Finding a home in fiction
AT JUST 30, Vietnam-born, Melbourne-raised writer Nam Le has been blessed with early success. The Boat, his debut collection of short stories, was published last year to a wave of international critical acclaim. In addition, Le has been awarded several major awards, including the Dylan Thomas Prize - the richest in Britain. Furthermore, he is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review.
Our appointment is at a noisy New York University student cafe in downtown Manhattan. Dressed in a black T-shirt and faded jeans, Nam Le has an easy charm and a broad Australian accent. Tomorrow, he will embark on a short reading tour to promote the US paperback release of The Boat, but this evening, he is spending the night on a friend's couch in a Columbia University dormitory.
Le has led a nomadic existence since he abandoned a career as a corporate lawyer in Melbourne to pursue his writing. The Boat, which was written with the aid of various writing fellowships in the United States, was the culmination of almost four years' work. The book's success came as a total surprise to Le. ''I didn't expect it to be much received at all because it's just a collection of stories,'' he says. ''Even the publishers were dampening any wayward expectations. No one reads short stories.''
One of the most striking aspects of the collection is its eclecticism. The geographical terrain traversed by The Boat - the United States, Colombia, Australia, Japan, Iran, Vietnam and beyond - is just as diverse as the ages, genders and backgrounds of Le's protagonists, each with their corresponding voices.
Curiously though, Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, the first story of the collection, the title of which borrows from a William Faulkner quote and foreshadows themes shared within the entire collection, is narrated by a character named Nam. The following story, Cartagena, is narrated by a teenage hitman in Medellin, Colombia. The contrast jars and challenges the suspension of disbelief crucial to the enjoyment of fiction.
Despite this, Le says his decision to show his hand so early was an easy one. ''If [the question of author identity] is there and if you're thinking about whether it affects the aesthetics or even the ethics of what you're writing, then the only good-faith thing to do is to address it in some way,'' he explains.
Le is, however, quick to point out that Love and Honour and Pity, which chronicles a strained reunion between ''Nam'' and his father at the Iowa Writers Workshop, is not autobiography.
''Even though the character shares my name and my circumstances, it's very much playing with the conventions of what fiction can do and how it differs from autobiography,'' he says.
The author admits that placing himself as a character within the story put him outside his comfort zone, but defends his decision. ''It was exactly what the story demanded,'' he says. ''That's the only principle that you can go by when you're writing. If it feels hard, if it feels wrong, if it feels bad, if you resist it, then the chances are that there's something behind that resistance and it's something worth excavating.''
The story also explores Le's cynical view of ''ethnic literature'' - the ''hot'' genre at the writers workshop. He is ill at ease with his marketability as an author who escaped communist Vietnam by boat at three months of age. ''Much of so-called 'ethnic lit' is purely a commercial innovation to sell authors,'' he states. Although Le arrived in Australia as an infant by plane from Pulau Bidong refugee camp in Malaysia, the story of Nam Le the boat refugee has proven a seductive hook for many journalists and critics. Nevertheless, Le would be the last person to don an ethnic costume for a photo opportunity or dust jacket portrait.
Still, he is intrigued and repelled by the notion of authenticity in literature. He appreciates, however, that readers search for a correlation between an author's life and their work. ''I think we all do it,'' he says. ''No matter how sophisticated you are as a reader, it calibrates your emotional response … It speaks of a desperate longing to believe in something that is clear, unmediated and true because so much of what we see and consume nowadays is the opposite of all those things.''
Perhaps Le's biggest complaint is that such labelling creates an uneven playing field and undermines the role of imagination in writing. ''It does a disservice to everyone because people don't judge it on the same terms that they would ordinarily use to judge literary fiction,'' he says.
Le has always been compelled to write, but says that prior to his short stories, his focus was on poetry. In any case, he never expected that writing would become a financially viable lifestyle. ''I'm happy doing this,'' he says, ''even though there's no security or stability.'' Although he is yet to reach an understanding as to why he writes, his family has accepted his choice.
''I don't know myself why I'm doing it. I don't even try to plumb those murky depths,'' he jokes, ''but my family has been nothing but supportive.'' He admits that as the child of migrants, there was a certain pressure to become a doctor or a lawyer, but he has fared better than others. ''I know folks in my situation - second or 1.5-generation Vietnamese - who have been far more constrained. I've been lucky in that respect,'' he says.
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