The weather in March in Europe is miserable. There are still cold spells, snow showers, and freezing winds. But in between there are “emotionally deceiving” days like this morning: The sun is golden, the sky is quite green, the spindly tree branches have a few speckled buds
Even if you think like that, it’s still very cold outside throughout Europe. I’m “locked down” because of Covid and there’s no place open to go. So I have to stay home and scroll through Facebook… I suddenly gasped when I saw a series of photos of writer Nguyen Huy Thiep. It’s been a long time since I heard about him ! I miss you…” that was the first sentence that popped into my mind.
After reading a few more articles and interviews summarizing the career of Nguyen Huy Thiep and the characters in “Retired General ” Without King Thuong, missing the countryside… appears clearly again.
Human memory is very funny. Lately, I often forget when I get out of the car and don’t remember I pressed the key. I didn’t have the key, I just held it in my hand and didn’t know where to go. I just finished ringing the phone and then looked for it until I found it.
Yet there are feelings from a long time ago that sometimes I remember and still feel like I’m touching them.
The skin has images that still appear when you close your eyes and there are things that you can still remember every word once you read it.
Nguyen Huy Thiep’s short stories are like that to me I read it again, but looking out at the sunny garden chirping with peaceful birds, I didn’t want to have “strong emotions” at this time. None of Nguyen Huy Thiep’s short stories fail to leave an impression on the reader The level of emotion is not suitable for today’s space…
Suddenly, my eyes suddenly caught the cover of the novel “Beloved 20” I have never read any novel by Nguyen Huy. Card. Maybe because I’m infected with the “reading trend of the times”, I’m becoming more and more reluctant to read long novels. I only like to read short stories and videos that last more than 3 minutes and I don’t even want to open them.
Article written 3 years ago about the premiere book “Beloved 20” at the French Cultural Center. Aside from a brief summary of the book’s content, which revolves around the topic of a young man in his teens who ran away from home due to conflicts with his family and fell into the path of addiction…the article did not mention anything interesting. There is also no emphasis on Nguyen Huy Thiep’s style or “strange” storytelling.
A single detail awakened my curiosity: Khue – the main character in the novel is writer’s son. So this is not a novel invented in my head, not a literary script, a play or a mysterious swordplay. This is an autobiography and a memoir – one of my favorite literary genres because I believe that nothing is as good as the real story. Nguyen Huy Thiep himself once declared: “I only write what I have lived…”
I texted to ask my friend – a literary treasure living in Budapest :
– Do you have the book “Dear 20” by Nguyen Huy Thiep, can I borrow it?
– I don’t have that book, I haven’t read it, I heard it was written a long time ago but it wasn’t published in the country The French bought the copyright!
My curiosity level increased even more, what “sensitive” thing was written that was only published 15 years later? Why did the French buy the copyright to this little snow? Foreigners who study Vietnamese literature are sometimes more observant than the country’s literary critics.
I wonder if the development of information technology can meet all needs. whether or not online travel can replace trips and whether online love is more beautiful than real life love, but the data response is amazing. Just a few minutes later, I sat down on the lounge chair with my eyes glued to the screen, voraciously reading.
Just as I predicted, My Dear 20s is very easy to read, like reading a diary or listening to a young man. narrative. Even though my 20s are just a thing of the past as a mother of two teenagers, I can’t help but laugh at the kind of “young” but very naive thinking typical of this new stage in life. .
Khue – the main character is a city boy with quite a lucky situation: He has a father, a mother and an older brother. Mother pampers her child by cooking delicious meals and taking care of washing clothes. My father is educated and has a passion for writing. A good and skillful boy. Khue is a decent college student who hasn’t done anything bad, he’s simply in puberty and in the mentality of a Vietnamese social family, the concept of “puberty” does not exist.
Until 15 years after the book was printed in Vietnam, review summaries still used the word “Khue rebel”. Khue does not have strong, angular, sly, cruel personalities… like Nguyen Huy Thiep’s other characters in famous short stories.
Because Khue is simply just a new urban youth. grown up, born in a good family. Khue is exploring the world around her and discovering herself. Even though she loves her mother and knows she pampers her, Khue still gets upset when she asks her “what do you want to eat?” Khue loves her father and admires her father’s talent but still laughs when he lies about trivial things or is a scholar. Khue acknowledges her brother’s skill. but he raised his eyebrows and criticized his brother for being stupid. Khue is healthy, smart, and has her own opinions, but she is always self-conscious and thinks everyone sees her as just a mosquito or a cockroach.
That puberty is such a contradiction when the West has had hundreds of years of Many scientific studies on hormonal changes and the development of nerve cells in the brain hemispheres to prove the thought actions of puberty, Eastern people still consider them “rebellious”.
Just finished reading chapter one and I was startled: Nguyen Huy Thiep, under Khue’s look, wanted to address the biggest problem of society: Education! Education at school, education in the family and education in society.
I turned to the last chapter: Cat Ba 2003 Oh, Nguyen Huy Thiep’s troubled thoughts are so much ahead of their time, I realize discovered the core too early, so it took nearly 20 years for some people to realize it.
Khue was not “rebellious” at all, completely normal, his thinking developed normally and it was because of the boy. Because of his innocence, he found many lectures in university lectures to be boring, useless, and false.
Khue is not stupid or lazy, only incompetent and poorly qualified lecturers are not. know how to convey knowledge clearly to students and attract young people. How many boys and girls have been victims of this type of education over the years?
If you bow your head in resignation from the lush green branches, you will be trained to become endlessly dry logs. have a cold. If you don’t accept it, you will be listed as a “rebel” and the line to go far into the quagmire is as thin as a hair!
Khue steps across the hairline boundary so simply that it is impossible can’t explain: “Why? Why, I don’t understand why? As they say mistakes lead to mistakes. Like a game of dominoes. Just a slight nudge of fate is the beginning of adventures…
The person you see is crazy and meaningless… How many mothers keep thinking about cooking delicious dishes for their children to wash their clothes? How many fathers think that making enough money for their children to go to school is their responsibility? How many generations think that they have to “beat” their children to understand the problem? topic? They all use the “shield” of love and “family education” to justify their actions.
How many parents have just been angry for a moment? Throwing their children into the abyss of social traps and then not being able to repent in time? Can we blame them at all? Parents were born in that era of education, how did they receive it and pass it on to the rest of their lives? My children are as regular as the genes in Darwin’s theory. Only genetically modified society changes, but education never changes.
When we are children, we receive education from family and school. But perhaps social education is what follows us throughout our lives. The working environment and surrounding friends have a great influence on people’s thoughts, actions and personality. Rarely do any parents understand why today’s “well-off” young people have to face more pitfalls than their parents’ “lack of food and clothing” days.
In social circumstances Considering money as the most important thing, cheating is a common thing. People who take advantage of their positions to get rich and gain respect can hardly hope that the younger generation will forever maintain their pure instincts. The cries for help from young people are actually drowned out in vain: Drug addict boys racing cars at the risk of their lives while prostitutes make money… don’t they want that? All because of lack of good education and lack of family love, they are thrown out into society full of black and white frauds that do not know how to escape. They are all victims and pitiful like all of Nguyen Huy Thiep’s characters.
Dare to think and dare to write Nguyen Huy Thiep frankly denounced:
“Actually, these opinions That knowledge only aims to equip people to live in accordance with a narrow social framework that is exactly what the current political mechanism desires Otherwise, people almost have to start over from scratch…
Nguyen Huy Thiep’s capital in social penetration is countless. An entire picture of urban life appears clearly From the dim lakeside in the evening to the night eateries in the old town welcoming guests, the opera house with ancient French architecture next to the flower garden with lots of open defecation, the clogged streets at work hours filled with chat cafes internet gaming…
The most complete mirror of society is still the young people around Khue: The country boy who goes to the province to study, wants to dress up and be a rich boy Equipped with all modern computer equipment, the daughter of a Protestant priest just wanted to clean up her living environment but unfortunately encountered some pawnbrokers who specialize in fraud and drug addiction.
These What happened to Khue after the night she ran away from home and rushed away like she accidentally landed on an endless water slide that was as thrilling as the “Adventures of a Cricket” from the age of 20. The reader is swept away by the emotions. The young man’s feelings: When he absent-mindedly went to meet the director of a ghost company, he was heartbroken when his first kiss was for a “living saint” girl who was just lying there waiting to die, holding her stomach and laughing. with the heart-stopping thoughts of the film school students in the scene where they race motorbikes under the cars of rich children who treat their lives like trash.
Details describing the hospital of Nguyen Huy Thiep couldn’t be more realistic from nurses to doctors from patients to family members. The hospital is probably also a miniature society full of characters who are both ridiculous and pitiful or blameworthy.
Khue came to drugs as simply as eating a meal. The scary thing is that it can happen to anyone’s family at any time, anywhere in the world. I think it is because of this factor that foreign countries immediately bought the publishing rights to “Dear 20”.
Because young people like Khue are typical of the 21st century youth class, he is not He is also a special character of a post-war Asian country, not in some remote village, but what happened to Mr. Khue in flesh and blood could also happen to my children and your children. a boy with black hair, yellow skin or blue eyes and brown hair living in Europe and America.
“Beloved 20” through the eyes of a young Vietnamese man analyzes a worldwide topic The world cares about: Educating the young generation!
What he wants to teach his son to convey to young people Nguyen Huy Thiep pours it all out in the chapter near the end. Although I have never met in real life, after looking at some videos of exchanges, I guess that Nguyen Huy Thiep is not the type to speak fluently.
The more fluent the writing style is, the more it penetrates the reader. Nguyen Huy Thiep in real life is even more hesitant in expressing himself. Maybe that was also the tragedy of his life: a famous writer but unable to express his feelings and say what he wanted to say to his children.
I pictured in my mind the scene. Father and son Nguyen Huy Thiep went to Cat Ba Island to live for a whole year: Every day the son went out to work on a fishing boat to change the living environment back to nature, meeting ordinary but extraordinary people. like a wounded soldier with a legless boatman and an old man with a papaya husband on the island….
Nguyen Huy Thiep sat waiting for his children in a small room overlooking the bay, diligently writing the novel “Dear 20s” as if pouring out all the love, regret, and regret pent up in the writer’s heart. And at the age of half his life, Nguyen Huy Thiep was thinking about death, perhaps due to the influence of Buddhism, which believes that death is always associated from the moment of birth.
He clearly envisioned the crowd His funeral was like the funerals he had witnessed in his life.
“I know my father still likes the rustic funerals of Vietnamese people in the countryside. Maybe it’s nonsense, sometimes it’s sleazy and not civilized at all, but there’s simplicity in it – something essential for writers and death.
Once I followed my father. I attended a funeral in the mountains above Phu Tho. The filial orchestra has a few people playing trumpets, drums, and bars. Around them are attendants (carrying the altar and coffin) wearing braces. The drummer sang and the crowd followed suit. I always remember the silly and plaintive lyrics that often had no rhyme or rhythm:
The spare drum plays the five-lien
(- Now it’s the five-lien!)
Give me the money three to nine hours!
(- Pay me the money!)
…
Look at the blue clouds and blue water blue and green
(- Woo ho do!)
And the silver hair on the green head
(- Woo ho do!)
< p>After the song, people began to lift the coffin up, walking and talking without looking sad at all.
In a far away place, I prayed for his soul to rest in peace. . Hopefully the novel “My Beloved 20s” will be a guide for parents and a favorite book for many young generations.
“No matter what, life has beautiful values Its beauty cannot be destroyed for any reason. Believe me, if you are not fully grown yet, don’t be so quick to lose your hair like me early youth”.
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