To Subscribers (iii of 3, correction)

from the janitor at Viet Nam Literature Project

[This letter went out in error to our 25 paid subscribers only. To repeat, that was a mistake. But hey, 32 of the 25 (sic) have read the letter since posting the day before yesterday, May 29. Here it goes again on June 1 to all subscribers. I regret the duplication of email to the 25.]

Hi all,

1 hundred of you read my previous letter on May 21, 2024, the day it launched at oh dark-30 here in North Carolina. That number nearly equals all our subscribers previous to that date, 1 hundred and 7.

This afternoon, May 28, we have now reached well beyond those who had signed up so far. 1 hundred and 42 have read that Viet Nam letter, among them at least 35 who had not previously subscribed.

I expect another 1 hundred readers to walk in, as have for each letter all this third year of work. 1 reader also has subscribed to future letters, as usually does.

1 reader has liked and 1 has shared the current letter. 1 reader may still click through to a previous letter on the same book. That has happened once to many letters, less often than a like or a subscription, more often than a share.

Those are unprofitable numbers for a magazine selling ad space for furniture, or an opera selling soap. A robot grabbing your eyeballs for resale would offer you something else.

But these results this week continue a solid return for my sixth English-language presentation of a French-language history of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Nobody else has won 2 hundred readers to any such thing, week after week, growing steadily at 3 days short of 2 months into the second quarter of our third calendar year.

I work to draw attention to a worldwide literature of 2 hundred years’ standing, exactly as old as the Republic of France and the United States of America, that also has risen in a people’s achievement of a nation. By literature I mean something you might read.

I have only a friendly interest in how much money a book made, what prizes it won, and none at all in convincing you to read it or telling you what to think about it. I don’t read or write about reading or writing that way.

I would put all subscribers on salary if I could, to learn what you think. 1 of my past projects had that in mind: a Viet Nam Literature Seminar to develop discourse about authors, works, periods, schools, and themes.

I did that philology at Yale in 1997 and at Chapel Hill in 1998-9 then participated and observed over 1999-2000 how they do it all over Paris. To establish an office to run such projects has proven beyond my abilities all this century.

These Viet Nam letters have instead proved sustainable. Authors write, editors publish, booksellers distribute, librarians acquire and catalogue and shelve and lend the books, I read them and write, and you read.

Thank you for your attention. About 25 subscribers also have given 50 or 250 dollars a year to pay for expenses and compensate the janitor, the man cleaning up after 2 hundred years of books and nations.

We are earning over 2 thousand dollars annually. They are deeply felt, as is every subscription and reader. Thank you.

Yours,

Daniel Edward Duffy, Ph.D.

Janitor

Viet Nam Literature Project

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.