The Chief Glory of Every People Arises from Its Authors

[William Buckley interviewing Borges on 2/1/77]

In Bà Triệu alley is an excellent bánh cuốn joint. Two weeks ago, I asked the lady if she had read Vũ Bằng’s ecstatic essay on bánh cuốn. She hadn’t, and likely won’t, despite my gushing recommendation. Each day, customers show up before she’s ready to serve at 6AM. This morning, I was her first, so had to wait at a table for ten minutes.

On her wall is a framed list of Catholic sins and virtues, with their consequences. “I overflow with each of these sins,” I said. She did laugh.

Eating, I heard some sap sing two songs about his mom. “I’m no longer in the warmth of that cradle,” he moaned. Respecting the lady’s taste, I refrained from cracking a joke.

Just before I left, a beefy young man showed up. Eating French fries, fried chicken, pizzas and, basically, just more protein, the kids are getting bigger. More calcium results in sturdier bones and straighter teeth. He had just gone to Phan Thiết to see Miss Grand Vietnam 2024. There are roughly 25 Vietnamese pageants yearly. Like everyone else, Viets are increasingly mesmerized by spectacles. They want lights, colors and sexiness. Since reading requires a more contemplative, even prayerful, mindset, it’s dying. Just give us porn, soft or hard.

It took decades to sink this low, but don’t worry, there are many more subbasements! Your mental derangement and linguistic collapse will get even funnier! If you think your interior monologue already sounds like the worst rap in some alien language, just be patient! An X-ray of your skull will resemble chunky vomit on a dive bar’s bathroom floor.

It’s astounding that, within living memory, Arthur Miller was married to Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote cavorted with Lee Raziwill and William Buckley interviewed Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg and, most remarkably, Borges. Dick Cavett picked the brains of Tennessee Williams, Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. In 1990, Nobelist Mario Vargas Llosa only failed to become President of Peru in a runoff election. Poet Léopold Senghor was President of Senegal for 20 years. Writers and thinkers haven’t always been so invisible.

Spanning 724 episodes from 1975 to 1990, Apostrophes in France featured Nabokov, Mailer, Solzhenitsyn, Yourcenar, Sontag, Kundera, Simenon, Styron, le Carré, Wolfe, Eco, Duras and Bukowski, etc. Until a decade ago, Houellebecq was often on French TV.

Yawn! Who has time to read even a single page of those bores?

As the entire world watched, France gave us a splendid hellscape to make Daumier or even Lautréamont retch. As for the beauty and subtlety of its tongue, we can lap up, doglike, Aya Nakamura’s genius:

J’suis pas ta catin, Djadja.
Genre, en catchana, baby, tu dead ça.
Tu penses à moi, j’pense à faire de l’argent.
J’suis pas ta daronne, j’te ferais pas la morale.

Feebly, I translate:

I ain’t your whore, Djadja.
Like, doggy style, baby, you dead like that.
You think of me, I think of making money. 
I ain’t your mama. I ain’t gonna lecture you.

You must understand she’s as gifted as Megan Thee Stallion or GloRilla. As for her last name, Japan should definitely sue. With this catin twerking away, no one will remember that Celtic great, Shunsuke! His free kicks can’t compete with Aya’s quaking buns. They’re still talking about them in Montreal.

In the age of selfies, nearly everyone is a poseur. Collecting “likes,” each talentless person imagines himself nearly famous. The phrase “famous for being famous” was coined by a Philadelphian, Charles Godfrey Leland, in 1896, in his story about a Florence gold digger. She whored herself to bask in wealth’s glamor. Not so fortunate, we just love to see it on TV.

It was in Philly in 1965 that Andy Warhol embodied this concept. There was such a mob at his Institute of Contemporary Art opening, all paintings were removed. With nothing to look at, the lusty crowd surged towards the artist. Warhol and Edie Sedgwick could only escape through a hole cut in the ceiling. “We weren’t just at the art exhibit—we were the art exhibit, we were the art incarnate.”

Of course, Warhol’s most famous saying is, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” To accelerate this process, he founded Interview Magazine in 1969. To look glamorous and cool has become a widespread goal. Why earn your fame when you can just look famous?

Warhol’s 1985 photo of Tama Janowitz embodies this. Though beyond mediocre as a writer, she looks here, as elsewhere, cool as shit. Also, her last name hasn’t hurt her career. I must change my name to Noam Solomon Luegner.

With image so important, the nerdy David Foster Wallace was transformed in photographs into a grungy hipster. William T. Vollmann is so hopelessly ugly, he’s decided to become grotesque, yet still au courant, as the nightmarish Dolores. Imagine “her” moving into your neighborhood. What they write hardly matters. You don’t have to read Infinite Jest or even know it’s from Shakespeare. Just leave that 1,079-page brick next to the shitter to impress your dinner guests.

In London in 1906, Everyman’s Library was founded so even the working poor could have access to the best literature. In the trenches of WWI and WWII, soldiers read classics.

With parents indifferent to literature, my mind was stunted until I reached college. There, I quickly discovered, mostly on my own, Appolinaire, Cendrars, Michaux, Gide, Jarry, Erasmus, Moore, Machiavelli, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Kundera, Borges, Cortázar, Milosz and Gombrowicz, etc. I had no television and decided, despite my love for jazz, to stop buying music. The internet hadn’t been invented.

It’s almost time for Cóc Cóc to close for siesta, so I will stop here. The article’s title is from some guy named Samuel Johnson. Now, I’m going to get me another coconut. I deserve it!

[Truman Capote with Lee Raziwill in 1966]

[Tama Janowitz, as photographed by Andy Warhol in 1985]

[David Foster Wallace, as photographed by Marion Ettlinger in 2001]

[William T. Vollmann, as seen in his Book of Dolores, 2013]

[Nguyễn Huy Thiệp (1950-2021), as memorialized on VTC 16 just after his death]