TUYỂN TẬP MỘT ĐỜI

About the Book

About the Book: The third millennium of the Christian era came with wars, one against infidels and another on terrorism, which were more than enough for a miserable Vietnamese, Ngô Tôn-Long—former lecturer on pedagogy and philosophy at Dalat University, 1968–1975, born in the beginning of the Second World War, grown up during the French revived colonial war, and terminated at the end of the American anticommunist war. Born again “neither by might nor by power” and having lived his faith for thirty years now, he was moved to study scriptures ancient and not so ancient and has been enabled to have his studies printed (on demand)—a dozen or so of the titles are dedicated to the uprooted, displaced, and dispersed people like him as well as peoples like his—yet not so appropriately published that most of his old acquaintances scattered to North America actually know only of his death forty years ago. Being no native speaker of English, he had never thought of writing anything whatsoever in this language till the day he was planted in the capital Adelaide of South Australia. Neither religions nor theology had been of his studies; instead, it was mathematics and physics, pedagogy and philosophy. Better read no books than believe only one, he used to seriously study every of all the books that happened to fall into his hands or to run on to himself—the written whatsoever and the living whomsoever. Years ago, he was kept on an island of refuge in a time just enough for him to study the accusation bold and public “Christians and Jews are infidels; People of the Book, they have distorted their Scripture!” Twenty years of self-incarceration inside Adelaide assured him of his in-depth studies on the books of each people—the Holy 22 or 24 (scriptures) and the Holy 46 or 39 (of a dozen bibles) plus dozens of not-so-holy books. Then he was brought on the eagles’ wings—from a southeastern island of the old world—across the ocean Pacific and crossing both the International Time Line and the Equator at about a same night time (so that he could see nothing down there, Pacific or not) to some northwestern lands of the new world (of names like Angels and Real-Mount). There, in the spirit of Yeh-Vah, he was set down amidst very many bones that were indeed very dry, as they themselves acknowledged it, saying, “Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we are cut off.” They were actually eating and drinking and enjoying their death on the day of their independence from Yeh-Vah while he was standing on level 102 of the Empire State Building with a “Holy Scripture . . . comparable to the Bible . . . the Most Correct . . . containing the Fullness of the Everlasting Gospel.”

About the Author

NGÔ TÔN-LONG (1940–1975) Graduated from the National Institute of Pedagogy, Saigon, 1956–1959, and the Faculty of Pedagogy, Dalat, 1960–1963. Teacher of mathematics and philosophy at high schools, Dalat, 1959–1963; Tuy Hòa, 1963–1965, and Pleiku, 1965–1967. Managing librarian of the Trần Hưng Đạo HS Library, Dalat, 1968–1975. Lecturer on philosophy and pedagogy at Dalat University, 1968–1975. ________________________________________ DAVID KOLZION (1986–) Escapee from Dalat (1980) and out of Vietnam (1990). Refugee in Galang, Indonesia, 1990–1993. Sojourner in Adelaide, Australia, 1993–.