108 Studies in Short Fiction 32.1 THE GENERAL RETIRES AND OTHER STORIES by Nguyen Huy Thiep Translated by Greg Lockhart. Oxford in Asia Paperbacks. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. viii + 192 pages. $11.95 paper. The General Retires and Other Stories is a collection of eight represen- tative stories by Nguyen Huy Thiep published in book form for the first time in the West. Translated from Vietnamese with a well-documented introduction that appraises Nguyen’s writing in the context of the meteoric rise of renovation literature prompted by sweeping economic reforms in the late 1980s, the stories represent a gamut of the most prominent contemporary Vietnamese writer’s genius: social-political criticism, construction/reconstruction of historical truisms, and demythicizing of cultural naivetés. Though these themes are central to most renovation writers’ works, in Nguyen they represent not only a complete break with but also a relentless attack on socialist realism and “doctrinaire-ism” (chu nghia phai dao). By 1990 most of Nguyen’s 30 stories, plays, and essays had taken Vietnam’s literary circles by storm, and to date the “Nguyen Huy Thiep phenomenon” is still generating much controversial debate among Vietnamese critics at home and overseas. The first striking characteristic of Nguyen’s writing—a cold dissection of human nature, society, and politics—can be seen, for example, in the lead story “The General Retires.” Instead of prosperity and happiness as promised by the government, the Vietnamese people continue to live in dire poverty and injustice. What drives General Thuan, who is already retired, back to the front where he is killed in action is his disillusionment with the empty ideals he was pursuing in his entire military career as well as his dissatisfaction with the moral condition of his family and his people: his son is a cuckold; his daughter-in-law is a ruthless business woman who raises her German shep- herds with aborted fetuses she brings home from her maternity clinic. At his nephew’s wedding the general is shocked by the guests’ behavior: they are cheap and rude and have eyes only for money. In Nguyen’s writing good people like General Thuan and Tham, the ferry woman in “Run River Run” who saves many people’s lives, are extremely rare. In using realism a la Balzac instead of socialist realism, Nguyen strips bare human nature. Most of his characters are wicked, vulgar, mean-spirited, and lustful. Adultery, incest, rape, murder, and robbery are some of their many crimes. In his essay Lockhart notes the “murky inklings of animal-human affinities.” I suggest that by likening humans to animals Nguyen means to show the bestiality of humans that socialist realism refuses to recognize, as well as the slough of a Post-war society unequipped to face the onslaught of capitalism in the wake of economic reforms. More virulent is Nguyen’s attack on historical figures. On the surface his controversial stories like “Fired Gold,” “A Sharp Sword,” and “Chastity”Reviews 109 (not printed in this volume), which construct/reconstruct official history, remind one of a New Historicist’s work. However, Nguyen’s “break with history” differs from Michel Foucault’s “counter-memory” because vying for power is not central to his “historical” stories. But I agree with Lockhart’s remark that “there is an absence of a single ideological centre” in Nguyen’s writing, although I would argue that this deconstructive bend displays more his iconoclasm than his attempt to “decenter” an ideology. One can understand why a story like “Chastity,” which describes the nineteenth- century national hero Nguyen Hue as a lewd, ill-mannered bumpkin, created an uproar upon its publication. Said a conservative critic, “If we denigrate Nguyen Hue today, tomorrow we will denigrate Uncle Ho.” Nguyen’s critical stance vis-a-vis the Party’s dogmatism can be best understood if we view his stories in light of his philosophy. In his famous essay “Who Can Fill the Void in a Writer’s Soul?” Nguyen defines the role of writers and asks the Party to make room for their participation in the quest for national salvation. There are two important implications in Nguyen’s essay. First, political militancy should not be ruled out in the writer’s struggle for national welfare. Second, the writer’s calling is to “seek noble ideals, truth, beauty, the absolute,” although, as the story “The Water Nymph” suggests, he might not be able to fulfill them in his lifetime. Given the fascination of the “Nguyen Huy Thiep phenomenon,” Lock- hart’s groundbreaking work is a significant contribution to Vietnamese literary studies. My only criticism is that, despite the translator’s excellent linguistic skills, often the complexities of Vietnamese syntax and vocabulary have escaped his attention. It is hoped that these problems will be corrected in the next edition of this important volume. Schreiner College Qut-PHIET TRAN SF SF §F §F §F SF §F §F §F §F THE BREAD OF SALT AND OTHER Stories by N. V. M. Gonzalez. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993. xix + 201 pages. $30 cloth; $14.95 paper. The ad copy on the back cover of The Bread of Salt and Other Stories pronounces N. V. M. Gonzalez “the dean of modern Philippine literature.” Indeed he deserves this sobriquet, and the same claim may be made vis-a-vis Pilipino American literature: Gonzalez bridges the pioneers, Carlos Bulosan and Bienvenido Santos, with today’s trailblazers, Jessica Hagedorn and Ninotchka Rosca. As do these other writers, Gonzalez traces the troubling and troubled web of colonial, postcolonial and neocolonial intersections in the Philippines, a tangled history of invasions and occupations by builders of empire: Chinese, Arabs, British, Japanese, and especially the two most