Author: Linh Dinh

I spent a week in New York with a handful of Japanese writers and editors. They were in the States to promote Monkey Business, a Tokyo-based literary journal. That Friday, we had a reading in Brooklyn, so I decided to spend the entire day there. I first heard of Brooklyn through Welcome Back, Kotter. It was 1975 and I was learning American culture mostly through a black and white television. I became very fond of Shirley Temple, Jimmy Snuka, Donny and Marie Osmond, Bugs Bunny and The Beaver. Since this was Tacoma, Washington, I also started to worship Slick Watts. … Continue reading →

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Though no millennial metrosexual, I sleep next to my laptop, and this morning, an email came from a Japanese literary journal, Monkey, to ask me to name a short story I wish I had written. Editor Motoyuki Shibata also requested a one-hundred-word explanation, which I promptly knocked out while sipping Earl Grey at my kitchen table. Done, I had a breakfast of spaghetti with tomato sauce, SPAM, salami and chunks of cheddar cheese. You had to see it. Though I immediately thought of Borges, Kafka, and even Walser, I decided on Hemingway’s “The Sea Change,” a rather obscure yet groundbreaking … Continue reading →

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When I lived closer to Center City, I’d take out-of-town friends to McGlinchey’s or Dirty Frank’s, but since moving to South Philly more than a decade ago, I’d drag people to the Friendly Lounge because it really is friendly. In Philly, black bars tend to be called “lounge,” but Friendly is the haunt of middle-aged white guys, mostly, though there’re Chinese George and myself, and Vern, a black Vietnam vet, as well as a few others of various shades. A Dominican lady, Maria, advised me to abstain from eggs, cantaloupe and papaya after sundown. An admirer of Rafael Trujillo, she … Continue reading →

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Unlike all of my articles of the past several years, this one will have no photographs. I apologize. Since arriving in Germany in late September, I’ve visited nine other countries and have written about and photographed Germany, Singapore, England, Poland, Hungary, Turkey and Ukraine. Though I’ve been to the Czech Republic three times, I couldn’t quite come up with the right angle to discuss it, so with just over a week left before returning to Philly, I thought about going down to Usti nad Labem or Most, two towns in Northern Bohemia, to examine its Gypsy situation. In 1999, Usti … Continue reading →

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I was surprised by how grimy and sooty Budapest was. So many of its buildings, once gorgeous, were in an advanced state of decay. This city looked better before World War II, for sure, and certainly a century ago. Since escaping Communism, Budapest is regaining its glories, though not at the same pace as Prague. There’s a peculiar local fad called ruin pubs, where hip types can drink and dance in these half-wrecked buildings. Too creaky to boogie, I only glimpsed them from the outside, but they didn’t look half bad. In the subway concourses, there were many homeless, and … Continue reading →

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In 1985, Czeslaw Milosz said in an interview, “The importance of the movement in Poland, of Solidarity, is that it is not just a Polish phenomenon. It exemplifies a basic issue of the twentieth century. Namely, resistance to the withering away of society and its domination by the state. In the Poland of Solidarity, owing to some historical forces, there was a kind of resurgence, or renaissance, of the society against the state. Quite contrary to the predictions of Marx, this is the basic issue of the twentieth century. Instead of the withering away of the state, the state, like … Continue reading →

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Nowadays, the United States exports almost nothing but weapons, noises, images and attitudes, and among the last, the black ghetto, keeping it real, thug, gangsta life is being gobbled up eagerly by millions all over, from Jakarta to Istanbul, to Berlin. White, yellow or brown, many pose enthusiastically as dwellers of the American black ghetto. Their fantasy makeover is derived entirely from music videos and Hollywood films. In East Germany, the catalyst was Beat Street, one of the first hip-hop movies. Released in 1984, it was shown in East Germany merely a year later. Communist censors deemed it an indictment … Continue reading →

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Though we head into 2016 without a direct war between the US and Russia, such a conflict still hovers over mankind. It’s hard to imagine Uncle Sam relinquishing his supremacy without a crazed fight. By abetting Turkey in shooting down that Russian plane, the US achieved one important objective, at least, and that’s scuttling the Russia, Turkey natural gas pipeline, the Blue Stream. Through its EU vassals, the US is now trying to block the expansion of Nord Stream, a pipeline that goes directly from Russia to Germany. The American-directed regime change in the Ukraine was also an attempt to … Continue reading →

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There are about 140,000 Vietnamese in Germany. In Berlin, there’s a large shopping center, Dong Xuan, and a Halong Hotel. In Munich, there’s a hip restaurant, Jack Glockenbach, in a gay neighborhood. In Hanover, there’s a temple with a pagoda and ornate gate. In Dresden, there’s a Buddhist cemetery that refrains from displaying the swastika. In Leipzig, where I’m living, just about every East Asian restaurant is run by Vietnamese, although it may be named Peking Palast, Hong Kong, Shanghai or China White. Vietnamese aren’t just in cities. Last week, I took a train to Wurzen, population 16,327. Near Jacobsplatz, … Continue reading →

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Born in Kansas City and raised in Midland, Michigan, Dan has also lived in Myrtle Beach, Vail, Martha’s Vineyard, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Taos, Durham, New York, Albuquerque and Denver in the US. He taught English in Seoul for three years, moved furniture in Barcelona for two and, for five years now, has been miserably ensconced in Brighton, England. Dan, “People here can be very nasty, and in general are very unfriendly compared to the US. This is the only country on earth that hates children, and this shows in the behavior of an often mean-spirited populace. It hasn’t been the most … Continue reading →

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October 3rd was the Anniversary of the Reunification of Germany. Having arrived in Leipzig just days earlier, I decided to take a long walk with my friend Olliver Wichmann. Though we covered nearly 20 miles that day, we saw no national flag on display, only an East German one in Grünau, a neighborhood of huge, Communist-eraapartment blocks. “This is remarkable, Olliver. In the US, you can’t walk a mile on any day without seeing flags.” “Generally, the only Germans who display flags are far-right ones. During big soccer matches involving the national team, it’s also OK to display flags.” Nationalism … Continue reading →

The post Germany Is Occupied by America appeared first on LewRockwell.

Recently, I flew to Singapore to participate in its Writers’ Festival. The Lufhansa captain bade us goodbye, “We wish you a successful stay in Singapore.” Heading downtown, I became reacquainted with the lush rain trees amply shading the highway for many miles. “Lee Kuan Yew picked these himself,” the cheerful cabbie explained. “They aren’t native. I think they’re from Africa.” “So much landscaping!” I marvelled. “It must be so expensive to maintain.” Plucking an unsightly pebble from the sea, Lee Kuan Yew blew his fragrant breath on it second by second, day by day and, wa lau!, it became not … Continue reading →

The post Do You Want To Live in Singapore? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ignorance is renewed with each newborn, and by the time any man figures out anything, he can almost feel the mortician leaning over his stiff face. Though all lessons are embalmed within history, few care to explore that infinite corpse. Lewis Mumford, “So far from being overwhelmed by the accumulations of history, the fact is that mankind has never consciously carried enough of its past along with it. Hence a tendency to stereotype a few sorry moments of the past, instead of perpetually re-thinking it, re-valuating it, re-living it in the mind.” Far from learning from history, people tend to … Continue reading →

Since September 11, 2001, Bin Laden had been mostly an absence. His few video or audio tapes were highly suspect, and speculations about his death had often surfaced. On July 11, 2002, Amir Taheri wrote in the New York Times, “Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan [“] With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still … Continue reading →

For nearly four years, I lived just 20 miles from Washington, in Annandale, VA, and I worked in D.C. for 9 months. From my home in Philadelphia, I’ve also gone down to Washington at least a hundred times, so this metropolis should not be alien to me, and yet no American city is more off putting, more unwelcome, more impenetrable, and this, in spite of its obvious physical attractiveness, and here, I’m talking mostly about its Northwest quadrant, the only part visitors are familiar with, and where commuters from Virginia and Maryland arrive daily to work. Even though it’s the … Continue reading →