Su kien tieng Anh

“Country man” and a vision for short stories

09:12' 10/07/2007 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – These days, the literature circle is talking about Ngo Phan Luu, a 61-year-old country “bumpkin” who has won the highest prize in the highly competitive Literature and Art Periodical short-story contest.
Out of 1,700 entries, many of which were penned by veteran writers, Ngo Phan Luu’s Buoi Sang Bien Mat (Morning Disappearing) and Com Chieu (Afternoon Meal) shared the first prize with teacher Ho Thi Ngoc Hoai’s Thung Lam.
Talking about his achievement, the old man from the central province of Phu Yen was quite modest. “I think and write in a farmer’s style. I also have a farmer’s intellect. For so long, our literature has abounded in delicate dishes. So I think perhaps this time, the simple but new taste of a countryside dish was delightful enough to win,” said he.
Morning Disappearing is a sad story about a husband lying on his death bed amid the indifference of his wife and kids. Asked whether such a disheartening picture faithfully captured reality, Ngo Phan Luu said, “Short stories should be a wake-up call. They don’t necessarily reflect reality. They can give birth to a picture of life that may predict reality.”
Ngo Phan Luu’s stories are concise, short, rough and philosophical. The rural writer attributes this style to his countryside essence. “Farmers don’t like flowery things. They like short and simple stories. They talk straight and look at things closely in order to discover and kill insects, so to speak.”
Ngo Phan Luu doesn’t call himself a writer. He said he was merely “a farmer who writes”. To him, writing short stories isn’t so much a profession as a passion, though he does hope by writing he can earn enough to send all his children through college.
He decided to write 6 years ago while reading 2 essays by Kundera and Ortega about novel writing. “It dawned on me that the biggest mistake of a novelist was to copy real life. No, the world in a novel must be isolated and disconnected from reality, though one’s materials indeed come from reality. They are different from real life but able to enter it.
“I liked the idea and started writing short stories since unlike novels, short stories are short,” said the old short-story writer, who sold a cow in order to have money to publish his first debut work of poetry called Winter Afternoon Cooking Stove.
He quickly realised that the Goddess of Poetry didn’t like him. So he tried his hand at short stories, and has been very diligent at it. “Being a farmer at heart, I can ‘plough’ hard. I write every day. I take part in all contests. I used to write by hand, but now I have a computer to type things with,” Ngo Phan Luu said.
Besides the poetry collection and a work of short stories published in 2005, Ngo Phan Luu will soon release another book of short stories about rural life called Tran Gian Mot Khuc (A Melody of Earth).
(Source: SGGP, TT)