Solitude -the work of Van Tho


























FROM A WRITER'S DIARY



I

Saigon 1963

I started writing in 1952 in Hanoi - in the first days of the Vietminh-launched autumn winter offensive when the rumble of artillery roached even the captital. My mother was the last of the Đo clan to be reported as last after the fall of my native town Nghĩa Lộ. I felt compelled to write in my lonely state. Writing then brought me some solace.
At the beginning of 1953 when I ceased to receive any money from my mother, I was obliged to embark on journalism of the humblest sort. I was charged with collecting news tips around the four districts of Hanoi and the courts as well. I also assumed the duties of a proof- reader in the afternoon and evening. Whereas my colleagues received one thousand five hundred piasters monthly, my boss Vu Ngoc Cac paid meone thousand only. I had to earn my daily bread by the sweat of my brow.
I came to the South Vietnam before Điện Biên Phủ and the subsequent Geneva Agreements.Of the first ten years of my profession as a writer, I was an official on a contractual basis for eighteen months only. I was known under the pen name ThePhong's coined by L.T.D. and myself at the foot of an electric pole in front of my aunt's villa in Chợ Đuổi Street, in Hanoi. This magical name keeps ringing in my ears.
In those days, there were very few Northerners and life was pretty hard for me. The highest price I enjoyed for a review was one hundred and fifty piastres. At that time, I had in store some memorial novels dealing with the life of the montagnards in my homeland in the northernmost part of North Vietnam. They were Tình sơn nữ ( A Highland Lass's Lover) written in Hanoi, Đợi ngày chiến thắng ( Waiting for a day of Victory) , and Cô gái Nghĩa lộ ( A Girl from Nghĩa lộ) , written in Saigon. The royalties for each of this trio were three thousand piasters for the first edition of two thousand copies. It was really great for an apprentice writer like me. The public received my novels with much enthusiasm.
The charge that I held many a critic in slight contempt was partly justified. The so-called critics could not fail to acclaim any book by an influential man. Take this case. When a book by writer Phan Văn Tạo was released, lost of provincial cadres offered to sell it and some tens of newspapers were quick to comment on its favourably. Even a minister in Bảo Đai's era wrote a partisan review in his ectremely polished style in le Journal d'Extrême Orient the prominent French language in Saigon. I knew and I still believe he did not write it out of sincere admiration. When writer Phan Văn Tạo presented his book to writer Nguyễn Đuc Quỳnh , then adviser to the Minister, the latter said, " You're only a writer with half of your being because you're only acquainted with the pink side of things".
To quote Jan Kott,
Uniformity of opinion among intelletuals is always a bad thing.The more complete it is, the worse the omen is. Uniformity of poorly informed opinions are all the more so. We deplore conformity. It's like witnessing a face to hear a Minister of Cultural Affairs making a plea to writers to work harder while he did not believe in literature.
Although the situation then was not so bad in Poland where writers were commissioned by the government, we are heading towards such a course of things. After the war many writers who could not put up with privation, hunger, nad misery have dropped their sense of mission. Here is another quoatation by Jan Kott:
What worries me is not the fact that many Polish stories are badly written, but the fact that many Polish writers are standing around and telling lies. As a critic I feel it is my duty to scruntinize the artist's motivation, that is, real behaviour or his attitudes towards life. I cannot praise a book of it does not reflect some concern about life. I felt nauseous when literary awards were decided by government officials who had very little knowledge, if any, of literature.
Can government officials become great writers? Perhaps, but only something like one out of a million. The majority of them only uphold the order of the Town Hall Clock, not that of the Eternal Clock.
I was never keen on behaving myself and writing as if I had my head in the clouds. Only those to whom luxury and misery make no difference and who do not compromise with their conscience can understand me. For this wrote these words by Essenin in capitals: DRINK WITH ME, O SUFFERING FEMALE DOG!DO COME AND DRINK WITH ME ! In alien Paris, after losing his money Mayakovsky asked for help from friends and had to swear, shrugging his shoulders, " How could these lousy bastards dare to think of generosity?"
Those who insist on having a tasty breakfast with a gulp of delicious coffee, those who enjoy the wishful thinking of having contributed to national culture after attending functions held in luxurious hotels had better not read my books if they wish to avoid dissappointment. My sort of rugged literature is definitely not to your taste. Don't torture me any more. Stop giving me the fly-caused itchy sensation to a pussy wound. You can go and pick up pretty girls, suits expertly tailored in cities as far as Paris, a set of wierd buttons, a new pipe, a specially imported tie or a top bottle of perfume. Sophisticates, you are surely much smarter than I can afford to be. Most of us writers are lucky if we have enough for ourselves to eat, let alone feeding wives and kids. We write simply because we cannot escape it, being victims of what we may call complexe d'obesssion.
In the last ten years how did I live? Time and again I faced hunger, humiliations of all sorts and committed such unsavoury acts as theft and extortion of money from friends. All sorts of queer things. All my enemies can use these to discredit me if they want to; there is no need for them to forge any other accusations. Or, they can just quote from my published autobiography Nửa đường đi xuống ( Midway in my Life's Joueney) , wherein the author is never evasive about any issue, however touchy it is. I have never practised blackmail and I am a living victim of blackmail. ; I have never been a vandal and I am branded a literary vandalist unhonourably. I am just a agnostic never an atheist. Im an comdemned of being a Judas, the traitor who sold out Jesus Christ. An innocent, I was reported to be chief of the destructive committee. All this happened to the simple writer that I was when the tempo of our literary activities was at an all time low.

II

In France the great playwright Jean Anouilh swore he would never write for dailies. I cannot but throughly agree with him, knowing what rubbish Vietnamese dailies are. As a former journalist, I cannot believe my eyes when I read all the rubbish in the newspapers. Fortunately I am no longer a journalist. I was once a contractual official for eighteen months because of hunger and because of my lack of courage. Afterwards, I served again as an official for six months. According to the contract I was receive five thousand piasters a month. After two months, I was given four thousand only, due to the budget squeeze. I was forced to resign when I learnt be a further cut in my salary. And it took me unbelievable patience to realise a claim for the salary. I was entitled to. At last I was convinced that I could not hang on to the government payroll as long as I wanted to write. Independence of thought is the sine qua non of any conscientious writer.
In my ten years of writing, there are at least three memorable events concerning three of my readers and myself. I am going to relate them one by one. I did not know the firsdt reader, a Quang Trung Training Center Canteen salesgirl. Nguyễn Quốc Toàn, a man who had fed me some time came to the Center as a national serviceman. He took some of my books there to read and lent her my autobiography Nửa đường đi xuống ( Midway in My Life Journey's) . Upon returning it to him she said, " I think I should lodge a complaint against you. I was so absorbed in reading the Thephong you lent me I forgot to watch the customers. As a result, I lost a couple of fountain pens" . Toàn also said he was allowed to buy on credit. I felt immensily proud of having such a keen reader. The second reader was a Faculty of Letters student from central Vietnam who met me in the street. He stopped to say " Hello there" and then continued, " I know you because I've read your book Nửa đường đi xuống which may brother bought. I can recongnise you from your photo on the jackett".
Hesitatingly, he asked me whether I had lunch. It was around three in the afternoon then. I was deeply moved, knowing my account of hunger in the auobiography was very convincing. I have not seen him since and do not even recall his name. But I would still recognise him if I saw him again and I remember the address he gave me, 66 Phó Đức Chính St. I did not go there. The third event occured during a visit I paid in 1963 to Tùng Nghĩa ( Dalat), the settlement area reserved for the Tháis of Lai Châu, Son La and Nghĩa Lộ. I was a bit disappointed because I did not see any girl in the traditional dress. When my friend and I stopped in front of a house next to a well I struck up a conversation with a Thái woman. When her daughter of about seventeen or eighteen overheard me speaking in Thái she came out to join us although she was ill at the time. I asked her in vietnamese whether she was Thái. She nodded and very graciously she invited us in. We sat around a table made of rough unplaned wood. She asked us where came from and what we were doing. Before I could reply my friend hastily declared I was a writer. She put out her tongue and frankly confessed she was very afraid of journalists. Then she asked me about my job. She let me know that she read a "forest" story about ethnic community and had enjoyed it very much. I enquired about the title of the book and the name of the author. I also asked her if she had kept it. She went in and brought it out. The cover of the book was torn and covered with signatures of all sizes and descriptions and in all sorts of ink. The student accompanying me was very young and did not know much about me except that I was a writer. Looking at the jacket, he said in surprise, " Here he is, the author of the book" . I was deeply touched that my bookk was papreciated by a girl in this isolated place- a girl from my hometown. I told her I wrote it a long time ago. She praised and criticised me at the same time. According to her, the description of life in ethnic community was accurate; but I had made a mistake in using the word koong khau for kom khau. I learned that her name is Lò Lệ Thu or La Lệ Thu if it is Vietnamised. But I prefer the first.
Later I wrote a dedication to her at the beginning of my book of poetry Trước mắt nhìn thi sĩ ( Under The Poet's Eyes) written in Dalat in this period. Those who cared ne most were poor people.
Let's stop wondering about the innumerable manifestations of hyprocrisy in a society like Vietnam. Let's not forget Vietnam has been under a process of disintegration for eighty years under French domination and twenty years of grinding war.



to be continued...

THE PHONG


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. Updated: 02.12.2008.