This book is a translation of a collection of personal, literary, and journalistic vignettes of Vietnamese individuals who have made notable contributions to literature, art, and science. It is a rich source of information on the social, cultural, and political history of South Vietnam, as well as the individual careers of its human subjects.
The people described for the most part came into prominence in the period 1954 – 1975. After the fall of the South to North Vietnamese forces in 1975, most of them were imprisoned for some number of years in communist reeducation camps after 1975. Later, in the 1980s, some of them made their way to the U.S., and most continued to be creatively active.
Võ Phiến, essayist, novelist, and literary historian, characterized the literature that arose under the southern Vietnamese republic as follows: “In the Vietnam of 1954 to 1975, a totally different type of literature arose.Gay and sharp laughter spread freely over books and journals,laughter that attacked mistaken deeds and perverse policies, and made fun of elements guilty of unworthy behavior… The objects of attack were provincial or national leaders and power brokers. The sound of laughter ran freely and noisily acrossall books and journals. At the same time, every view of human life, every faith, both fine and deluded, both noble and crazed,existed as well; one could seek to understand, expound, and promulgate these beliefs,just as one pleased.At no time before or after 1954 – 1975 in the South can one find any literary tradition in our country that developed in such a free and open manner.”
The regime that took over in 1975 sought to eradicate this legacy by criminalizing it and by physically destroying all remnants of it that could be collected. As a result, the most complete collections of the literature of Vietnam from this period are to be found, not in Vietnam, but in certain academic libraries in the U.S., such as those of Cornell University, Yale University and the University of Hawaii.
The author of this book, Dr. Ngô Thế Vinh, is himself one of the leading figures in the literary life that emerged in South Vietnam during the time of the Southern Republic, and was personally acquainted with all the figures he discusses. Dr. Vinh is a full-time internist and staff physician at Long Beach Medical Center in California, but he is also a tireless author, whose work includes novels, books of cultural commentary (such as this one), and investigative reporting. In particular, he has personally explored the entire length of the 4,800 km long Mekong River and has written two books that deal with the survival of the Mekong as a great river of the world, and with the livelihood of more than 70 million people living along the river and in the Mekong Delta. These and other books of his have been awarded many prizes and have attracted many appreciative reviews. He remains a committed and unrelenting environmentalist. In addition, I have found Mr. Vinh to be a supremely gifted journalist with a quasi-magical ability to track down obscure documents and facts.
The author had close friendships with all the individuals he discusses in this book, so his portraits often include excerpts from their correspondence. As a doctor, he was also naturally interested in their medical situations, so this too forms part of many of these portraits. The individuals he portrays in this volume are the following:
• Mặc Đỗ (1917 – 2015)
A journalist, novelist, short story writer, and translator, he was born in Hanoi to a family steeped in Confucian ways, but also amenable to western cultural influences. He emigrated to the South in 1954 and helped establish a literary group called Quan Điểm (“Viewpoint”) and the newspaper Tự Do (“Freedom”). In addition to his own novels and short stories, he translated works by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mauriac, Tolstoy, Pasternak, and others.
• Như Phong (1923 – 2001)
Characterized by the author as “a journalist’s journalist,” Như Phong was a novelist, an expert on communist affairs in North Vietnam, and a strategist who often worked behind the scenes as a political advisor to people in public life. In the U.S., he made many young friends to whom he expounded grand schemes concerning the role that journalism would play in the future of Vietnam.
• Võ Phiến (1925 – 2015),
An essayist, story writer, literary historian, and editor, he was one of the principal authors associated with Cyclopedia (Bách Khoa) magazine in Saigon. After 1975 his home in Los Angeles became a center of expatriate literary culture. He wrote several deeply researched books about the literary history of South Vietnam. He is also the subject of a study by John Schafer: The Sadness of Exile.
• Linh Bảo (1926 –)
One of the earlier woman writers of Vietnam, Linh Bảo spent much of her life in other countries, including a number of years in Guangzhou and Hong Kong. A novelist, gifted story writer, freelance journalist, feminist activist, her books use ridicule to expose the negative aspects of life. Her style, the author says, was merciless, contrary, demonic, and devil-may-care, but at the same time full of pain.
• Mai Thảo (1927 – 1998)
He was a novelist, short story writer, poet, and the founder-editor of the avant-garde magazine Creation (Sáng Tạo). After emigration to the U.S, he lived a monastically simple existence in a single-room apаrtment, which was also his office—the place where he prepared each issue of the expatriate journal Writing (Văn). He is one of the few figures treated in this book who was not imprisoned in a reeducation camp. He instead spent two desperate years living in hiding in Saigon before escaping as a boat person to Malaysia and then to the U.S.
• Dương Nghiễm Mậu (1936 – 2016)
A novelist, short story writer, essayist, he was born in Hanoi and emigrated with his family to the south in 1954. His first novel, Mother’s Legacy, won the National Prize for Literature in 1966. He entered the army in that year and worked as a war correspondent. After imprisonment in a reeducation camp from 1975 to 1977, he did lacquer work for a living. He is one of the few authors discussed in this book who chose to remain in Vietnam rather than emigrate.
• Nhật Tiến (1936 – 2020)
A prolific and varied novelist, short story writer, playwright, Nhật Tiến identified strongly as a Rover Scout with the Vietnamese scout movement, and remained loyal to its traditions throughout his life. With more than twenty books to his name, his creations are particularly associated with childhood, and often deal with the suffering of children.
• Nguyễn Đình Toàn (1936 –)
He was a poet, novelist, short story writer, songwriter, and host of an influential radio program called “Themes in Music – Nhạc Chủ Đề.” Most of his novels appeared in parts in various journals before appearing as books, and devote more attention to atmosphere than to plot. He wrote the lyrics, obscure but suggestive, of “First Love Song” by the musician Vũ Thành An: “Joy chases the drifting, windblown clouds, / Gloom rains heavily into life.”
• Thanh Tâm Tuyền (1936 – 2006)
He was born in the city of Vinh in Nghệ An, went first to Hanoi, but then emigrated to Saigon in 1954. He was one of the principal contributors to the magazine Creation (Sáng Tạo). He gained early notoriety with his obscure and starkly original poésie libre, but later in life took up more traditional forms. From 1975 to 1982 he was imprisoned in very harshly-run reeducation camps in North Vietnam. He was a novelist, fiction writer, and playwright, as well as a poet.
• Nguyễn Xuân Hoàng (1937 – 2014)
He was a novelist, short story writer, essayist, and editor. He was active in Saigon before 1975, and emigrated to the U.S. after years in reeducation camps and served as the editor of a number of Expatriate Vietnamese literary periodicals.
• Hoàng Ngọc Biên (1938 – 2019)
An artist, painter, poet, novelist, Proust scholar, translator, and musician, he is one of the most versatile and enterprising people discussed in this volume His works in many media are wide-ranging and highly experimental.
• Đinh Cường (1939 – 2016)
An artist, painter, poet, and art instructor. By 2005 he had had more than twenty-four solo exhibitions and twenty-one exhibitions with other artists. He is also the author of three books, one consisting of essays on art, and two consisting of poems.
• Nghiêu Đề (1939 – 1998)
An artist, painter, poet, originally from Quảng Ngãi Province. An old associate of the author’s, he was much in demand as a cover designer for literary works. Of a capricious and eccentric disposition, he never troubled to make a careful record of his activities. He moved with his family to the U.S. and died in 1998 before attaining his sixtieth birthday.
• Nguyên Khai (1940 –)
An artist most of whose work consists of oil paintings. His nature was reserved and contemplative. He once said in an interview, “Art does not turn its back on reality, but also does not illustrate reality. Art gives us another means of viewing things; a means of viewing things that are not realistic, so that the true nature of goodness and beauty can be expressed.”
• Cao Xuân Huy (1947 – 2010)
A combat marine and writer, best known for his war memoir: My Gun Broke in March, a uniquely passionate, vivid, and expressive book. The author has much to say concerning this figure’s spirited battle against eye melanoma during his last years.
• Phùng Nguyễn (1950 – 2015)
An IT expert who was also a short story writer, essayist, and blogger. The author devotes much attention to a phase of his life that he never talked about but which nevertheless exerted a strong influence on his later activities: his prolonged recovery from a severe leg wound that he suffered in the course of a military operation. In addition to authoring a Blog entitled “Forest and Trees,” he published two collections of short stories: Tower of Memory (1988) and Oakland Night and Other Stories (2001)
• Phạm Duy (1921 – 2013)
A songwriter, lyricist, musicologist, and memoirist, he was the most prolific and distinguished of all the Vietnamese songwriters of the last century, of whom there have been a great many. The portrait in this volume examines his activities in several phases of his career and examines the evolving nature of his relations with his numerous friends and associates.
• Eric Henry (1943 – )
Henry is an American scholar in Chinese and Vietnamese culture, and is the translator of the present volume. The author devotes much attention to Henry’s early experiences in Vietnam and to his recent efforts to overcome the refusal of Phạm Duy’s family to grant permission for the publication of his translation of Phạm Duy’s four volumes of memoirs.
• Phạm Biểu Tâm (1913 – 1999)
He was a doctor, surgeon, eminent medical professor, and university rector. The author’s portrait deals with this figure’s enormous contributions to the establishment of a modern medical system in Vietnam, paying particular attention to his activities as an educator and to his personal selflessness and generosity.
• Phạm Hoàng Hộ (1929 – 2017)
Dr. Hộ was a scientist-botanist, the founder-rector of Cần Thơ University, and the author of the multi-volume, exhaustively complete Illustrated Flora of Vietnam. His portrait in this volume examines his gradual evolution as a scientist, together with his unceasing activities as an educator and university rector and his efforts to overcome the limitations imposed on him by the current government of Vietnam.
Dr. Vinh is the author of a second book of cultural portraits dealing with seventeen additional figures (Nguyễn Tường Bách, Hứa Bảo Liên, Hoàng Tiến Bảo, Tạ Tỵ, Trần Ngọc Ninh, Lê Ngộ Châu, Nguyễn Văn Trung, Dohamide, Lê Ngọc Huệ, Nghiêm Sỹ Tuấn, Đoàn Văn Bá, Mai Chửng, Trần Hoài Thư, Phan Nhật Nam, Võ Tòng Xuân, Trần Mộng Tú, and John Steinbeck). This volume concludes with a cultural portrait, not of a person, but of a uniquely organized bookselling district next to the central post office in Saigon. I hope to translate and publish this volume soon as “The Creative World of South Vietnam, Volume 2.”
Together, these two volumes of portraits amount to a vibrant portrait of a culture with much to offer to the world and at the same time offers a strong correction and refutation of the communist government of Vietnam’s attempts to deny the significance of this culture.
ERIC HENRY
Chapel Hills, South Carolina
April 30, 2023
