Une si jolie petite guerre (iv)
bande dessinée from Marcelino Truong
The founder and president of the Republic of Viet Nam phoned often to ask the artist's father to come early the next morning to translate. Sure, that is a striking detail,
but as representative as unique. Get involved in any Vietnamese family and you will learn about jaw-dropping participation in national history.
As an editor I regularly heard from some individual whose family told the whole story of the country with their lives. Could we just write it all up and package the history?
Cool, I would say, the way this works is you think it through for yourself. Marcelino Truong was doing it long since already when I first saw his work in a bookshop window.
One view he reports is his mother's as she quarrels with his father, a patriot. She never wanted any part of the whole smalah,
using a new-to-me Orientalist word for entourage, the family that accompanies a sheikh, as I suppose in Algiers. Bitter, weary at just 3 chapters in of 19, she is a Marianne skeptical of the barricades.
A Breton, she and her husband are children of schoolteachers. Every character speaks a clear and correct school French sprinkled with an occasional word from the life of the people and the provinces that sends me to the dictionaries.
The artist's drawings of their surroundings share that expository, lively quality. It's 1962. Art Deco still looks good in the colonies, as yet spared the open war already visited on the metropole.
The cars have big fins and plenty of space to park. Cigarettes and lighters are stylish and his mom uses an atomizer with a bulb.
All this familiar modern life with soon be antique and exotic. We look back with the artist, angels driven blind into the future by history.
This was the fourth Viet Nam letter of 7 so far addressed to Une si jolie petite guerre by Marcelino Truong. We had sent the first on February 28, 2022, the second on March 5, 2022, and the third on March 26, 2022.
Then the fifth went out on May 28, 2022, the sixth on July 9, 2022, and the seventh on May 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.
Promotional copy:
The post is in English. You can get the book in that language as well, translated with a sure ear by David Homel, American novelist in Montreal.
I should go check how David translated smalah. Marcelino Truong's mother, a Breton he draws like Diane, the blonde symbol of France,
uses this word from the low argot of the Legionnaires and pieds-noirs in Algiers. I bet David didn't say clusterfuck but that would be fair.
She is speaking of the whole cause and nation of Viet Nam. Her husband is a high officer there in Saigon. She wants out, with him and their children.
Young Marco may be a focal character of this comic, but his mom is my hero. I urge the whole smalah upon you.
This is the fourth time I have written about Such a Pretty Little War. I hope to conclude at some point but may never catch up with the artist's oeuvre, as at maturity he produces one account after another
from the history we all have lived, whether you know it or not. Please consider signing up at no cost for the visible audience as I survey the art, scholarship, and science
we have made out of the nation of Viet Nam. Please consider patronizing the others at $50/year or subsidizing the whole smalah at $250/year.
The war machine of the United States encourages you to deduct any gift from your income before tax, since we give you nothing in return we are not already providing to everyone for free.