Reading books with friends: Cheeky Tran Chien

This man is strange. Originally from Nam Dinh, surnamed Tran, son of a famous revolutionary, born in the central plains during the French resistance (I heard Tran Truong Chien’s birth name was shortened from the slogan “long-term resistance”. he came out at that time), but he was a street person and lived all his life on the streets. Hanoi Street. Studying literature and becoming a journalist, she was fed by her father’s blood, so she also likes to meticulously explore the streets, breaking into the physical and spiritual nooks and crannies of the ancient capital and the current capital. He watched every corner of the house rummage through the past hidden beneath it. He converses with every tree-lined street echoes of past history. He turned every page of Vietnamese books, French books written in Thang Long – Hanoi, looking for traces of the past that are still being recorded. Since then there is Hanoi in Tran Chien’s writings – Hanoi is separate from Tran Chien. The street stories he wrote are about Ke Cho’s ordinary people but have the temperament of Hanoi, including the good and the bad. He was deeply irritated by the encroachment of foreigners from the provinces, especially from the marshes, into the lands of that time, which tarnished the dignity of both the land and the inhabitants of the capital. Perhaps the discomfort is caused by the heroic and chaotic transformations of history in modern times. With his writings, he wanted to write a history of street literature in the hope of saving and preserving a bit of that millennia-old literary place. Hanoi in the story of Tran Chien is nostalgic with old sights. But he is also aware enough to see and write down the character traits of today’s citizens, right in the bustling metropolis.

However, he had stories about the countryside and countryside as if he was a long time villager, a village chief, who knew everything in the house beyond the alley. In the stories, he mainly investigates close relationships in the countryside, especially kinship. Like an old man who can tell everyone in the village what he is in the village above and below that he is the son of his family, his grandson and grandparents, how does he relate to this person, upper and lower limbs like this Well , the person who caused trouble has a name away from you, you should call him uncle. Also from the reality of my house, my village, every time the writer returns to his hometown, he lives in a rural atmosphere. Today, don’t think that the issue of kinship has been alleviated, on the contrary, it still persists, sometimes even more complicated in modern societies that emphasize personal relationships and status associated with clans. Tran Chien’s rural story is firmly rooted in the past and renewed in the present, so in the “Vietnamese village in the integration period” contest (2019 – 2021) organized by the newspaper “Nang Thon Today” and the online newspaper “Dan Viet”. won first prize with his story uncle’s son. Another aspect of the rural story is that the road-country connection is also shown by him when the street people are still attached to the village, while the country people who go to the road to do business still find the road far from the village. . Reading Tran Chien’s story in this section, I often unknowingly utter the words of literary critic Hoai Thanh, “In each of us, there is a compatriot”. The author of “Vietnamese Poet” wrote those lines while commenting on Nguyen Binh’s poem with a love cult festival scene in an old village. And I remember that sentence because through Tran Chien’s story I see that the core of modern Vietnamese society is still many farmers.

The stories in this book have both urban and rural areas written by Tran Chien. But I want to talk about the writing style. Clever narrative style. In life, he didn’t talk much, didn’t speak loudly, kept whispering and whispering, in May, one sentence in November, when he spoke suddenly, he kept talking. But listeners have to listen and suddenly oh. It was because of his clever speech. He brings that witty tone to the story. The tone from the very beginning draws the reader into the character, as if talking, joking, arguing with the character. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the sentences continued to intertwine with each other, telling the dialogue. But even the dialogue of the characters in the story is a continuous, extended author’s dialogue. Dialogue with the author’s witty tone makes the story told with a sense of irony. Yes, the story of Tran Chien always has a faint smile from the author – a person who knows everything in life, has seen that the solemn and solemn things in life are just that. I want to borrow the name of Shakespeare’s play to say the meaning of Tran Chien’s story – “Much Ado About Nothing” (“No one is too busy”). But maybe that’s so, or that’s all, the story makes the reader after reading it have to sit quietly and think about life, realizing the busyness of people who interfere in life, sometimes in vain. , it turns out that life is normal don’t pretend to be noisy, don’t make each other suffer because of this and that the best way to live. Tran Chien is smart about the past. He is also witty about the present, when the characters in his stories are today’s young people in the @ era. Thus, reading it acquires an interesting literary quotient.

Tran Chien is a go-getter. Go alone. Too many and sometimes a friend or two can do the talking. He left not with the way of a passing tourist but with the eyes of a historian and the soul of a writer. His favorite place is the northern mountainous area. Travel alone with a backpack, take a passenger car, travel alone to a high mountain, seek shelter in a certain village, wander alone on foot or rent a motorbike, meet with residents alone Local people chat, ask questions, alone enjoy the joy of the explorers when they know more knowledge, find more addresses, open new stories. And Tran Chien’s way of asking was also clearly intelligent. This is not the type of question that visitors are simply asked to answer yes to. That’s not the kind of question journalists keep looking for information. Not the kind of questioning lowland people with people in the highlands that shows that we are civilized. Not the kind of question Westerners look to Southerners with an “exotic” mentality. This is Tran Chien’s style of questioning: take it easy, wait, ask without asking, like pushing the story, then in the storyline in sync with the host because the guest said something, then suddenly releases him a question The question is to know more about what is known, not to know the unknown, and as it becomes clearer, the story continues. When he was back on the road, sometimes, after drinking too much tea, he would immediately say, “I just got up there, I just found out it’s really weird, so what I heard before wasn’t but that’s how it is. … So, Tran Chien adds to his living and literary capital. Historians look for facts, connections, and connections between old and new, old and new. Writers hunt for details, construct plots, create characters, and prepare new works. Maybe not right away, on the spot, but forever. But that is Tran Chien’s own way of learning about life, or “infiltrating life” as a way of saying it at one time, as a writer. He knows how to observe the smallest details, at first glance, in the course of human change. Therefore, the reader saw in his stories very real life scenes, as if the author had just taken them from life.In other words, Tran Chien looked everywhere and saw a story. It was a valuable quality of a writer in him.

Tran Chien wrote quietly. He rarely attended festivals, the less he posted out loud. His books, short stories, novels and magazines number in the dozens. Invited to the national writers’ association but he faltered. His ingenuity in life that almost does not know. Into literature the intelligence is more impenetrable, but only the discerning reader can see it. For him it can be said that it is a choice of life and writing. Tran Chien was smart.

Reading this collection of stories, as well as other volumes, you will meet authors such as Tran Chien, and so on.

See you next time with other new books.

Hanoi, May 2023