Read Nguyen Huy Thiep's essay: Talking with narcissus and…

After more than three decades of being famous nationwide for his short stories, he finally won an award for… critical theory thanks to his essay collection Setting a Net to Catch Birds.

Writer Nguyen Huy Thiep writes essays with the same sharpness as he writes stories. With a nonchalant style, occasionally dropping a comment lightly like throwing a stone into a calm lake.

Narcissus 20 Years Later

His essay "Conversations with Narcissus" and "Writers' Mistakes" once stirred public opinion.

More than 20 years later, reading this essay again, although it has lost its old stirring atmosphere, "narcissus" is still beautiful, still evoking issues of Vietnamese literature in the time of writer Nguyen Huy Thiep and even today.

Perhaps that is why when republishing literary essays by writer Nguyen Huy Thiep, the publisher chose the name Conversation with Narcissus and… (Tre Publishing House, 2025).

Reading the book, I realized that before being published, most of the articles were published in newspapers and magazines such as Tien Phong, Nong Nghiep Viet Nam, Phu Nu TP.HCM… These articles are often concise, charming and suggestive.

Readers may wonder what the narcissus has to do with literature? Or is it about Narcissus turning into a narcissus?

There, you have to read, read until the end to see that sometimes the seemingly distant associations are actually close to the problem, to literary matters and even to matters outside of literature.

The way the story is told sometimes makes us forget that we are reading an essay and feel like we are participating in a story.

It is as if the writer and I were sitting across from each other, with a vase of daffodils on the table between us. The writer did not look at us, he only looked at the daffodil and "talked" to it, as if we were whispering to ourselves.

For example, the following passage: "Mr. Nguyen Huu Mao, 88 years old, living at 7 O Quan Chuong, Hanoi, is a strange poetry lover. The number of poems he wrote in his life must have reached... hundreds of tons! The story goes that in 1946, during the scorched earth resistance war, his family was evacuated, he did not pay attention to all the valuables in his house, somehow he only brought... a load of poems!

Once, when he was sick and thought he was about to die, his eldest son came to visit him. He worriedly asked: "In my life, you are the son who has done the most things that have annoyed me the most. You write poetry, I also write poetry... Now that I am near death, I ask you honestly: Is my poetry better or is yours better?" (ibid., p.159).

Nguyen Huy Thiep opened his essay "Poetry Net" like that. He talked about poetry and the times, the times of "poetry inflation", the masses became bored with poets. And that is not an "old story".

But the image of "Mr. Nguyen Huu Mao, 88 years old, living at 7 O Quan Chuong, Hanoi" makes us curious and wonder if he is real or just a fiction of the writer?

What a witty smile telling a tragicomedy of poetry and literature. The writer wonders if Nguyen Huy Thiep were still alive, would he have written another "poetry net" telling the story of a man who was beaten for writing a poem and posting it on his personal page?

The "fable" story about "Mr. Nguyen Huu Mao" has brought the issue closer to the readers. Isn't the figure of "Mr. Nguyen Huu Mao" still looming around us? And who knows, maybe one day we will also become that "Mr. Nguyen Huu Mao" who loves poetry?

Nguyen Huy Thiep beyond short stories

The book Conversations with Narcissus and… is divided into three parts: Heaven, Earth, and Human.

The writer discusses general issues of literature, of writing, and of the writer's mindset.

It can be seen in articles with very specific names such as "A careless corner in the writer's inner world ", "Who can fill the gap in the writer's thoughts", "The path of literature", "Talking again about the signs of contemporary art forms in novels"... These articles mainly focus on the "Heaven" section.

In the "Geography" section, readers have the opportunity to read the writer's articles not only related to literature but also about Hanoi's pho, the land and people of the South...

In the "Human" section, Nguyen Huy Thiep mainly writes about his literary friends.

The work "Talking with Narcissus and..." although it is a reprint of old articles, is also an opportunity for readers to approach a Nguyen Huy Thiep outside the world of short stories. In fact, sometimes we feel that the "inside - outside" boundary no longer exists. A rich, complex inner world of a famous artist but still feels "everything is still on the way" (ibid, p.55) with the concern of what is literature, what is a writer?

And the artist replied: "What is a writer? It is nothing. It is just a small soul full of mistakes and always trying to repent and overcome those mistakes" (ibid, p.55).

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HUYNH TRONG KHANG

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/doc-tieu-luan-cua-nguyen-huy-thiep-tro-chuyen-voi-hoa-thuy-tien-va-20250416093959486.htm