Descriptive statistics on the first paragraph of my favorite novel in Vietnamese. Count of sentences and that of clauses in those sentences vary freely as the chapters also do in length. Walt Whitman’s poetry works the same way. Conversational, expressive, free verbs.
Looking up each word even those I have used daily for 30 years I find that Phan Văn Giưỡng and Nguyễn Dình Hoà give as well the Sino-Vietnamese, administrative, elevated, literary version of the word. That is, the word I look up because Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn uses it conveys none of those qualities.
Common as dirt. But to write with only such words is the last word in literary, the lotus rising from shit.
This is the third Viet Nam letter of 6 so far on Cõi Đem by Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn. The first posted on March 23 2022, the second on April 23, 2022, then the fourth on July 2, 2022, the fifth on August 8, 2022, and the sixth on February 22, 2023.
Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.
The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.
Publicity copy:
It's a story by an anti-communist who lost his whole family escaping and started to write on the beach after the shipwreck. He considers that it is best not to visit the place.
Not necessarily why you might think. This one concerns another escapee who goes back in the first days when they would let you out again.
He wrecks havoc in the lives of good, trusting people not really meaning to. He just isn't a person. He never got a chance to become one in exile.
Here is the third of 4 posts written of a great many to come about 1 of my favorite books and authors of Viet Nam. I have got about a dozen in play.
Every week 3 each get about 6 hours of my work to convey to you my experience of reading. I write about them in such a way that you may disagree,
such that we agree that we both live in the world these books come from. It's a propaganda technique. One of my dearest colleagues over there in the propaganda fide of Viet Nam disagrees with me.
So I win. Fun game. If you would like to get on the scorecard please sign up for the free subscription. Consider supporting the outreach at $50/year or the whole mission at $250/year.
It's a charity. We run at less than half of what the IRS calls a small non-profit. As we achieve smallness over the rest of my life we are accomplishing many small things.
Who else is going to tell anyone that the great anti-communist exile Vietnamese author writes with compassion and humanity about how his people are not to be trusted and that is very funny?