Index of titles A-F (i)
from the janitor at the Viet Nam Literature Project
Through F as of January 20, 2023:
A
American Time Bomb (i). Joshua Melville and Chicago Review Press. January 17, 2023:
Sam Melville among the bombers looks to me like poet Gary Snyder among the beats. He was the 1 who studied and thought and had something to say that was not banal or crazy.
B
Black Americans in Viet Nam Letters (i). Janitor, Viet Nam Literature Project. October 5, 2022:
I am aware that my cheerful interest in what black Americans of talent and intellect have had to say occasioned by the nation of Viet Nam is a taste few wish to acquire.
C
Captain Blackman (i). The novelist John A. Williams of the United States Navy. April 4, 2022.
"The guys'll come splashing down here, Blackman thought, thinking there is only one or two of em out there, and they'll drop the hammer on them. What to do?”
Captain Blackman (ii). The novelist John A. Williams of Syracuse University. May 4, 2022.
We left Captain Abraham Blackman, United States Army, supine on the forest floor his head resting against a stump. It is the position in which I continued, from my couch, to read the story we share in mind as he bleeds and I read.
Captain Blackman (iii). The novelist John A. Williams of the Black Arts Movement. June 6, 2022.
Abraham Blackman, Captain, United States Army, is bleeding out staring at the sky in the last days of the Republic of Viet Nam. The Vietnamese Communists had pinned him down with a few rifles, luring his men to rescue and suffer overwhelming ambush.
Captain Blackman (iv). The novelist John A. Williams and Doubleday & Company. July 23, 2022.
Captain Abraham Blackman, United States Army, is still bleeding out in the Republic of Viet Nam. He had risen from cover to draw fire rather than let his young men walk into ambush from an overwhelming force.
Cõi Đem (i). The novelist Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn at publisher Làng Văn. March 23, 2022.
Country of Night, by Nguyen Ngoc Ngan. The author’s family, first name is that of the administration who unified Viet Nam over the same years as George Washington’s did the United States.
Cõi Đem (ii). The novelist Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn at publisher Làng Văn. April 23, 2022.
Night Country? Realm of Night. The first sentence on the first page begins: over there. If you are reading here in daytime then you are reading about what goes on in the shady part of the world.
Cõi Đem (iii). The novelist Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn at publisher Làng Văn. May 25, 2022.
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.
Cõi Đem (iv). From the novelist Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn at Làng Văn. July 2, 2022.
First sentence of the novel: Bên ngoài, trời dã sáng lắm. Outside, it’s bright, says the Google translator.
Cõi Đem (v). From the novelist Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn at Làng Văn. August 8, 2022.
“Bên ngoài, trời dã sáng lắm.” Outside, it was bright already.
Cult, Culture, and Authority: Princess Liễu Hạnh in Vietnamese History (i). From historian Olga Dror at Texas A&M University. December 21, 2022.
I write these letters to people who read them. I have no audience in mind, files and rows up a raked auditorium.
Cult, Culture, and Authority: Princess Liễu Hạnh in Vietnamese History (ii). From historian Olga Dror at Texas A&M University. December 24, 2022.
Spirit, wind moved on the face of the water and here we are in creation. Spirit, breath moves in and out of lungs, inspiration so we get all excited then expiration when we drop dead, dust.
D
Dawson’s War (i). From novelist B.K. Marshall and the Studies and Observations Group. February 12, 2022:
I recommend earnestly to you a 2021 novel set among the Studies and Observations Group of the United States Army Special Forces who with Hmong partisans scouted the route of supply from the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam through the Kingdom of Laos to their war to defeat the Republic of Viet Nam.
It is the smartest novel I have read from the war between Ha Noi and Saigon, surely a personal judgement.
Dawson’s War (ii). From novelist B.K. Marshall and the Studies and Observations Group. February 26, 2022:
Judge a book by its cover.
What it's for.
Dawson’s War (iii). From novelist B.K. Marshall and the Studies and Observations Group. March 16, 2022:
“Alan Dawson’s first attempt to acquire a college education was unsuccessful.”
It’s a boy’s story, about an unemancipated minor becoming a cadet then an officer of society.
Dawson’s War (iv). From novelist B.K. Marshall and the Studies and Observations Group. April 13, 2022:
“Having a week of casual company before jump school began, Dawson ventured down to the sparkling lights and plastic flags of the used car lots that dotted Victory Drive in Columbus. He bought a four year old Chevrolet Corvair.”
Dawson’s War (v). From novelist B.K. Marshall and the Studies and Observations Group. May 16, 2022:
It's a novel. What's new?
Dawson’s War (vi). From novelist B.K. Marshall and the Studies and Observations Group. June 18, 2022:
“THE NEXT MORNING Peterson, Morrisey, and Dawson went to the TOC to receive an intelligence briefing on their upcoming mission.”
Peterson is a staff sergeant, an E-for-enlisted 6 on a log scale 4 to 9 of non-commissioned officers.
The Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Viet Nam (i). From John Sylvester, State, and Frank Foster, Army. February 21, 2022:
As the People’s Army of Viet Nam entered Saigon the people shed their military uniforms and burned their papers. Medals. too, I should think, although I have never heard that.
The Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Viet Nam (ii). From John Sylvester, State, and Frank Foster, Army. March 14, 2022:
Verso, bottom row, second in from left is the war wound medal. Says so on the back in Vietnamese.
The Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Viet Nam (iii). From John Sylvester, State, and Frank Foster, Army. April 9, 2022:
Recto, bottom row, second from right. Army colonel Frank C. Foster and State counter-insurgent John Sylvester, Jr. translate the name of the decoration as the Special Service Medal.
The Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Viet Nam (iv). From John Sylvester, State, and Frank Foster, Army. May 9, 2022:
"The color plates and the written descriptions of the Vietnamese awards are in the order of precedence."
That is, how you display and wear them.
The Decorations and Medals of the Republic of Viet Nam (v). From John Sylvester, State, and Frank Foster, Army. June 13, 2022:
Four arrows, north, south, east, and west decorate the Medal for Campaigns Outside the Frontier. The frontier is the outline of the Republic of Viet Nam shown above the laurel crown of victory on the medal.
Democracy (i). From reporter Joan Didion at Vogue. July 30, 2022:
The back cover of the novel is a glamor shot. The woman in the photograph won a job as a researcher at Vogue right out of college in 1956.
Der Ritt auf dem Ochsen (i). From Dietrich Thalbaum at K. Fischer-Verlag. October 26, 2022:
Judge a book by its cover. What it is for.
Distant Stars (i) and Free Fire Zone (v). From the Foreign Languages Publishing House at Ha Noi and First Casualty Press at Coventry. September 17, 2022:
Blue and orange. I have looked at that cover again and again getting close to 50 years and the penny just dropped.
du Ciel et des Étoiles (i). From astrophysicist Trịnh Xuân Thuận at the University of Virginia. October 3, 2022:
Here is a dictionary in love with heaven and the stars. It is 1 of 11 books by Trinh Xuan Thuan that the Walter Royal Davis library of the University of North Carolina campus at Chapel Hill has collected.
du Ciel et des Étoiles (ii). From astrophysicist Trịnh Xuân Thuận at the University of Virginia. November 21, 2022:
The encyclopedist Trinh Xuan Thuan treats Consciousness between Comets and the Cosmological constant. The title of the article in French is Conscience.
E
Être mère au Viet Nam (i). From poet Chế Lan Viên and La Maison des Éditions en Langues Étrangères. November 30, 2022:
A mother’s work in Viet Nam
(Làm mẹ ở Việt Nam).
A mother’s work in Viet Nam is not easy
Être mère au Viet Nam (ii). From poet Chế Lan Viên and La Maison des Éditions en Langues Étrangères. December 27, 2022:
A mother’s work in Viet Nam
(Làm mẹ ở Việt Nam)*
Thi Viện reports on the interweb that in the posthumous complete works, Chế Lan Viên toàn tập (NXB Văn học, 2002) editor Vũ Thị Thường titles the poem from the first line given in that edition,
Làm bà mẹ Việt Nam.
Every day I come all the same (i). From poet Hoàng Trung Thông and the Foreign Languages Publishing House. November 7, 2022:
every day I come to hear you speak of prisons every day I come all the same and yet: how to hear you
F
Fair Use (i). From the United States of America, 17 U.S. Code § 107. September 12, 2022:
Books & Authors: Viet Nam, Inc. does business as Viet Nam Literature Project. VNLP has published all these Viet Nam letters so far from our office in Durham, North Carolina, in the United States of America (USA).
We publish under the protections of the first amendment to the federal constitution of the USA.
Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463-1778 (i). From historian Nhung Tuyet Tran and Vietnamese studies. March 30, 2022:
See the little girl in a maillot getting out of the pool at the Cercle Sportif in 1962? She is on the dust cover of her little brother’s book.
Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463-1778 (ii). From historian Nhung Tuyet Tran and Vietnamese studies. April 30, 2022:
Look to the left. Verso.
Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463-1778 (iii). From historian Nhung Tuyet Tran and Vietnamese studies. June 1, 2022:
“In many national histories, certain features become distinct signifiers of the country’s heritage. In Vietnam, the image of ‘woman’ serves as the embodiment of authentic tradition and as a sign of the country’s readiness for modernity.”
Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463-1778 (iv). From historian Nhung Tuyet Tran and Vietnamese studies. July 18, 2022:
“From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, the Lê, Mạc, Trịnh, and Nguyễn families all claimed the right to govern the Vietnamese-speaking populations of the Indochinese peninsula, and they articulated a governing philosophy that linked political and social order to familial order.”
Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463-1778 (v). From historian Nhung Tuyet Tran and the University of Hawai'i Press. December 12, 2022:
Harriet Morehead Berry paved the roads of North Carolina. 2 years of work increased the membership of the Good Roads Association by 22 times and its treasury by 6.
Familial Properties: Gender, State, and Society in Early Modern Vietnam, 1463-1778 (vi). From historian Nhung Tuyet Tran and the University of Hawai'i Press. December 15, 2022:
Here for the third time is the spread of pages 36 and 37. The first time, (iv), I called your attention to the verso, left-hand, page 36 where Nhung Tuyet Tran passes along a sad song of the people, “Like a female stork drudging by the banks of the river. ”
Free Fire Zone (iv). From editors Wayne Karlin, Basil T. Paquet, and Larry Rottmann at 1st Casualty Press. July 4, 2022:
Hang on. I first rummaged this collection for something to read.
The frogs are gone (i). From David A. Willson the Rear Echelon Mother Fucker. March 9, 2022:
"Don't strain your weak eyes looking"
a young man wrote at the Army administrative center at Long Binh, Republic of Viet Nam,
“the frogs are gone.”
So was Mrs. Cuc, who had been eating the frogs.