Tu Luc Van Doan Collection
On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, Daniel Duffy wrote:
I've been hearing about the Tu Luc Van Doan collection that appeared
in Viet Nam in 1999. The occasion for gossip is that these prose artists,
poets, reporters, columnists, cartoonists, editors, publishers, and
anticolonial activists are appearing together as canonical authors in
Viet Nam.
The leaders of their group, Nhat Linh and Khai Hung, fled the revolution,
and the idea is that they have not been promoted within VCP territory
since then. That seems to be case, just from what I have on hand. My
NXB Giao Duc and NXB Van Hoc collections of short stories from the 30s
don't include their work. The afterlife of TLVD in VN has got to be
more complicated than that, though. I've been reading criticism from
VN that reflects a long and rich discussion of these authors.
I finally handled the collection, "Van Chuong Tu Luc Van Doan",
in the Tu Luc bookstore in Westminster, CA, earlier this month. There
are three thick volumes, bound in boards. They are a project of the
Institute of Literature. They present Nhat Linh, The Lu, Tu Mo (v. I);
Khai Hung and Hoang Do (v. II); and Khai Hung/Nhat Linh, Thach Lam,
Tran Tieu, and Xuan Dieu (v. III) each in his own section.
The editors, Phan Tran Thuong and Nguyen Cu, provide biographical notes,
publishing history, and offer brief selected criticism, old and new,
at the end of each volume. Spot-checking the publishing histories, I
notice some editions from RVN as well as RVN/SRVN, but not any from
other nations.
You have to make choices when you present an author. The choice that
is easy for me to point out, just hefting these books in my hand, is
the choice to represent writers who thrived in many genres, as collaborators
in controversy with each other, in the form of a collection of individual
authors of fiction or poetry. The other obvious choice, something I
looked for immediately, was to report the fate of Khai Hung in silence.
The artist came to a bad end, on the run from revolutionaries, and I
would like to hear all about it from someone who has access to records
and witnesses and does not have an obvious agenda to slander the revolution.
Beyond that, I'm not yet competent to say more about these books, except
that to my nose they have an air of care and skill. It's good to have
them, but I want to page through Phong Hoa and Ngay Nay, the TLVD periodicals,
for myself, and look at the monograph editions of the time. I would
very much like for a scholar, working at liberty with good materials
and proper support in a critical and cosmopolitan environment, to narrate
in full the mortal careers of these fascinating men.
I am familiar with their careers as immortals. The works of the TLVD
have been in continual reprint and new editions for decades, among those
who fled the VCP more successfully than KH managed to. I can't walk
through a Vietnamese bookstore in the
US, often even a grocery store or video shop, without seeing the subtitle,
"Trong tu luc van doan" on a book, and without seeing puns
and references to the names of the group's magazines, publishing houses,
and famous books, on the covers of the most contemporary publications.
From groping around in archives, it seems to me that such has been the
case among Vietnamese people since they first fled the VCP.
There is an exuberance to the afterlife of the TLVD among the overseas
people, an orientation toward the present moment, to the reader. I gather
that it was this way in Saigon, too. Often the traces of TLVD have no
history on them at all. There are photo-offset reprints of TLVD books
that carry absolutely no publication data, not even the address of the
mail-order house that distributes them.
Neil Jamieson elaborates how yin and yang call each forth in the social
life of Vietnamese books. I find that a useful way of thinking about
these things.
After all, I handled the yang, establishment, Vien Van Hoc collection
of TLVD in the very yin, entrepreneurial Tu Luc bookstore in Orange
County. The collection itself is sponsored by an old, Ha Noi publisher,
NXB Giao Duc, but actually is published by its new, Da Nang branch.
Even within the three volumes, there is a dynamic of yang canon-building
and yin consideration for the desire of the reader.
Right next to the hefty, subdued, TLVD volumes on the "Van Hoc"
shelf in Tu Luc were slender, colorful paperbacks of reader's classics
by individual TLVD authors, also recently published, of course by a
Saigon press, NXB Van Nghe TPHCM.
I bought them all, like popcorn. I got:
Hon buom, by Khai Hung
Anh phai song, by Khai Hung
Doan tuyet, by Nhat Linh
Ngay moi, by Thach Lam
Tat den, by Ngo Tat To
Goi thuoc la, by The Lu
There are nineteen others listed on the backs. These things are way
yin, a dynamic response to the Ha Noi tomes. The only editors credited
are production people, and there are no notes or introduction at all.
Compared to the US reprints, the print is bright and clean, the chapbook
trim size leaps into the hand, and there is no "Trong Tu Luc Van
Doan" legend on the front.
I judge books by their covers all day long. Each cover of this series
invites the reader to open the book, comments on the text while you
read it, and represents the issues of the book after you've read it.
The back cover tells you more things to read. It's a really wonderful
project. Some kid is going to read these things the way I read Kim and
Treasure Island and The Big Sleep, with no idea that the twentieth century
even happened.
Dan Duffy
Graduate student
Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC
27599 USA
919-932-2624
<dduffy@email.unc.edu
From: Sinh Vinh <sinh.vinh@ualberta.ca
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Tu Luc Van Doan books
Dear Dan,
You might be interested in knowing that back in 1997, while in Hanoi, I had an opportunity to attend and observe the defence of a "Pho' tie^'n si~" (as I do not wish to open a can of worms, I shall not attempt to provide an English equivalent of this degree) dissertation on Nhat Linh at Vien Van hoc. The defence had been announced on newspaper(s) and was opened to the public. To me, it was quite an exciting experience.
Before ddo^?i mo+'i, selecting such a topic to write one's dissertation would have been unthinkable in Vietnam. One minor thing that surprised me at the defence was that the candidate cited Qua?ng Nam as Nhat Linh's birthplace, and no correction made by her supervision committee members. In actuality, we know that Quang Nam was this writer's nguye^n qua'n (original domicile/place of origin), and Cam Giang, Hai Duong (presently Hai Hung) was his birthplace (no+i sinh).
Last but not least, thanks for sharing your whiskey with me in San Diego two weeks ago.
Best.
VINH Sinh
From: "Stephen O'Harrow" <soh@hawaii.edu
To: "Vietnam Studies Group" <vsg@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: Tu Luc Van Doan books
Hello Dan,
For what it's worth:
One fellow who has apparently been insturmental in last decade's revivification
of the TLVD is Phan Cu De of the VN literature dept. at the Truong Dai
hoc Tong hop Ha Noi of yore. As I remember first meeting him in about
1982, he was rather staunchly behind the interpretation that the TLVD
were worthless bourgeois romantics, but I guess he changed his views
somehow (I shall leave to our fellow VSGers' imaginations how that might
have come about) and, lo and behold, he comes out with a series of re-editions
of TLVD in the 90s ("I owe it all to Doi Moi"), mirabile dictu.
As I remember, Tran Khanh Giu (a.k.a. "Khai Hung") was active
in post WW2 politics (as were all the TLVD prime movers, with the exception
of Thach Lam, whose reputation was saved by his having expired of TB
at a tender age at the beginning of WW2), and his views/activities were
most likely not totaly appreciated by some folks in the Viet Minh. I
am not too sure if he was a member of the Dai Viet or active in some
other group but, in any event, he was arrested (from the school where
he was teaching and taken off to be shot by the river bank, I am told)
in 1947 and never again heard from. A biography of Khai Hung was published
in Saigon in the late 50s I believe and it is probabaly at the bottom
of some old bookcase around this office if I can get some dynamite and
reduce the pile of stuff in here and if I ever do I will let folks have
the proper bibliographic references.
Aloha, Steve O'H.