Viet Nam letters (iii)
from the janitor at the Viet Nam Literature Project
I clean up around here. The chair, the president, the editor, the clerical staff, security, they are volunteers. They do what they can when they have a minute.
I clean up every work day. 1 book 3 times a week. I prepare 4 every week I can in order to stay 2 months ahead.
Today is still June. This one posts mid-August. I lost last week to a COVID booster. I will take 1 week off next month, July, to read math at the beach.
Mathematics is the great recreation of humanists, even those who work for a living as mathematicians. 5 of the 7 liberal arts are math. Sooner or later I will start cleaning up math and Viet Nam, but not yet.
I take the sabbath off except from grandchildren, shalom. I have already started cleaning up the books of Jews and the books of Jew-haters and Viet Nam.
I could do just those 3 times a week indefinitely, as I could brush off only the Green Berets, dust just Vietnamese Studies, mop up exclusively Vietnamese poetry by exiles in English translation, scrub exactly one novelist in Vietnamese from Canada, vacuum French comic books and nothing else . . .
Instead I clean all sorts, in more examples every month. I sit in that chair maintaining one book at a time. I write it up then weeks later the volunteers leave it out on the table again. I write it up again expecting to detail each one a good dozen times.
Each book is 1 chapter in its author’s life, or 3 chapters: living it, writing it, publishing it. I try to make each book at least 1 paragraph or stanza in my life. A basket I empty again and again, a hallway I buff once again.
I am cleaning up a gorgeous mess, a world fractured into shards of light by one nation emerging in a world of already many nations. I am the janitor at the Viet Nam Literature Project. I can show you pay stubs from Books & Authors: Viet Nam, Inc.
Here is my closet.
This was the third Viet Nam letter of 5 so far from the janitor about our work. The first posted on February 9, 2022 and the second on May 14, 2022. Then the fourth posted on March 6, 2023 and the fifth on April 11, 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.
I regret that since this post we have slowed down, lately to just 1 each month. I hope to ramp up to 1 a week. We shall see. I am rotating the previous letters about 5 a week through the Daniel Edward Duffy page at Facebook, the Viet Nam letters at Bluesky, and the Viet Nam Literature project page at Facebook.
These posts read to me like “Letters to a Young Janitor, I mean Autodidact.” Makes me feel less lonely on my watch caring for kids and a home, in that order. Work and Serve. In the People’s Republic it took the form of an independent newspaper, here it takes the form of surrogate father. Common theme: serve others, and thereby oneself. Please keep these letters coming, they’re instructive and inspiring.