Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Butler, Robert Olen - Kathleen Gilgore (review date 4 September 1992)

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Kathleen Gilgore (review date 4 September 1992)

SOURCE: Gilgore, Kathleen. “As Others See the Vietnamese.” Christian Science Monitor 84, no. 199 (4 September 1992): 12.

[In the following excerpt, Gilgore extols Butler's poignant and respectful treatment of the Vietnamese people and their language in A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain.]

Robert Olen Butler's A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain makes deeper and truer sense of the bittersweet life of exiled Vietnamese. He concentrates on Westernized families who escaped in 1975. The only American fiction writer who has delved deeply into the lives and psyches of these new Americans, Butler is fluent in Vietnamese, and it shows. It's refreshing to see this ancient and subtle language used with respect instead of GI pidgin.

Each of Butler's stories forms a poignant monologue. The Vietnamese characters take center stage and speak as if justifying their existence. Sometimes...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Madison Smartt Bell (review date 23 February 1992)
   2. Richard Eder (review date 29 March 1992)
   3. Kathleen Gilgore (review date 4 September 1992)
   4. Cynthia McCown (review date 11 December 1993)
   5. Josephine Hart (review date 16 January 1994)
   6. Robert Olen Butler and Missouri Review (interview date February 1994)
   7. Julia Glass (review date 6 February 1994)
   8. Robert Olen Butler and Michael Sartisky (interview date spring 1994)
   9. Mark Ford (review date 12 May 1994)
   10. Helen Heritage August (review date August 1994)
   11. Lorrie Smith (essay date spring 1995)
   12. Jonathan Penner (review date 10 November 1996)
   13. Barbara C. Ewell (review date 17 May 1997)
   14. Susan Balée (review date summer 1997)
   15. Peter Stanford (review date 17 August 1997)
   16. Susie Linfield (review date 25 January 1998)
   17. Thomas Bonner (review date 20 June 1998)
   18. Ron Charles (review date 6 January 2000)
   19. Kit Reed (review date 16 January 2000)
   20. Jonathan Levi (review date 23 January 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Moliere