Viet Nam Literature Project

02/17/2026

104 readers in not quite 10 hours for this morning's Viet Nam letter. It concerns Aristotle and Viet Nam.

377 over 3 weeks for the previous letter, a poem by a friend about Dante on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

From political scientist Paul Schuler in Jonathan D. London's handbook of contemporary Viet Nam

01/29/2026

342 have read the new Viet Nam letter in the first 60 hours after launch at oh-dark-30.

Expended Casings is a poem, or prose introduction to a book of poems with that same title, by Alan Farrell.

which we have illustrated with photos Alan took of the friends he fought with.

Link in comments.

01/06/2026

New Viet Nam letter today on William Galston, the Marine, political scientist, and son of Arthur W. Galston the inventor of both dioxin and bio-ethics.

William is both a liberal democrat at Brookings and a Straussian, one of the movement now in charge, so to speak, at Washington, DC.

Cameo appearances by political scientists Jim Scott, Ben Anderson, Thaveeporn Vasavakul, our Ha Noi friend from Duisberg would someone please tell him to drop me a line, and liberal theorist John McGowan.

Also by the philosopher Kant. Get you some:

from political scientist William A. Galston

07/20/2025

The current Viet Nam letter has won 173 readers since launch 12 days ago on Tuesday, July 8.

79 of our 147 subscribers have read the post while 68 readers walked in.

4 readers have clicked through to previous Viet Nam letters. 3 have read the previous post of Barney Currer's story, "The Rabbi."

2 have read David A. Willson's poem "The frogs are gone." 2 have read the first letter introducing the project.

Since we have had no new reader for this letter in a few days, I am starting to promote it, as here. I would like to make 200.

from Barney Currer and 1st Casualty Press

06/20/2025

Letter out to Vietnamese Studies Group

Hi all,

The current Viet Nam letter has won 146 readers since launch on May 31. 1 reader moved on to a previous letter on Jonathan Hill's Tales of a Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy, and his uncle P**c Tran's Sigh, Gone.

The current letter examines the cover of Quang X. Pham's second book, Underdog Nation. Since the first words on the cover are "child refugee", I begin with Gerald Ford.

That president is looking awfully good lately. He swept all law aside to welcome a nation to these shores.

I go on to the cover's other promotional copy: the United States Marine Corps, and biotechnology. Both are continual topics of these Viet Nam letters, for instance on Wayne Karlin and Arthur Galston, which the letter on Quang links to.

I grew up and live among no-collar Marines who have gone into business. Jonathan and I are of the world of comics - each Viet Nam letter is a comic strip - and I am a reader of the same literary languages that inform P**c.

I grew up not with Arthur's family exactly, but in the next town with his departmental colleagues, and have worked over long years with Wayne. The point of these letters is to bring that varied sense of Viet Nam to the academic and literary sensibility limited by what I call the publicity machine,

people I know personally just about exactly like me from my national high school and college, our sports teams and clubs and societies, who generate discourse around Viet Nam in terms only of pity or veneration.

I am a softie myself, and a fan, but my interests lie rather in intellect and taste. Quang X. Pham, for instance:

https://vietnamlit.substack.com/p/underdog-nation-i

Yours,

Dan

from Quang X. Pham and Forbes Books

06/18/2025

draft letter out to Vietnamese Studies Group

Hi all,

The current Viet Nam letter has won 146 readers since launch on May 31.

The letter examines the cover of Quang X. Pham's second book, Underdog Nation. Since the first words on the cover are "child refugee", I begin with Gerald Ford.

That president is looking awfully good lately. He swept all law aside to welcome a nation to these shores.

I go on to the cover's other promotional copy: the United States Marine Corps, and biotechnology. Both are continual topics of these Viet Nam letters, for instance on Wayne Karlin and Arthur Galston.

So I had some things to say about Quang's jacket. Please take a look.

Yours

Dan

06/16/2025

The president of the United States of America cast all law aside to welcome those whose republic fell at Saigon on April 30, 1975. Our navy already had steamed from Guam to the rescue.

from Quang X. Pham and Forbes Books

06/15/2025

Lizard Boy 2 is out! That is, in my mail last week.

Read all about it.

from Jonathan Hill and Walker Books US, colored by Allie Drake

06/14/2025

This Viet Nam letter is the 248th across the 38 months since February 9 in 2022. That first post has attracted 108 readers across 4 Gregorian years.

Read all about it.

from the janitor

06/12/2025

My copy of the first volume of Huy Đức’s history of Viet Nam over our common lifetime has arrived. The title jumped up at me.

Read all about it.

from historian Peter Zinoman

06/11/2025

The Regents of the University of California have published at the website of their Press with a capital P this introduction by Peter B. Zinoman to his interview 12 years ago with Huy Đức now in the current issue of their Journal of Vietnamese Studies.

Read all about it.

from historian Peter Zinoman

06/10/2025

It’s a short story about walking off the job into life. John Updike was a contemporary of my mom and dad.

Read all about it.

from Phuong Anh Le