Cõi Đem (vi) and Trong Quan-Tài Buồn (i)

from novelist Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn at Làng Văn

I already have read and started to tell you in 5 posts so far about the 1 on the left below. Cõi Đem concerns a man who has returned to Viet Nam when that was rare. Call it Night Country.

I have not yet read the 1 on the right, Trong Quan-Tài Buồn. What is it?

In the Sad Coffin? They’re all sad, right. I mean, given that we are being pathetic, attributing our emotions to the unfeeling. So:

In a Sad Coffin, 1 among others. Hang on, it could be plural.

In Sad Coffins?

Same publisher as the novel Cõi Đem at left above. Same length and width. Trong Quan-Tài Buồn is 50 pages thicker on the same weight paper. You could stack them together as I have seen in overseas Vietnamese bookstores.

At left, chartreuse, an earth tone, another book like a brick in a wall. At right, lilac mixed with white in pastel to stand out. At left, title and author have no serifs, like a sign on a filling station telling you what you already know.

At right, author and title are in serifs, evoking text that demands careful reading. At left, the firm Làng Văn also has serifs as from an old-time typewriter, while at right they appear as làng văn, no capitals, all italic, no serifs:

an evolving colophon of an imprint. In both cases the publisher is the only guide to the contents beyond the author and title. There no blurbs from other authors, no language about other best-sellers or prize-winners.

There is no publisher’s summary or publishing category. At right, Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn appears above the title where at left he was under. Both books are novels but the one on the right-hand side is more emphatically an exemplar of the franchise of an author.

“Here’s the new Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn!” But is it? New, I mean. Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn’s entry in Vietnamese at Wikipedia dates Trong Quan-Tài Buồn to 1988 and Cõi Đem to 1990.

But look. The title pages say they both appeared in 1991:

But on the 2 rights pages, not shown, the International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) come from a single batch for publisher 929090 with Cõi Đem at 26 and Trong Quan-Tài Buồn at 38. 12 books in one year, 1981?

Maybe so. A Làng Văn catalogue at the back of Cõi Đem lists 84 titles.

Trong Quan-Tài Buồn stands at #23, second down from leftmost column below, 16 before Cõi Đem at #29. Both come after Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn’s English-language The Will of Heaven at #22, top left corner, that for sure Dutton published in 1982.

On the back, below, more disorder suggesting change. Postal codes and stations and boxes in Toronto differ for the publisher.

Both covers offer the same house magazine làng văn at the same frequency, once each month. Cõi Đem at left also offers the journal Văn Xã every other month.

Trong Quan-Tài Buồn instead spells out the year’s subscription rates for Canada, the USA, and other countries, whether by ground, boat, or air, and offers a discount on all books to subscribers.

They date the offer to 1994. Perhaps the cover of Trong Quan-Tài Buồn is later than Cõi Dem but the contents are earlier?

That is as far as the covers have got me for now. Let’s start reading.

Both books are novels. The rights page of Trong Quan-Tài Buồn, at left below, says it is a long story, truyện dài, toute une histoire of what usually means socialism but could mean the meaning of society, xã-hội chủ nghĩa.

Since the author lost his wife and children fleeing the Communists, I take it that this novel is a sociological, in the sense of disillusioned, study of socialism. In Sad Coffins?

Đào thức giấc lúc trời chưa sáng rõ.

Peaches woke from sleep when the sky was not yet quite light.

This is the sixth 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, the third on May 25, 2022, the fourth on July 2, 2022, and the fifth on August 8, 2022.

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.