/ARTS WEEKLY/LITERATURE-VIETNAM: Writers Becoming State Puppets?

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Tran Dinh Thanh Lam

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, May 10 2005 (IPS) - The long absence of good literary works from Vietnam has set off some soul-searching questions among authors here, with many asking whether government grants given to members of the Vietnamese Writers’ Association (VWA) have been put to good use.

”VWA has a habit of using the government’s money to sponsor some of its members (the sponsorship list is always top secret); but I believe that so far no outstanding works have come out from that money,” said Nguyen Nhat Anh, author of several best sellers in Vietnam.

This pondering question was addressed at the 7th Congress of the Vietnam Writers’ Association late last month, where some 565 authors debated the issue.

Though literary works – novels and collections of short stories and poems – have increased in record numbers over the past five years, there has not been anything significant that has won international accolades.

Many writers blame the absence of quality works on what they call “state sponsorship”, the subvention that VWA grants to writers to complete their book projects. Being a member of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, VWA – as a mass organisation set up and controlled by the Vietnamese Communist Party – is eligible for direct state funding.

”Sponsorship is a bad measure. The writer is firstly a worker. He must depend on his labor to earn a living,” said Nguyen Ngoc, speaking at a forum organised by the ‘Tuoi Tre’ daily entitled ‘Should literature be sponsored?’

Nguyen Ngoc, a celebrated writer in Vietnam, has no qualms about speaking his mind. He was VWA secretary general in the late 1980s before being forced to step down at the 4th VWA congress for his critical ideas.

During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese writers were either soldiers or communist party cadres – all duty-bound to reflect the nation’s heroic struggle for independence.

When peace came about in April 1975 at the end of the war, these writers – as recognition for their writing – received direct state support to continue on with their literary works.

But Nguyen Ngoc pointed out that this only lumped the non-talented writers, who had an income, with the struggling talented ones living from hand-to-mouth – making many feel frustrated.

”It does not follow the principle of meritocracy and hence has turned literature into a stagnant pond,” he told the forum.

But there was a brief period in Vietnam when modern literature actually flourished. It was called the ”renovation era” after the Vietnamese Communist Party’s Sixth Party Congress in 1986.

At this congress, party leaders emphasised the responsibility of writers and the media to boost the spirit of the masses and suggested they could do this by ensuring truthfulness and avoiding simplistic, cliché-ridden accounts.

In October, 1987, Nguyen Van Linh, the new Vietnamese Communist Party secretary general, personally attended a memorable meeting of writers and artists and participated with them in a frank dialogue about the state of creative activity.

In remarks he made at the end of this two- day exchange, the party secretary general stated that ”one must hold fast to socialist realism,” but he suggested that ”writers who properly adopt this approach are not afraid to attack evils, even evils in people holding important posts in the party”, if these ”evils prevent the new socialist man from emerging”.

This invitation from the most powerful person in government signaled a major change in policy and had an immediate liberating effect on literary production in Vietnam. A period of openness lasted until 1988, where contacts with the West were easier during this period and they facilitated the translation and publication abroad (not always with government approval) of works by Bao Ninh, Duong Thu Huong, Nguyen Huy Thiep, and Pham Thi Hoai.

But the period of openness did not last long.

In December 1988, Nguyen Ngoc, then author and editor of ‘Van Nghe’ (‘Literature and the Arts’) was sacked, presumably for publishing stories by Nguyen Huy Thiep.

Most observers believe it was Nguyen Huy Thiep’s historical stories – ‘A Sharp Sword’, ‘Fired Gold’, and ‘Chastity’ – that angered some communist party leaders. In these stories traditional heroes such as Quang Trung, who drove out the Chinese in 1789, are treated irreverently; and traditional villains such as Emperor Gia Long, accused by patriots of making deals with the French, treated sympathetically.

The 1986 reformist faction began to lose power, no doubt in part because conservatives were alarmed by the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe and events at Tiananmen Square.

”Great (international) tittles that our literature has got so far did not result from sponsorship, at least the works created from 1975 to now,” said Nguyen Ngoc. ”In literature, freedom is essential. The writer needs no kind of guidance or directive for his creation.”

However, VWA General Secretary Huu Thinh pointed out to some achievements that Vietnamese writers had made during the past five years to justify the present “state sponsorship”.

”We have more novels reflecting modern issues and short stories dealing with the realities of life,” he said.

Huu Thinh added sponsorship was necessary in order to prevent writers from commercialising their work. ”It is true that writers could live and create without state subvention; but in that case we could not ask them not to run after market trends, not to commercialise their works.”

But this is precisely why the VWA peeves off many writers.

Nguyen Ngoc gave a sarcastic definition of the VWA. ”It is a professional association, but organised like a state agency, with different departments and lots of civil servants. It gives state money to its members to make books.”

Bui Minh Quoc, a former editor in chief of a literature magazine in Lam Dong Province, wants a total revamp of the VWA to make it a real professional association.

”We should change the VWA, change the way of conducting the congress,” Quoc said in his letter sent to his colleagues before the VWA Congress.

Quoc said that in theory, the VWA Congress is a meeting of all Vietnamese writers. But then, he added, the Vietnamese Communist Party secretariat had taken it upon themselves to decide who could or could not attend.

”The VWA is an organisation of writers. Writers are the masters of their association. But when the communist party secretariat does not permit writers to be the masters, the association is no more useful, no more fun,” he added.