The real world through the pen of Nguyen Binh Phuong

The invitation of opposing categories

Nguyen Van Sang studied well, got a doctorate in the Soviet Union, returned to work as a teacher, but could not make ends meet, his wife left him for another man, hoping for a warm Tet, he took a last risk to sell 4 kilos of Dai Tu tea to Thai Nguyen, but accidentally shot and killed a soldier, so he was sentenced to death within just over a month. Later, one of Sang's two sons interviewed and recorded people related to his father's life and death. The story of Sang's life and his execution is nothing new. As the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said, it was just a trivial example, a death sentence among countless death sentences. Yet, in the hands of Nguyen Binh Phuong, a writer famous for his attention to detail, Sang's death was not trivial at all because of the interweaving and collision of countless stories, lives and people. Sang becomes the main axis, the foundation for the instability and degeneration of life to "sprout and flourish".

Cover of the book "A Trivial Example" by Nguyen Binh Phuong.

Tracing Sang's life and death, the issues of morality, traditions between good - bad, good - evil, right - wrong, good - bad, morality - incest, virtue - virginity, fidelity - adultery, ... are re-judged by Nguyen Binh Phuong, placing them in the right place where they exist. The writer digs up lives from many perspectives: direct - indirect, subjective - objective, near - far ... then exposes their nature through complementarity, criticism, and polarity. The liveliness of each narrative, sometimes changing the person, sometimes dialogue, sometimes just monologues, ... has attached to Sang's life elements that are both real and virtual, full of mystery and invitation. The light and darkness of Sang's life also make the opposing categories constantly change, making it difficult to find the root, the truth, the final result. Each person is a piece that creates a typical picture of the distorted, strange human world.

Writer Nguyen Binh Phuong.

In the never-ending dialogue between good and bad, good and evil, Nguyen Binh Phuong still slowly tells the story as he did in his recent novel -Tell it and go. A trivial example.After telling the story, it leaves behind a messy, morally empty surface, and the reader pieces it together, patches it up, and explains the irregularities himself. Only when the reader deciphers the value of the work, then the reader can see the meaning of the dialogue's leveling: putting all value systems on a scale, the weight does not belong to either side, but it belongs to the consciousness of being human - this eternally hidden personality will emerge when the conscience is awakened.

The eternal personality is hidden by Nguyen Binh Phuong in the depths of the collapse and absurdity. The surface is a "shameless" dialogue between different types of people, but the depth is the foundation of morality and dignity. The guest character - Sang's son, goes to find traces of his father that he could not feel when he was young, except for the day he told his father to remember to bring a gun to show off, through his tape recorder, many personalities and human destinies are revealed. At this time, the tape recorder exists as a person, a witness contributing to the completion of the pieces of life. The reader follows it to contemplate, to ponder, to awaken, to feel sorrow and bitterness.

Voice of too many personalities

Nguyen Binh Phuong's characters often appear with full angles and appearances, through the complexity of many points of view. This character tells and judges the other character, the combinations of points of view continuously twist together and expose what has existed and is existing. The inner world, identity, love, reason for living, etc. are explored and turned over one by one, with no final result but only dialogues that are sometimes supportive, sometimes antagonistic, sometimes agreeable, sometimes critical. Each character carries within themselves more than one/many personalities, creating an unstable, chaotic, complex, and absurd reality..

Sang once confided to Quyet:“…family is like a full glass of water, even the most skillful person can only hold it for a short time, sooner or later it will spill.”[p.74]. Indeed, the corruption and decay come from within. The family's solid blood fortress has been manipulated by money and fame. The couple's feelings are also controlled by money. For a few gold bars, the shop owner is willing to push his wife into prostitution. For money and the house, Van - the eldest daughter-in-law, tries every way to seduce her father-in-law, Chinh, regardless of the incestuous relationship. It is also because of money that Sang's wife left him for another man... Uyen's sister once came to visit and told Uyen:“A big house is cold, try to keep it warm”[p.16]. A person like Uyen, once made Sang's life less lonely, but was also stained and changed by life. Uyen kept the house warm by losing one man and then compensating with another. The flirting between Mr. Chinh and Mrs. Uyen seemed to push all the degeneration to the peak.

Thus, the animal-human nature of old Chinh has brought about sad consequences: the whole family is crippled, mentally deformed, living a life of neither human nor ghost. The calm, chilling gestures and words that come out of old Chinh's family members are in the form of dialogue against dialogue: "My brother left just in time" (Quyet's words to Uyen), "That's cause and effect" (Uyen's words to old Chinh), "Yes, that's cause and effect" (old Chinh's words in response...

The dialogue form does not aim at the story being told, there is no connection between the speaker and the listener, but it indirectly reveals the character's nature. The abnormality in psychology, gestures, and actions of the old man Chinh's family is a version, a miniature slice of a tragicomic and chaotic society. The stories are fragmented, broken between the past and present, the past and the present, the living and the dead,... inA trivial exampleNguyen Binh Phuong collected all of them into one thing - the absence of humanity.

Nguyen Binh Phuong writes well in everything. Every section is attractive and impressive. He does not talk big, focusing on the center, but often sticks to the periphery, borrowing the periphery to attack and de-center. From a side perspective, from a narrow perspective, from the perspective of Mr. Chinh's family, he expands infinitely, those are issues of war, politics, law, culture, education, ethics, sex, etc. All are in motion, circulating in the technique of "inversion", swapping space and time, narrative voice, viewpoint but still ensuring the systematic, continuous nature of chaos, suggestion, and incompletion:“In that big, tricky head, there are still countless stories waiting for their turn. If you want other stories to speak, this one needs to stop, absolutely must stop.”[p.202]. That is the normal, natural but full of instability and paradox of life.A trivial exampleentrust

(*). Nguyen Binh Phuong,A trivial example, Writers Association Publishing House, 2021.