Book-blogger
Hai Di Nguyen







Friday 24th July 2020



Q1) The book most influential for you as a young person

How young is young? But I’m going to say Anna Karenina. The book completely changed my view on literature—it made me realise what literature was capable of. I had loved reading since a small child and had read classics and modern classics before getting to Anna Karenina, but Tolstoy changed everything. One may struggle with some of his ideas, but there is no doubt that he is among the greatest novelists of all time because of the scope and depth of his works, because of his psychological insights and vivid, complex characters.

As my friend Himadri has once written, some writers seem to use broad brushstrokes—to use strong colours and paint with great sweep and vigour, such as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Melville, etc. whereas at the other end of the spectrum, some writers paint with small, delicate brushstrokes and the most meticulous precision, such as Jane Austen, Flaubert, James, etc. Tolstoy seems to do both—he is not in the middle, but he encompasses the entire spectrum. He can work on a large canvas (especially in War and Peace) but his works are full of nuance and no details escape him.

Anna Karenina was also significant in leading me to do a Russian literature challenge—for a year I was concentrating on reading Russian literature and discovered many other great writers such as Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Leskov, Lermontov, and so on.

On a personal level, Anna Karenina made me think differently and see people in a different way. His characters are vivid and stay with us because they are complex and full of contradictions, and that is how people are.

Q2) The book that gets you through hard times

I don’t have a single book that gets me through hard times. Literature in general gets me through hard times. However, an author who can always cheer me up, especially if I cannot concentrate well on reading, is P. G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse is a delight.

Q3) The book that most disappointed you

This doesn’t happen often as I mostly read classic literature, especially 19th century literature. Sometimes I may struggle with a novel but usually try to see what the author’s doing, and in the end even if I don’t see it as a personal favourite, I can see why it’s considered great.

But the book that recently disappointed me was Stoner. Stoner seems to be a book that people either love or hate, and I cannot see why anyone would rate it so highly. A few critics have even called it a perfect novel. To me, it’s a bland book with plain prose, uncompelling characters, and unclear motivations, all of which became so obvious as I picked it up after reading Edith Wharton.

Q4) Name a book with either a brilliant opening or a brilliant ending

A book with a brilliant ending is The Age of Innocence. I discovered Edith Wharton earlier this year and read The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence. All of them have great endings: The House of Mirth has a tragic ending, The Custom of the Country ends with a vision of hell, and The Age of Innocence has these lines in the final chapter: “He preferred to spend the afternoon in solitary roamings through Paris. He had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime.”

I started the book thinking it was about a man torn between a pure, traditional, boring wife and an unconventional, passionate lover, but it turned out that I was wrong. The Age of Innocence is a lot more complex, and a melancholic, moving book.

Throughout the story, Newland Archer thinks that his fiancé, then wife, May is pure and naïve, knowing nothing about real life. But May understands a lot more than he thinks, and with the backing of “society”, successfully kicks Ellen out of her husband’s life. It is only years after May’s death that Newland realises she has always known about his love for someone else. But in the end, when he has a chance to meet Ellen again decades later…

Q5) Your favourite character from a novel

I like many characters, but I’m going to say Fanny Price from Mansfield Park because she is my favourite Jane Austen heroine and the least popular.

Fanny Price is a sensitive, understanding, and perceptive character—she is an acute observer and has a sharp eye for people’s character, unlike Emma Woodhouse or Elizabeth Bennet. She also has strength. Her critics often complain that she is passive, but there is nothing passive about holding fast to one’s moral principles and resisting pressure from everyone else.

Q6) Next on your 'to read' pile is...

As I’m reading The Tale of Genji, it will be difficult to pick up something afterwards. What can compare to it? I may pick up something completely different, perhaps non-fiction, before reading The Pillow Book, which is from the same period. In fact, Sei Shonagon, the author of The Pillow Book, was Murasaki Shikibu’s rival at court. I think it is important to read multiple works from the same nation and the same period so you get a better idea of the culture and tradition, instead of jumping from a book of one country to another.

A few months ago when I was reading The Tale of Kieu by Nguyễn Du, I also read 2 major Vietnamese works that came before it, so it helped to understand what Vietnamese writers were doing before Nguyễn Du wrote his magnum opus.

Q7) Your favourite poem

I don’t have a single favourite poem. My favourite poets are 2 Vietnamese poets, Hàn Mặc Tử and Bùi Giáng, both of whom haven’t been properly translated into English.

The most impressive epic poem I’ve read is Truyện Kiều (The Tale of Kieu in English) by Nguyễn Du — 3254 lines. Truyện Kiều is generally seen as Vietnam’s greatest literary work, which has influenced not only the literature but also the language and many other aspects of Vietnamese culture. Several characters from Truyện Kiều have become archetypes, and every Vietnamese person knows at least a few lines from it.

For years it was my “humiliation” not to have read Truyện Kiều, as a Vietnamese person—I hesitated because it’s a long, complex poem with lots of metaphors and classical allusions and archaic language. But I read it a few months ago, in 2 annotated versions, and it’s a great work of literature. Nguyễn Du in Vietnam has more or less the same place as Shakespeare in England and Pushkin in Russia, and he has had lots of influence on the Vietnamese language that I earlier hadn’t fully realised.

The trouble is the translation into English or any other foreign language. I read Truyện Kiều in Vietnamese. The meaning that Nguyễn Du packs in only a few words and metaphors would need an expansion and require more words in another language, and as there are lots of classical allusions, very often a translator has to weave the clarification or explanation into the translation itself. The result therefore would sound crude and not retain the elegance of the original.

Another thing that may become lost in translation is that each character has a distinct voice, and Nguyễn Du combines literary language and everyday language. Having said that, I think Truyện Kiều should be read. From what I’ve seen, the translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông, which is often used in teaching, seems faithful and respectful and has lots of notes.

Q8) The greatest book you've ever read

Over the past few years, my top 3 have been unchanged: Anna Karenina, War and Peace, and Moby-Dick.

However I’m currently reading The Tale of Genji, which may be the greatest novel in the world, or among the greatest. From afar, The Tale of Genji may not look very appealing because it’s from the 11th century, and the culture is indeed alien, but in terms of technique, it is surprisingly modern. It forced me to rethink everything about world literature and the history of literature, because most of my favourite writers come from the 19th century (Tolstoy, Austen, Melville, Flaubert, etc.), then I realised that in 11th century Japan, a female writer had already figured out everything about the psychological novel.

I think it would be hard to read The Tale of Genji without getting a sense of awe, as it is a novel of great scope, longer than War and Peace, with about 400 characters. The characters are all unnamed, because it is rude to use personal names at Heian court, so we know of the characters by their titles or nicknames related to a flower, a poem, or a residence. The challenge is that the characters get promoted and change titles, or move house, and their inter-connections are also complex, so it is more difficult than War and Peace, but Murasaki Shikibu keeps track of all of them and the characters are all distinct and memorable.

As Tolstoy does with Russia in War and Peace and Anna Karenina, The Tale of Genji captures the intellectual and moral climate of Japan in the Heian period — we learn about the court system, beliefs and lifestyles, rituals, festivals, letter-writing, calligraphy, poetry, music, dance, incense-making, painting, gardening, Buddhist philosophy, and so on. At the same time, because it’s written by a woman, and about the women surrounding Genji as much as about Genji, The Tale of Genji also shows us what it’s like to be a woman in Heian Japan. It is also a beautiful novel, pervaded by mono no aware. A central theme is the fragility and impermanence of life, but it is not only sadness—in the idea of mono no aware, there is also a celebration of fleeting beauty, while it lasts.

It is an extraordinary novel, one that should be read more. ●







Hai Di Nguyen is a Norwegian citizen, originally from Vietnam, and currently based in Yorkshire, the United Kingdom. She is an aspiring filmmaker and has won an RTS Yorkshire Student Award for her experimental short Footfalls. She also writes for Trẻ Magazine, and blogs about literature at https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com /// t: @hdinguyen11






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