Journal Articles

The curious memoirs of the Vietnamese composer Phạm Duy

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This article reviews the memoirs of Phạm Duy, a famous Vietnamese composer, who in the late 1930s and 1940s composed some of the first modern Vietnamese songs. His memoirs describe his time with the anti-French Resistance, his break with it in 1950, and his years in Saigon and the United States. My review focuses on curious aspects of these memoirs: Phạm Duy's careful listing of his many love affairs; his insistence that he needed lovers to compose songs; and his failure to acknowledge that he profited from a culture that glorifies the self-sacrifice of women. After considering whether Phạm Duy's behaviour as depicted in his memoirs conforms to cultural norms for Vietnamese male artists, I argue that it is best seen as, in Judith Butler's expression, a ‘hyperbolic exhibition’ of the natural. I conclude by speculating about how Phạm Duy and his memoirs may be viewed in future years.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Call Number

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Publisher

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press., 2012

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

00224634

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Vol. 43, No. 1, February 2012,pp. 77-110

Subject(s)

The curious memoirs of the Vietnamese
Memoirs of Pham Duy

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