Lower-case Roman numerals in parentheses (iii)
From the janitor at the Viet Nam Literature Project
I posted our first Viet Nam letter on January 28, 2022. I wrote:
Three times each week I will introduce briefly, in a learned and lively manner, a book that has something to do with the nation of Viet Nam.
We have launched 212 posts so far over 20 months and change. Fewer than 3 a week, and slowing, but not far off.
I will write about each one again and again,
Indefinitely. Born in 1960, I may return 1 dozen times give or take 6 over another 20 years to some books I have been reading since 1975 and others published only this century.
always in brief, always in an entertaining and informative way.
Some posts are briefer than others. Yet over the previous 2 months each new post has entertained about 100 readers over its first week.
We have returned as we first proposed to about half of the about 75 titles introduced so far as many as 9 times for total of (x).
Still, I have posted exactly 34 different titles in Viet Nam letters (i) time only. Here they are in order of appearance interspersed with dicussion of whether I really have indeed read them only (i) time:
The Rabbi. March 21, 2022.
Out with the Lions. April 20, 2022.
Medical Evacuation. May 23, 2022.
Most of them do not stand alone. The 3 above, for instance, all come from the (viii) posts so far on the 1972 collection of fiction from US veterans, Free Fire Zone. Furthermore,
The Rabbi tells of a man behaving with decency in a foreign land and portrays ambient anti-Semitism. I am a Jew and 1 of my longtime collaborators the poet Linh Dinh is a vocal anti-Semite. I do not yet have anything more to say about The Rabbi but do have more books coming from Jews in Viet Nam and Vietnamese Studies.
Out with the Lions alerted me to a late neighbor here in North Carolina, the United States Special Forces sergeant Loyd Little. We have posted (ii) more on the novel which the chapter Out With the Lions comes from, Parthian Shot, and (i) on his Laos novel In the Village of the Man.
These Viet Nam letters are riddled with our Special Forces, from their Vietnamese Phrase Book through sergeants Alan Farrell and Nick Brokhausen, captain B.K. Marshall, and general William P. Yarborough. Many more titles are coming, a focus of interest, like Jews.
Medical Evacuation is the first letter about the writing of Wayne Karlin who edited the collection Free Fire Zone we have posted about (viii) times. Wayne has recently collected this early piece with others we shall cover. This emphatically Jewish author and editor has built a monument of fiction and translation we will work our way through as long as we post these letters.
In the Village of the Man. June 25, 2022.
There is nothing beautiful about my poetry. June 29, 2022.
My verses are in fact no verses. July 13, 2022.
Thoughts on a Monsoon Morning. July 20, 2022.
I will visit your home. July 27, 2022.
The 3 lines in italic above each give the first line of a poem rather than a separate title. The 3 poems so named all come from my friend Nguyen Chi Thien over his nearly 30 years of hard time served for his poetry.
In the Village of the Man is one of the 2 novels by Loyd Little already mentioned.
Thoughts on a Monsoon Morning is of 2 poems by the poet David Connolly we have sent a Viet Nam letter about (i) only. This cri de coeur speaks for itself so strongly that I may never have anything to say about it.
Democracy. July 30, 2022.
The King God Didn’t Save. August 1, 2022.
Why I Can’t. August 3, 2022.
Why I Can’t is the other poem by David Connolly we have presented only (i) time so far. It connects with his poem One of My Best Friends which we have written about (iii) times already.
It concerns black and white in the United States Army of his day. The solitary post on The King God Didn’t Save is a companion piece to the (v) so far on the novel Captain Blackman, a dramatization of the issue by the same author, John A. Williams.
Democracy concerns the White Anglo Saxon Protestants whom David addresses in Thoughts on a Monsoon Morning, the establishment who sent the South Boston man and his black friend to war without thinking it through. These are Joan Didion’s people, who set up the United States of America, extended it across the continent then found themselves on Hawaii with nowhere to go, so off they went.
Her novel hardly mentions Viet Nam: that is the whole point. It is hard to talk about what they didn’t think about but we try.
Fair Use. September 12, 2022.
This post grounds my use of others’ intellectual property in our constitution, under federal law, to promote the intellectual life that Joan Didion’s people neglected.
Distant Stars. September 17, 2022.
Why Were the Soil Tunnels of Cu Chi and Iron Triangle in Vietnam So Resilient? September 24, 2022.
Black Americans in Viet Nam letters. October 5, 2022.
Black Americans in Viet Nam letters specifies my interest and perspective on the (v) so far on John A. Williams’ Captain Blackman and the (i) on his The King God Didn’t Save.
Why Were the Soil Tunnels of Cu Chi and Iron Triangle in Vietnam So Resilient? suggests further posts about other work of Kenneth R. Olson, and Lois Wright Morton, and the Open Journal of Soil Science, and about Vietnamese topics in all the earth sciences. But I foresee no more on this (i).
Distant Stars takes its name from a short story by a sapper on the Ho Chin Minh supply route from Ha Noi to their war with Saigon. Its success took the teenage Le Minh Khue off the front to serve Viet Nam as author and editor. We will post about that lady and her work with Wayne Karlin the editor of Free Fire Zone until I drop.
What Mother Told Me Once. November 2, 2022.
If you love someone, say you love. If you hate someone, say you hate. I read this poem at the university memorial service for the translator.
The poet Phùng Quán was a patriot in Ha Noi when the Vietnamese Communists made their Democratic Republic a prison to fight a long war at steep cost without debate. The translator Huynh Sanh Thong instead fled even Republic of Viet Nam, a remarkable anarchy.
The last time we spoke he told me that I am not a scholar and that he wanted nothing more to do with me. Over the years I plan to say what I love.
Every Day I Come All the Same. November 7, 2022.
Questions sous terre. December 9, 2022.
Mireille Gansel translated Every Day I Come All the Same and Questions sous terre. We have posted more than 1 dozen times on her work and hope to do many more.
Tales of a Seventh Grade Lizard Boy. October 22, 2022.
Weirdo. February 13, 2023.
Tales of a Seventh Grade Lizard Boy and Weirdo both use words with pictures, an enthusiasm of mine.
We already have posted many times on the work of Marcelino Truong. I have more to say already on Jonathan Hill and wait happily for more work from Anh Do.
Panthers in the Skins of Men. February 19, 2023.
Trong Quan-Tài Buồn. February 22, 2023.
Panthers in the Skins of Men goes with the (iii) on The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up both by Charles Nelson.
Trong Quan-Tài Buồn follows on (v) others on Cõi Đem by Nguyễn Ngọc Ngạn.
Dan Ellsberg. April 5, 2023.
Shavetail. April 8, 2023.
Song of the Negro Blacksmith. April 8, 2023.
Dan Ellsberg is now dead. We will get to some of his papers on the war and to the literary monument his eulogist W. D. Ehrhart has made of reading them.
Shavetail and Song of the Negro Blacksmith may remain (i)-offs. William P. Yarborough already fits in with the other Special Forces authors. Should I learn what F.W. Moorman did in the war I may post again on his poem.
The Communist Party of Vietnam. April 14, 2023.
13 Ways of Looking at a Jew Hater. April 29, 2023.
The Communist Party of Vietnam is the (iv) on the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Vietnam by Jonathan London.
13 Ways of Looking at a Jew Hater goes with (iv) on Postcards from the Ends of America. The poet Linh Dinh demurs at my calling him a Jew hater. Fine.
I agree that Linh doesn’t hate anyone. Why it is so startling the way he talks about us. So the next one will continue as 13 Ways of Looking at a Jew Blamer.
In review, only the following 5 letters of (i) iteration now stand alone and call for elaboration or affiliation:
Dan Ellsberg
Democracy.
Distant Stars.
Tales of a Seventh Grade Lizard Boy
Why Were the Soil Tunnels of Cu Chi and Iron Triangle in Vietnam So Resilient?
I’m on it.
This was the third Viet Nam letter of (iii) so far explaining our Lower-case Roman numerals in parentheses. The (i) posted on September 19, 2022 and the (ii) on May 2, 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.