ABSTRACT
The short stories of Nguyên Huy Thiep generated heated debate when they first appeared in the early decades of post-war Vietnam. Even with the easing of censorship under Dôi M?i policy Thiep’s writing were provocative. Translations abroad garnered equally intense international interest, though for different reasons. Written in simple, spare language, but blending historical, mythical, and fictional figures in sometimes complex, nested temporal structures, Thiep’s stories have been variously compared to those of Borges, Eco, and nouveau roman experiments. One of Thiep’s most celebrated stories, for instance, is told through three different voices, and ends with a narrator offering a choice of three endings. Overseas critics saw “portmodern” sensibilities in works like “Vàng Lu’a,” and he was awarded France’s Order of Arts and Literature and Italy’s Premio Nonino in Literature.
Thiep’s stories offer vivid reflection of the social challenges that Vietnam faced following the triumphant victory of the Second Indochina War. For Thiep and others, decades of war and privation led not to the enlightened civil society envisioned by Chi Minh, but to new forms of oppression in expansive state controls, and in the materialism and moral corrosion of emergent capitalism. Thiep’s stories hold an unflinching mirror up to the cruelty, pathos, humor, and devastating solitude of human life in its everydayness as in its mythic resonances. They are, however, decidedly non-didactic. Adamantly opposed to the instrumentalization of literature exemplified by the by state-mandated social realism, Thiep repeatedly asserted that his primary interest is storytelling—in plots, characters, and destinies. Finding inspiration in demonic narratives of classical Vietnamese and Chinese literature, Thiep seeks to tell stories that can be retold.
This chapter examines Thiep’s work in the context of postwar Vietnam and his peculiar critical tactic in addressing that context. “Vàng Lu’a,” heretical retelling of canonical historical tales and figures was well recognized by state critics, for instance, yet escaped outright ban due in large part to its cunning narrative structure. In exploring this and other stories, and in finding resonance between Thiep’s literary tactics and that of urbanites in the streets of Hanoi, I will speculate on what both suggest for an approach to critical architectural work in contemporary cities.
