Started: November 27, 2017
I don't think I ever stated this explicitly before, but when I committed to tracking which books I was starting and which books I was finishing, implicit in that was also a commitment to talk about which books I was abandoning.
I seldom make a conscious decision to abandon a book. Rather, I realize that I haven't read a particular book for several months, and then consciously acknowledge that I long ago abandoned it.
So it was for this book. I haven't been studying it for I don't know how many months. And then I realized one day that my copy is no longer even on my bookshelf. (My wife thinks she may have loaned it out to one of her friends, but it's been so long she can't even remember.) And I've decided that rather than going through the trouble of tracking down another copy, I'm just going to admit to myself that I've abandoned this book.
The study plan I had devised around this book was always questionable, It was a terribly inefficient way to learn Vietnamese. But I might have persisted with it regardless. I mean, it was kind of fun, I was learning a few interesting words.
Except, I was spending too much time on quizlet again, and the hand cramps were beginning to come back. So when I decided to ease up, this was the first thing to go.
3 comments:
On one hand this book has a good translation, for a very "American" book.
On the other hand it's the last thing I think anybody should use for anything like... learning the Vietnamese language. Needless to say the translator shall always have to make abnormal choice of the vocabulary they use when they try to translate. The translating policy in general these days is that they shall try to keep intact the spirit of the original work as best as possible, hence localization is something they no longer do, which leads to the weird Vietnamese that can't be helped.
Due to how "American" the writing style is, it's very hard to get through. I almost abandoned the book (which led my sister to say "perhaps you are not intelligent enough to understand the book - well, I ended up being the only one who finished it). But once you got used to the writing style, it's very engrossing.
I like how moral ambivalent it is. Usually you expect some clear good and bad guys. Here you have a black guy who still ended up being judged as guilty, then tried to escape and ended up getting killed. You have a two-faced teacher who has always acted uptight just to be revealed by the near very end that she privately laughed or sneered on the black guy. You have the lawyer dad that doesn't pretend like people are fair or objective, there's a speech on that as to how black people shall always get unfairly discriminated on or something like that. That very dad also insisted on taking responsibility for his own son when the son was suspected to have killed some guy (the son didn't - but that sure is a righteous thing to do).
These are the stuff that East Asians tend to love making like they are exclusive to their own societies.
Much more worth reading than Steinbeck's books, if you want values and meanings out of your reading.
[fixed a grave misphrasing mistake]
>That very dad also insisted on taking responsibility for his own son when the son was suspected to have killed some guy (the son didn't - but that sure is a righteous thing to do).
I asked ChatGPT, the AI chatbot in turn suggests what I want to convey is unusual so there isn't really an English expression for that. Seems like the English is written badly so it could get miscontrued, so let me express this again:
basically in Sinic culture there's a trope of the child may not do anything wrong at all, but the parents insist "Oh my child did that, let me take the blame and put responsibility on him too" and assume guilt just like that. That's what I mean when I wrote the badly phrased English. Kinda like the child isn't supposed to be an individual so the parents get to do whatever on the child's behalf, even determining their future or preferences or whether what the child did was moral or not.
Asians tend to easily assume this is unique to their own culture. Maybe it is indeed more prevalent here than in the West. But judging by the ending of this book, it doesn't seem to be nonexistent in the West.
Also, although this is on another post, but...
>Recently, "To Kill a Mocking Bird" has been undergoing a big surge of popularity in Vietnam. Everyone is reading it.
I think the book was popular (not really since most people may only know the book's name through media at best) more because around that time, American culture was still new and popular in the country. Racism slavery as portrayed through fiction is already a theme that should give good fiction to read - Uncle Tom's Cabin is somewhat liked in Vietnam, not sure how popular (as it's mostly recommended to school students) but is definitely the go-to racism slavery book that is recommended to young children to read. Anyway, I have to say "To kill a Mocking Bird" sadly doesn't make much of an impact. Although that can be said about any book at all in the country, this book did gain traction but I don't think people did read or manage to finish it much. Kinda like Lolita, which was popular and did have some translation controversy in Vietnam (you can guess why, no it's not due to obscenity or related - surprisingly) - and yet almost no Vietnamese managed to make anything out of the book
Like I said, my sister didn't even finish it. It's a kind of book that requires a very niche set of Vietnamese to even get through it. Maybe most people would find the book writes in a way they can't find easy to read through, to put in a way. If they aren't some type of readers who decide to keep persisting until the book gets good, then "To kill a Mocking Bird" is very likely not for them, at least speaking for non-Americans. This book just doesn't have a simple or thrilling narrative like "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
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