By L. C. Tsung
Pageant Press, Inc. New York, 1963, US$3.50
Reviewed by Nancy Chang Ing
"Spring in New York City is like a displaced person; desolate, forlorn, devoid of passion or joy. It arrives wearily in this city of concrete and bricks, finding practically no trees at all. Deeming the place inhospitable and barren, it departs hurriedly on its trek south without so much as a last lingering look ... " So begins the story of The Marginal Man. And very aptly, it establishes the background for what the author has to tell.
L. C. Tsung has observed at close range the many problems and changes that occur in the lives of members of the Chinese community in New York. He has chosen his characters from all aspects of life:
Charles Lin, with whom he begins and ends his story, is a student who is stranded in New York by the fall of the mainland. He is torn between his longing for his family and his unwillingness to return to a Communist dominated land.
Helen Tang, beautiful and socially inclined, is an ex-Communist who finally consents to help the FBI; she is a shrewd business woman whose sophisticated exterior hides the turmoil of her emotions.
In contrast, the author presents Amy Ting, Charles' cousin, the charming wife and mother who has turned to religion as an answer to her many frustrations, but who finally has a rather sordid love affair.
The "other man" is Jimmy Chen, the typical playboy bachelor who is always making a play for pretty women.
Then there is President Han, whose "fine character and good education, together with years of experience as an educator in China, were of little help in his job-hunting expeditions." The author puts his finger on the tragedy of the elder scholar stranded in an alien society: "His advanced age, usually a mark of wisdom and a sign of respect in China, became a liability is a society where only youth and energy counted."
The author also has used President Han to express his idea of The Marginal Man. In one of the President's long harangues on life, he says: "All those who have intimate contacts with two or more different cultures are called pien yuan jen, The Marginal Man ... we are all marginal men. We were born and raised in a society perfectly self-confident and fully self-sufficient, where life was almost predictable. But we are now transplanted into a new culture, vigorous and pragmatic, possessing a set of values and emphases to which we are not accustomed but which we are obliged to accept. We are moving along the margin of each culture, so to speak, with every word we speak and every act we perform ... Hence, we are frequently caught in a dilemma which drives us to exasperation and pain."
Long ago, after reading The Flower Drum Song, I wondered why nothing had been written about the Chinese people who make their homes in America, their emotional struggles, their political commitments, and their social obligations. This is why I was eager to read The Marginal Man and see what L. C. Tsung had to say.
I think Tsung chose his characters well, and in his development of the story, he shows his sympathetic understanding of the many-sided problems involving Chinese living abroad. But I also think he could have gone deeper into the problems facing his characters. He has presented us with a sweeping picture of Chinese community life in New York, studded with portrait-like studies of various types of people. This is all done convincingly, but you are somehow left with a feeling that mere is more to it.
Some descriptive passages about scenery and people are excellent. But in some places, I have a feeling of direct translation from the Chinese. Many standard Chinese cliches are used and they tend to clutter up the author's style.
Tsung also has the unfortunate habit of using too many adjectives. For example: ... there could be no occasion more desolate, barren, oppressive and lonely than to be in a big city on a Sunday afternoon." And " ... all around him there were manifestations of merriment, high spirits and spontaneous gayety..."
Still L. C. Tsung is to be commended for exploring new territory in The Marginal Man. I sincerely hope he will try again.
THE TWO VIETNAMS:
A POLITICAL ANALYSIS
By Bernard B. Fall
Frederick A. Praeger, New York
1963, 493 pp., US$7.95
Reviewed by Charles C. Clayton
One of the potential powder kegs of the Far East and an area in which the Republic of China has a direct interest is Vietnam. It follows that it is important to know as much as possible of the background of the struggle now going on there. This is Mr. Fall's second book on Vietnam. His first, Street Without Joy, has been required reading for diplomats and correspondents in Saigon. Significantly, it was banned by the Ngo Dinh Diem government.
The overthrow of the Diem government does not mean Mr. Fall's new book is out of date. In fact, Mr. Fall anticipates what happened last fall. He predicted the Diem government would collapse of its own weight, and warned that in such an event, "the amount of American leverage that will remain in such a case will be open to question."
The author reviews the history of the Vietnamese nation and traces the events that led to the loss of Indo-China by the French. He analyzes the mistakes that gave North Vietnam to the Communists and tells why the Viet Cong have been able to infiltrate South Vietnam. The picture he paints is not flattering to the United States and he does not spare military and political reputations. One of the obvious miscalculations, he says, was American determination to build a conventional Vietnamese army to fight an unconventional war. This mistake, it must be added, is now being corrected.
The author is a professor of international relations at Howard University and has been a student of Vietnamese affairs for the last ten years. He has visited North Vietnam and toured the Communist zone, and has talked to Ho Chi Minh. He explains what he believes to be the significance of his book in the preface: "An important part of this book—and I hope this will be its particular contribution to the body of knowledge about Vietnam—is devoted to a comparison of the governmental and economic institutions of both zones, not as they have been designed on paper to impress their friends and fool their foes, but as they really operate in everyday practice ... The weaknesses and strengths of each zone of Vietnam deserve our most careful attention at a time when American and other Western troops may be committed in one form or another to holding South Vietnam."
Mr. Fall reports that conditions in North Vietnam, both economic and social, are very bad indeed, with suppression of all liberties, an extensive secret police and a constant campaign to impose on the people the Communist ideology. His report gives us excellent biographies of both Ho Chi Minh and Ngo Dinh Diem. His appraisal is penetrating and disturbing. This is a book which should be widely read for the background it provides on how Communism works in Asia and how it can be defeated.