn to Life.
by Antonella Malizia