I have always been an avid reader, and now that I am retired, I can spend as much time doing it as I like. I not only read at home, I take a book or my e-reader with me whenever I go somewhere that might require me to wait, like the doctor, dentist, barber; or on a train, plane, or bus. In years past, seeing people reading during their "down time" like that was not uncommon. But now it has become so rare that it actually draws comment from people--"Oh, you're READING something?" Even in Taipei, when I look around on the bus or the MRT, almost everyone has their attention on their phone, and from what I've been able to see over peoples' shoulders, it's not to read a book like Jimbob. (I used to read on my phone, but I like physical books much better, and also eventually grew to dislike trying to read anything serious on a little bitty screen.
Interesting observation about the Vietnamese use of the verb "play." My Mandarin Chinese skills are limited, but I have noticed something similar. The verb "play" is not only used when referring to a sport. For example, when referring to making a phone call, they say "play (on) a telephone." Certain cultural aspects of regional languages often find their way into their neighbors, so who knows?
Glad to see I'm not alone in having a hard time adjusting to screen reading. I was attracted to it primarily because it's so much cheaper, but soon realized I couldn't sustain the intangible gaze for a length required to do justice to serious writing.
I have a couple of e-readers and hundreds of eBooks, but I always prefer the hard copy, even if I have to pay more. I don't mind as much if I am reading pure text, but photos and maps are practically illegible in eBooks, and many of the history-type books I read have maps in them that I find useful. I guess I also just like the tactile sensation of a real book, and I think they are also easier on the eyes.
One reason I have lots of eBooks is that it is often possible to get them for free. Many older works are out of copyright, but even newer stuff can be found free on-line if you are willing to search for it. Out of print stuff is frequently kicking around on-line somewhere--that is how I got copies of things like Peter Duesberg's book "Inventing the AIDS Virus" and David Irving's "Hitler's War."
As I recall, the alt position on AIDS was that the Gallo/Montagnier identified virus was a hoax and that the disease was caused by risky lifestyle choices which lowered individual white blood cell counts. A deadly virus, even if intentionally leaked from a lab (by conservative perps) was more acceptable to the ptb than a medical attack on the promiscuous gay lifestyle. Lifestyle falls under the "terrain" category of disease as opposed to air born contagions - germs and viruses.
My memory has been recently refreshed by Celia Farber who did gallant work as a dissident journalist back in the day and brought that history lesson to her substack. If I have misspoken positions or facts, please correct. I'm still learning.
That is pretty much how I understand it, based on the book. In particular, Duesberg mentioned "poppers" as a prime culprit in the "risky lifestyle choice" category. He also pointed out that strangely enough, the symptoms of AIDS are different in different parts of the world. The symptoms that African doctors expect to see in an AIDS patient are completely different from those seen in an American patient. How can that be, if it is the same disease?
Another interesting parallel is the "repurposing" of an existing pharmaceutical to treat the disease. With AIDS, it was AZT, originally developed to treat cancer, but abandoned because it was too lethal. It is often said, and Duesberg agrees, that AZT killed more "AIDS patients" than the "disease" itself. We saw history repeat itself with Covid, where they dusted off Remdesivir, a failed Ebola treatment, to treat Covid. Again, the side effects of Remdesivir in Ebola tests were reportedly as gruesome as Ebola itself, if that is even possible.
Don't want to write off those big investments in a pharmaceutical only to ultimately label it a failure, now would we?
When was the time that reading "serious" literature was common?
When I was a kid my mother was the only adult I knew that read books. She loved mysteries. Everyone else watched TV.
My highschool group found out that I liked to read. They were shocked. One kid was so puzzled that I would voluntarily read that he talked it over with his dad. His dad said any male that read was a homosexual and he banned him from any further association with me.
Now that was in a largely working class community but in university one of my neighbors was a man in his 60s. He was thrilled to come across me because I liked to read. We would exchange novels and chat briefly about them. This was early 1970s and he didn't know anyone else who read.
Since then I have found some men who read scify or self improvement books but only one who read non genre novels.
The only novel during my time as an adult which I knew other men to have read was Bonfire of the Vanities. I was in business school at the time so maybe that had something to do with it.
I have read that The Great Gatsby got a new lease on life when the army included it in the books given to soldiers in WW2. It was reportedly very popular. I doubt it would be these days.
I know other men who are interested in politics. They will willingly watch a 4 hour documentary on YouTube but give them an article that takes 10 minutes to read and they act like you just sent them War and Peace.
Long-time listener, first-time caller from Mississippi. (By the way, your piece on Jackson from years back captured the troubled soul of the Capital City in a way that the magnolias-and-moonshine mushiness that drips from far too much Southern writing cannot.) With stocks tumbling, US presidents disappearing, civil war in the UK looming, and Israel leading the world into more Purim-themed chaos, I thought I should finally pay for a subscription while there is still time.
“The death of reading is also the death of attention. Without that moral prerequisite, there’s no knowledge, respect or love for anything.” This hits hard for those still (begrudgingly) laboring in public higher ed. Administration presents education as a product, so students demand their degree/product, which requires passing--if not superior--grades. However, in students’ way of thinking, making them work for good grades is like making them cook a meal they have purchased in a restaurant. Why read even a seven-page short story when you can skim a few paragraphs from SparkNotes? Why skim when you can have ChatGPT spit it out for you? Heaven forbid an instructor recommend anything because of the beauty or insight expressed in that reading alone. Throw in widespread functional cynicism, and all research as a means of discovering the truth becomes another hoop one has to jump through in the career circus of higher ed.
However, if students (or most people, so as not to pick only on students) can no longer pay sustained attention to anything, what's the use? Using tech has shrunk our attention spans—luckily, I was nearly an adult before I first “signed on,” but after decades of use and abuse, I can't sit down with a novel as I could when I was 19. Don’t want to imagine how those who have never known anything but a high-speed-Internet world approach life. Trying my damnedest to ensure my children don’t grow up thinking that “find me on Instagram” is another way to say “goodbye.”
We need more play, but even that requires the ability first to allow ourselves to become profoundly bored in a way that doesn’t seem possible anymore. “Don’t want to open yourself to your thoughts or connect with others in a way that may possibly change you? There’s an app for that.”
I wish I had access to your tanslating skills when I was renting a room in Sacramento, California a few years ago, Mr. Dinh.
I was renting a room in a Vietnamese (she had apparently successfully obtained citizenship to the States or at least Green Card status) lady's house. She told me she bought the house based on the proceeds from a novel she successfully had published. She showed me the book which apparently had not been translated into English. The Cover (paperback) had that archetypal image of the Grim Reaper; the skeletal figure with a black cloak and hood. (Funny how that archetype shows up across cultures?) Perhaps you know it? I would have read it avidly had I known Vietnamese or had it been translated into English. Her name, that is to say my landlady's name, she told me, was Trey (not tray). She was very specific about that.
Anyway she had another young border or renter. A very attractive, sweet, quiet Vietnamese young lady whose first name seemed to be "Ho" but, for obvious reasons she prefered to go by "Holly."
I had mentioned to Trey's nephew, who slept on a couch in the main room, one day how attractive I thought Holly was. And after that, while in the kitchen late one night Holly reciprocated the interest, shall we say.
I don't know if she was perhaps interested in a relationship with an American to try to solidify her stay here and her migration status or if she really liked me. But it was a heady to the point of intoxicating experience when she literally ran into me in the kitchen late at night. All I wanted was a microwaved T.V. dinner, not some hot young Vietnamese chick. (Sorry, I'm not a sexist pig; I just appreciate young women who take care of themselves and look good.)
The problem was the poor girl (half my age) spoke only a few words of English and I spoke no Vietnamese.
I wonder what could have been if we had been able to communicate?
Oh well. I'm an old man now. The least I can do is hope she is happy and perhaps married to another American who can give her citizenship or whatever she was looking for. Beautiful soul that she was and I'm sure still is.
An ugly world can not tarnish a beautiful soul. At least not hers.
(Yes, I had read Goethe's "Faust", part one; and I was not into seducing innocent young women to take advantage of them.)
Given Vietnam's French connection, I wonder if Mme Trey might not have been Mme Tres. As to Holly Ho, I'm no stranger to hauntings by ghosts of regret, and I do mean especially romantic regret. Your situation was impossible. But is writing about it a ritual of banishment or binding?
They're carrying the coffin to the hearse. That procession was led by a Buddha on a pickup truck. Usually, the coffin has to sort of bow three times to the house before leaving.
Vietnamese funerals tend to last for days, to allow time for distant family members to return. Sometimes this causes problems. People drinking at funerals can get so drunk, fights sometimes break out, even to the point of causing more funerals!
That's a rather poor funeral, with not even ten mourners. A better one would have two bands, with one playing traditional Vietnamese music.
Here's a taste of that, with a drunk old man counting from 1 to 100. Though obviously a joke, everyone keeps a straight face. It's an excellent example of Vietnamese playing:
LD, I seem to recall if you went further down Bacu towards Triangle Park there were a few bookstores and cafes where you could see some readers. I tried to score something in English, but they had nothing. I read a lot on my phone actually. People look at me askance when they realize what I am doing.
The books on the impressively named Book Street are mostly garbage, and those tiny stores are struggling mightily. Some decent books are better than nothing, so I hope they're not wiped out entirely.
In Saigon in the 60's and 70's, people could rent books. I did that as a kid.
Reading e-books on a phone or tablet can work okay. I at least like that you can always pick up where you left off without some bookmark falling to the floor and that you can read in any ambient lighting conditions. Still, I find it takes some minutes to get my monkey-brain to settle down and stop trying to leap to some more promising source of my next dopamine hit with the handy "global catastrophe-viewer" app just a tap away.
And these days it's hard not to look suspiciously at written language as something like the root of the problem. "Language is a virus from outer space." W.S. Burroughs said that, though I'm glad it at least enabled his Thanksgiving Prayer:
That lab virus thing is iffy to me. I'm more into that the vaxx was the axe. There's a fascinating side show to the JFK assassination based in N.O. where go-fer LHO, his bio-smart teenage girlfriend Judith Vary Baker and hairless autodidact David Ferry were secretly working to repair damage done by the 2 contaminated polio vaxxes. Dr Mary's Monkey is the book which first triggered my interest in viruses and vaxxes. Mary Sherman and Alton Ochsner were in charge of their secret Tulane U. lab.
I got pegged w/ your moniker because James (my middle name) and Jamie weren't to my Detroit friend's liking. He became Ken Bob to keep the redneck joke running.
I have always been an avid reader, and now that I am retired, I can spend as much time doing it as I like. I not only read at home, I take a book or my e-reader with me whenever I go somewhere that might require me to wait, like the doctor, dentist, barber; or on a train, plane, or bus. In years past, seeing people reading during their "down time" like that was not uncommon. But now it has become so rare that it actually draws comment from people--"Oh, you're READING something?" Even in Taipei, when I look around on the bus or the MRT, almost everyone has their attention on their phone, and from what I've been able to see over peoples' shoulders, it's not to read a book like Jimbob. (I used to read on my phone, but I like physical books much better, and also eventually grew to dislike trying to read anything serious on a little bitty screen.
Interesting observation about the Vietnamese use of the verb "play." My Mandarin Chinese skills are limited, but I have noticed something similar. The verb "play" is not only used when referring to a sport. For example, when referring to making a phone call, they say "play (on) a telephone." Certain cultural aspects of regional languages often find their way into their neighbors, so who knows?
Glad to see I'm not alone in having a hard time adjusting to screen reading. I was attracted to it primarily because it's so much cheaper, but soon realized I couldn't sustain the intangible gaze for a length required to do justice to serious writing.
I have a couple of e-readers and hundreds of eBooks, but I always prefer the hard copy, even if I have to pay more. I don't mind as much if I am reading pure text, but photos and maps are practically illegible in eBooks, and many of the history-type books I read have maps in them that I find useful. I guess I also just like the tactile sensation of a real book, and I think they are also easier on the eyes.
One reason I have lots of eBooks is that it is often possible to get them for free. Many older works are out of copyright, but even newer stuff can be found free on-line if you are willing to search for it. Out of print stuff is frequently kicking around on-line somewhere--that is how I got copies of things like Peter Duesberg's book "Inventing the AIDS Virus" and David Irving's "Hitler's War."
As I recall, the alt position on AIDS was that the Gallo/Montagnier identified virus was a hoax and that the disease was caused by risky lifestyle choices which lowered individual white blood cell counts. A deadly virus, even if intentionally leaked from a lab (by conservative perps) was more acceptable to the ptb than a medical attack on the promiscuous gay lifestyle. Lifestyle falls under the "terrain" category of disease as opposed to air born contagions - germs and viruses.
My memory has been recently refreshed by Celia Farber who did gallant work as a dissident journalist back in the day and brought that history lesson to her substack. If I have misspoken positions or facts, please correct. I'm still learning.
That is pretty much how I understand it, based on the book. In particular, Duesberg mentioned "poppers" as a prime culprit in the "risky lifestyle choice" category. He also pointed out that strangely enough, the symptoms of AIDS are different in different parts of the world. The symptoms that African doctors expect to see in an AIDS patient are completely different from those seen in an American patient. How can that be, if it is the same disease?
Another interesting parallel is the "repurposing" of an existing pharmaceutical to treat the disease. With AIDS, it was AZT, originally developed to treat cancer, but abandoned because it was too lethal. It is often said, and Duesberg agrees, that AZT killed more "AIDS patients" than the "disease" itself. We saw history repeat itself with Covid, where they dusted off Remdesivir, a failed Ebola treatment, to treat Covid. Again, the side effects of Remdesivir in Ebola tests were reportedly as gruesome as Ebola itself, if that is even possible.
Don't want to write off those big investments in a pharmaceutical only to ultimately label it a failure, now would we?
When was the time that reading "serious" literature was common?
When I was a kid my mother was the only adult I knew that read books. She loved mysteries. Everyone else watched TV.
My highschool group found out that I liked to read. They were shocked. One kid was so puzzled that I would voluntarily read that he talked it over with his dad. His dad said any male that read was a homosexual and he banned him from any further association with me.
Now that was in a largely working class community but in university one of my neighbors was a man in his 60s. He was thrilled to come across me because I liked to read. We would exchange novels and chat briefly about them. This was early 1970s and he didn't know anyone else who read.
Since then I have found some men who read scify or self improvement books but only one who read non genre novels.
The only novel during my time as an adult which I knew other men to have read was Bonfire of the Vanities. I was in business school at the time so maybe that had something to do with it.
I have read that The Great Gatsby got a new lease on life when the army included it in the books given to soldiers in WW2. It was reportedly very popular. I doubt it would be these days.
I know other men who are interested in politics. They will willingly watch a 4 hour documentary on YouTube but give them an article that takes 10 minutes to read and they act like you just sent them War and Peace.
Long-time listener, first-time caller from Mississippi. (By the way, your piece on Jackson from years back captured the troubled soul of the Capital City in a way that the magnolias-and-moonshine mushiness that drips from far too much Southern writing cannot.) With stocks tumbling, US presidents disappearing, civil war in the UK looming, and Israel leading the world into more Purim-themed chaos, I thought I should finally pay for a subscription while there is still time.
“The death of reading is also the death of attention. Without that moral prerequisite, there’s no knowledge, respect or love for anything.” This hits hard for those still (begrudgingly) laboring in public higher ed. Administration presents education as a product, so students demand their degree/product, which requires passing--if not superior--grades. However, in students’ way of thinking, making them work for good grades is like making them cook a meal they have purchased in a restaurant. Why read even a seven-page short story when you can skim a few paragraphs from SparkNotes? Why skim when you can have ChatGPT spit it out for you? Heaven forbid an instructor recommend anything because of the beauty or insight expressed in that reading alone. Throw in widespread functional cynicism, and all research as a means of discovering the truth becomes another hoop one has to jump through in the career circus of higher ed.
However, if students (or most people, so as not to pick only on students) can no longer pay sustained attention to anything, what's the use? Using tech has shrunk our attention spans—luckily, I was nearly an adult before I first “signed on,” but after decades of use and abuse, I can't sit down with a novel as I could when I was 19. Don’t want to imagine how those who have never known anything but a high-speed-Internet world approach life. Trying my damnedest to ensure my children don’t grow up thinking that “find me on Instagram” is another way to say “goodbye.”
We need more play, but even that requires the ability first to allow ourselves to become profoundly bored in a way that doesn’t seem possible anymore. “Don’t want to open yourself to your thoughts or connect with others in a way that may possibly change you? There’s an app for that.”
I wish I had access to your tanslating skills when I was renting a room in Sacramento, California a few years ago, Mr. Dinh.
I was renting a room in a Vietnamese (she had apparently successfully obtained citizenship to the States or at least Green Card status) lady's house. She told me she bought the house based on the proceeds from a novel she successfully had published. She showed me the book which apparently had not been translated into English. The Cover (paperback) had that archetypal image of the Grim Reaper; the skeletal figure with a black cloak and hood. (Funny how that archetype shows up across cultures?) Perhaps you know it? I would have read it avidly had I known Vietnamese or had it been translated into English. Her name, that is to say my landlady's name, she told me, was Trey (not tray). She was very specific about that.
Anyway she had another young border or renter. A very attractive, sweet, quiet Vietnamese young lady whose first name seemed to be "Ho" but, for obvious reasons she prefered to go by "Holly."
I had mentioned to Trey's nephew, who slept on a couch in the main room, one day how attractive I thought Holly was. And after that, while in the kitchen late one night Holly reciprocated the interest, shall we say.
I don't know if she was perhaps interested in a relationship with an American to try to solidify her stay here and her migration status or if she really liked me. But it was a heady to the point of intoxicating experience when she literally ran into me in the kitchen late at night. All I wanted was a microwaved T.V. dinner, not some hot young Vietnamese chick. (Sorry, I'm not a sexist pig; I just appreciate young women who take care of themselves and look good.)
The problem was the poor girl (half my age) spoke only a few words of English and I spoke no Vietnamese.
I wonder what could have been if we had been able to communicate?
Oh well. I'm an old man now. The least I can do is hope she is happy and perhaps married to another American who can give her citizenship or whatever she was looking for. Beautiful soul that she was and I'm sure still is.
An ugly world can not tarnish a beautiful soul. At least not hers.
(Yes, I had read Goethe's "Faust", part one; and I was not into seducing innocent young women to take advantage of them.)
Given Vietnam's French connection, I wonder if Mme Trey might not have been Mme Tres. As to Holly Ho, I'm no stranger to hauntings by ghosts of regret, and I do mean especially romantic regret. Your situation was impossible. But is writing about it a ritual of banishment or binding?
Wow! Is that a mobile temple? Quite extraordinary. Blessings to you Linh. I hope you are feeling well.
Hi Peggy,
That's a hearse. People on it are family members dressed in mourning white. Here are two more hearses:
https://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2019/02/hearse-ea-kly.html
https://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.com/2020/02/hearse-dien-bien-phu.html
And here's a video of a funeral:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX2Tm948CyQ&t=5s
They're carrying the coffin to the hearse. That procession was led by a Buddha on a pickup truck. Usually, the coffin has to sort of bow three times to the house before leaving.
Vietnamese funerals tend to last for days, to allow time for distant family members to return. Sometimes this causes problems. People drinking at funerals can get so drunk, fights sometimes break out, even to the point of causing more funerals!
Linh
Very cool. I like the music. Kinda reminds me of a New Orleans funeral!
Hi Peggy,
That's a rather poor funeral, with not even ten mourners. A better one would have two bands, with one playing traditional Vietnamese music.
Here's a taste of that, with a drunk old man counting from 1 to 100. Though obviously a joke, everyone keeps a straight face. It's an excellent example of Vietnamese playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSheltDUhXU
Linh
Very interesting guitar playing. Quite intricate! Thanks!
LD, I seem to recall if you went further down Bacu towards Triangle Park there were a few bookstores and cafes where you could see some readers. I tried to score something in English, but they had nothing. I read a lot on my phone actually. People look at me askance when they realize what I am doing.
Hi Jimbob,
The books on the impressively named Book Street are mostly garbage, and those tiny stores are struggling mightily. Some decent books are better than nothing, so I hope they're not wiped out entirely.
In Saigon in the 60's and 70's, people could rent books. I did that as a kid.
Linh
Reading e-books on a phone or tablet can work okay. I at least like that you can always pick up where you left off without some bookmark falling to the floor and that you can read in any ambient lighting conditions. Still, I find it takes some minutes to get my monkey-brain to settle down and stop trying to leap to some more promising source of my next dopamine hit with the handy "global catastrophe-viewer" app just a tap away.
And these days it's hard not to look suspiciously at written language as something like the root of the problem. "Language is a virus from outer space." W.S. Burroughs said that, though I'm glad it at least enabled his Thanksgiving Prayer:
"To John Dillinger and hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day, November 28 1986"
Thanks for the wild turkey and
The passenger pigeons, destined
To be shat out through wholesome
American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil
And poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a
Modicum of challenge and
Danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to
Kill and skin leaving the
Carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves
And coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
The bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killing lawmen,
Feeling their notches.
For decent church-going women,
With their mean, pinched, bitter,
Evil faces.
Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the
War against drugs.
Thanks for a country where
Nobody's allowed to mind their
own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the
Memories-- all right let's see
Your arms!
You always were a headache and
You always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest
Betrayal of the last and greatest
Of human dreams.
If he had lived long enough, he could have offered thanks for laboratory COVID, too.
That lab virus thing is iffy to me. I'm more into that the vaxx was the axe. There's a fascinating side show to the JFK assassination based in N.O. where go-fer LHO, his bio-smart teenage girlfriend Judith Vary Baker and hairless autodidact David Ferry were secretly working to repair damage done by the 2 contaminated polio vaxxes. Dr Mary's Monkey is the book which first triggered my interest in viruses and vaxxes. Mary Sherman and Alton Ochsner were in charge of their secret Tulane U. lab.
I got pegged w/ your moniker because James (my middle name) and Jamie weren't to my Detroit friend's liking. He became Ken Bob to keep the redneck joke running.