Vietnam in a fragmented mirror

NGUYEN Huy Thiep, born in Hanoi in 1950, is the author of seven full-length plays, numerous essays and more than 50 short stories. His oeuvre has been both excoriated and praised in his own country. Le Minh Ha, a younger expatriate Vietnamese writer, has said that Thiep “created a new stream for contemporary Vietnamese writers to swim in and a huge shade for them to seek shelter under.” Despite such acknowledgments, translations of his work in six languages, and adaptations in three full-length films, Thiep is little known in the West, even in literary circles.

Perhaps now, with 17 of his best-known stories available in a first book-length, English-language publication, thanks to the nonprofit Curbstone Press, this is about to change. “Crossing the River” -- the title is taken from the book’s first fable-like tale and also encapsulates many of the themes elaborated later in the collection’s more naturalistic stories -- belongs on the shelf of anyone who cares about the art of the short story and the crosscurrents of international literature.

To approximate the emotional climate of Thiep’s stories, try pairing Thomas Hobbes’ take on the human condition in “Leviathan” -- “The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” -- with Samuel Beckett’s existentially apprehensive Vladimir in “Waiting for Godot” -- “What are we doing here? That is the question.” When Thiep’s characters smile, it is with an elegiac awareness of how fleeting the happy moment is. When a man or woman laughs, it’s likely to be schadenfreude at the sight of another’s bad luck.

That the short stories of Vietnam’s preeminent literary provocateur should reflect such bleak views shouldn’t surprise, even given the limited knowledge that most Americans -- despite our tragic sojourn there as blinkered, Johnny-come-lately invaders -- have of Vietnam’s history. In the story “Without a King,” a hardscrabbling, city-dwelling family prepares to perform the ancient religious ritual of honoring the death anniversary of the wife of clan head Old Kien. No one seems quite sure how to proceed. Kien’s brother-in-law, Mr. Vy, wearing “a political cadre suit in the Sun Yat Sen style, buttoned right to the neck and very dignified,” tells Kien: “ ‘We cadres have no Gods. After forty years of following the revolution, I have no altars in my house, and I don’t even know how to say a prayer.’

“Old Kien was silent, his eyes red. Mr. Vy walked to the altar, stood still, and bowed his head.

“Old Kien wiped his eyes and said, ‘Now, one after another, whoever wants to bow can go ahead and bow.’ ”

Thiep’s judgment of communism’s impact on life and art is unequivocal and unintimidated. At another point in the story, he displays a rare flash of playful sarcasm: “This story [of how two characters first met] has already been recorded. (It just goes to show how inquisitive our writers are!) As told, it is a simple love scene, pure, without calculation. Life is dialectical, materialistic, harmonious, beautiful and lovely, etc.” A more damning “etc.” is hard to imagine.

However damaged and fragmented is the present state of Vietnamese culture, Thiep has no use for any misty, lost Asian values, or idealization of the country’s pre-Communist, precolonial past. In a trilogy of linked stories set in the early 1800s -- “A Sharp Sword,” “Fired Gold” and “Chastity” -- Phang, a gifted mercenary in the employ of the conqueror Gia Long, concludes that the most significant characteristics of his country are its smallness and its weakness. “It is like a virgin girl raped by Chinese civilization. The girl simultaneously enjoys, despises, and is humiliated by the rape....

“The problem at hand is how to rise up and strive to become a strong country....Decrepit Confucian practices and political masturbation will never result in pure or wholesome relations. A time will come when the worldwide political regimes will seem like an all-too-familiar mixed salad, and the very concept of purity will possess no significance.” How accessible and satisfying are these stories for an American reader? Often one has a blurred sense of missing a connection or allusion. Poems are quoted, but the context isn’t given. Games with Vietnamese names are played, but without a description one can’t visualize the actions or understand the symbolism. The translation is occasionally awkward.

On the other hand, Thiep is most compelling -- and universal -- when he moves from his scathing overview of human weaknesses and egocentricity and takes tentative steps toward exploring the insoluble mysteries of the human heart: “You ask, ‘What is love?’ I say, ‘It’s the most refined level of virtue. Not everyone understands that.’ ” Or as the sad hero of another story says, “Have you ever loved? ... Love teaches you to walk like a tiger.... It teaches you the wiles of a fox, of a venomous snake. It commands you to be either more humane or more cruel. The vile do not love.”