The search for Brian McNally ends: Your MEN in Saigon IV

With the headline "Where in the world is Brian McNally" Abbe Diaz begins a forum post on her website www.PXThis.com that reveals the enigmatic Mr. McNally had moved to Saigon. McNally a former New York restauranteur became the subject of a worldwide search that ended in none other than Saigon when a piece he had written about his travails popped up in Vanity fair in the spring of last year. And the wheels were set in motion that would bring me and a man I had never met before on a collision course amidst the motorbikes, rain, cigarettes, cocktails and ladies of Saigon -- Almost immediately after the piece appeared in Vanity Fair under the post script "Our man in Saigon", I received a letter from Rhona, a reader in New York whom I had previously not known as well stating roughly, "Wait a minute, you're our man in Saigon!". Rhona sent me a copy of the story and a friendship was born out of the unlikely crossing of my blog and the mystery writer/restauranteur.

McNally's first story shows a writing flair unusual to those not working in the business of writing and illustrates quite literally that you can get anything published if you happen to be friends with the editor of a well respected magazine. It gets a good review from me. His second story, published in November of 08, unfolds to show that just as anything can get published that anything can also get edited and the VF staff seems to have had a heyday with this one. Add to that, that now with the masthead of a legendary periodical under his belt, McNally launches into forays on politics corruption and prostitution, or seemingly lack thereof and stumbles pretty badly. I take the time to dissect it rather seriously and wait for the next story, hoping that he comes to his senses. It seems, at least according to my recent conversation with him, that he has - but more on that later.

My day, last Saturday, was pretty damn long. I had awaken early to get it started with the Saigon Digital Marketing Conference (SDM: more on that later as well) but through possibly seven or eight presentations, lunch, too many coffees, a few more presentations and then cocktails, and of course passing out plenty of my now ubiquitous Post-It Note business cards, I was just getting warmed up. Encouraged by the certified Bar Mitzvah band that had been assigned to work the conference (nobody ever accused digital people of having squat for musical taste) I exited the New World Hotel back into the world of Saigon that would barely get one star rating in the world of five star experiences.

Off to a bar known only by a number that I could not remember and the cross- street intersection behind the Sunwah building that I could remember, to a location that has proven to be discoverable by even the most inebriated of conventioneers and local expats alike, I am directed there by a new acquaintance who works for one of the more well known consumer research firms in town.

Arriving at questionmark numbered bar, I enter to find what is a more than common and successful formula for bars catering to the expat working populace in Saigon - an easily predictable combination of attractive young English speaking female staff and graying old men with credit cards. I fit in perfectly, save for the credit card, and find my new found buddy happily ensconced in the attractions of a dedicated employee. We chat for a bit, hash over some shop talk about the conference and he offers me a whiskey and ginger ale. It tastes yummy. But cigarette supplies have diminished and the barmaid tells me that menthols are not on the in-bar menu so I must go out to one of the small street stands and pay an overly inflated price for the same old smokes - so be it.

Walking out onto the street I am confronted by the remnants of a late day shower that has left the street wet but thankfully not flooded as so often is the case in Saigon. A man stands back to me staring into the drizzle but I busy myself across the little road to the ironing board style cigarette stand (you can fold them up and take them anywhere) next to the coffee cafe where Vietnamese yuppies congregate at little love seats to drink Starbuck's priced beverages and decide if they want to get married or not. I procure a normally priced at 15,000 dong pack of Marlboro menthols for twenty thousand after negotiating down from twenty five and dash back across the way to the awning over the front of my numbered bar of choice. As I look up I see a man looking excactly like the man in the photo above and say, "Hi, are you Brian?", recognizing him immediately. I'm quite sure his expression and maybe even his shirt were just like what you see above.

He responds that yes, he is Brian and I tell him that I recognize him from the Vanity Fair stories of the past year. I introduce myself as David, tell him about my blog and give him one of my rubber stamp Post-It Note business cards. From then on, it's just another two old blokes outside of what could be one of a hundred other bars in the city. We talk of past lives and present pursuits. I ask him if he knows Abbe Diaz, mentioned at the beginning of this story, and he chimes back "I fired Abbe!" from one of his more than many noted restaurants in NYC. I didn't ask why - that being a business that doesn't exactly reward employee loyalty. He tells me that he's found an export business in the way of neon and Bakelite signs that it's entirely possible for one to make $150,000 a year just by doing that - and as anyone who might understand the financial differences between Saigon and New York can tell you, would be like making a half a million or better in the Big Apple. I talk of my advertising past and he encourages me to think beyond that and into more export oriented businesses. Indeed there are things you can get done cheaply in Vietnam that are just plainly cost-prohibitive in more advanced economys and I think about that for a few seconds - and then move along. Those businesses just don't interest me much.

I prod the conversation along into the two articles that he had done so far for Vanity Fair, fully aware that although I was a fan of the first had pretty much taken the second apart for being factually and culturally inaccurate - but also knowing that I had chosen to take the VF editorial staff to task for that and not McNally himself. "Nah, I'm not a writer", he plainly states, in response to my question about whether he would be doing any more stories. I tell him I like his writing, which is true, and encourage him to keep on (not exactly anyone can get a first story in Vanity Fair). He then tells me that VF had sent him a contract and was interested in pursuing the series but that he's busy doing other things. A golf course was mentioned. Illuminating the pay structure for VF stories though, what I can say, without giving up too much information that was given to me in confidence, is that any writer in Vietnam certainly wouldn't turn it down. Without other income it would be insufficient in New York, but here a person could live on it, and not too shabbily at that.

We talk further about living accomodations and he riles a bit about rents going up - a landlord wanting $5000 a month and how that's getting on New York prices. Shit, for that around here the landlord is either a friend of Graydon Carter's or has at least seen a copy of Vanity Fair magazine with Brian's story in it. "Fuck", I exclaim. We talk about Ahn Phu and Phu My Hyun, two of the newer, pricier neighborhoods in town, and those are summarily rejected by him as not having the charm and grit that makes this place endearing - but the Stepford wives could live there. I direct him towards District 3 with the idea that a thousand bucks or two will have you living like a Buddha.

By this point I'm reasonably drunk but still have at least two more stops to go on the evening's tour. I say nice to meet him and we shake hands as I head back inside the bar. He seems more than content just out of the drizzle and gazing at the street - and I forget to put in a plug that I might be more than happy to take up the writing job that he has plainly claimed he doesn't want anymore.

All in all, nothing more and nothing less than I might have expected from all I've learned about the man in the last year (I didn't ask about Madonna or all the other famous people who used to hang out in his places. I've met my share as well). Nice, unassuming, chilled and more than comfortable in this element. As "Dick Johnson" says to Mr. McNally on Abbe's blog: "I wish you all the best and admire that despite your 'crazy' reputation within the industry, you are apparently, a pretty good sport. aww. you really are just a big fucking softie inside". And about a man who's obviously kicked up his share of shit through Schrager hotels and the like in NYC, that's quite the fucking compliment. I agree. I hope to see him around and talk more.

For the entire "You man in Saigon Experience" check below:

IV: The search for Brian McNally ends
III: The second Vanity Fair Story
II: The first Vanity Fair story
I: Your Man In Saigon"

Your Man In Saigon III

Way back in March of 08 I was surprised to find a mail in my box from a reader in New York who claimed that Vanity Fair magazine had tread on to The Wild Wild East's turf with their own "Our Man in Saigon" feature. The reader went on to explain that "to your readers, your are our man in Saigon" and wondered what I had thought of the story.

At that point this blog was but a month old and I wondered how I could even have had any readers at such an embrionic stage, but at least one reader there was, and from New York none the less, so I was happy to find any audience at all. A few weeks later I recieved a hard copy of the feature from New York and was able to reference it on the Internet as well. It was interesting, to read a newcomer's view of this city, as I had been here a little over two years at that point, and interesting to read it in a Vanity Fair context. Readers of this blog will certainly not confuse any writing here with the Pulitzer prize winning product of many of the Vanity Fair writers but it was more than curious to read Brian McNally thrust into that context. My comments and introduction to the first story are here.

For those not familiar with all this background suffice to say that Brian McNally is an old friend of Vanity Fair's editor, Graydon Carter, and a former restauranteur of quite some repute in New York. It's not difficult to understand Mr. Carter's fascination with his friend's decamp to Saigon in episode number one, but the second installment, published in November, brings a lot of questions to mind, not in the least Vanity Fair's editorial reasoning and various journalistic responsibilities. I had to ask myself just exactly why they were continuing with what one reviewer termed as Mr. McNally's "walking breakdown" I encourage you to read the entire piece here, but will also run through it briefly with Vanity Fair excerpts in colour, which you can click on to see the original, and my comments attached as follows:

"In Vietnam, if the weather doesn’t claim you—whether by scorching heat, the hair-trigger deluges, or a ravaging cyclone—then the swarming traffic or counterfeit medicine will."

A curious introduction at best, as neither the heat was scorching this last year nor did we experience anything so severe as a cyclone, certainly not as far inland as Saigon is situated - the work of the editorial staff at VF is more than plainly evident in McNally's second Web Exclusive "Letter From Saigon". Gone are the patchy transitions and somewhat coloquialy quaint constructions from his first public entry replaced by strands of pristinely elegant prose that might send the most avid reader, or certainly a second year political science student, to his Wiki or Dictionary.com search in hopes of figuring out something like the following:

"No doubt, in the lurid imaginations of Wolfowitz, Perle, and Co., the place is teeming with subversive samizdat cafés, where students and intellectuals, thirsting for democracy, surreptitiously pass mimeographed essays on Thomas Paine from table to table. Apart from the fact that anyone interested in reading essays on Thomas Paine should head straight to the English-language section of any one of a number of bookstores here..."

Aside from being just needlessly erudite, this passage, and a whole political bit around it starts out by violating expat rule number one - "Unless your're a professional journalist or diplomat, stay out of politics in your host country." - and ends by just not being factually responsible in that none of McNally's political wonderings are substantiated for the reader, or other writers, in a way that could illuminate or encourage any positive change - never mind that it's plainly obvious that he's never entered one of the bookstores he references looking for Thomas Paine - of which you will find, of course, absolutely none.

"It’s far more dangerous to expose corruption in Vietnam than to practice it, as the recent widely reported trial of two journalists and two whistle-blowers demonstrated. (Two were sentenced to jail terms for breaking certain vague and paranoid laws such as abusing democratic freedoms and infringing on the interests of the state.)"

I'd be much happier to read McNally's take on restaurants and culture than I would traipse through his political or social ramblings, since in most cases he's way out of his element or just flat wrong, or blind:

"Strip clubs are nonexistent and most bars close at midnight. Scantily clad go-go girls dancing on a stage would be enough to lose a bar its liquor license. Apart from a few streets outside the tourist and ex-pat neighborhoods, street prostitution is represented almost in its entirety by the same two lady-boys who cruise Le Loi Street every night on a moped. There are no brothels that I have ever heard of and, more important, there is no organized crime, and there are no pimps involved in prostitution."

To say there's no organized crime or managed prostitution in a city growing as fast and furiously as Saigon, after having claimed that corruption is rampant in the earlier parts of his story, just doesn't make any fucking sense. And it's not true. I'm quite sure the Vanity Fair code of ethics forbids me to say the word "fucking" but it should also prevent Brian McNally from writing, and Graydon Carter from approving any purported facts about things they don't know fuck all about - since former New York celebrity restauranteurs and Spy magazine writers should not be the first people anyone would pick to route out the underworld in an unknown land.

The absense of any real humanity or real relationships for that matter is what finally permeates this second installment from VF's man-supposedly-in-Saigon. And the question of what he is actually doing here remains yet unanswered.

"There the fashion doyenne who manages to be both genuinely eccentric and genuinely dull, there the Hollywood producer who has written more books than he has read, there the phony English journalist who has been trading for 30 years on an accent that was drowned long ago in the Thames Estuary and, hijacked by happy hour, has rarely seen a sober dusk."

This snippet of carboard cut-out character sketches from New York is about as close as McNally ever gets to relating to people and it's never in a particularly personal nor complimentary fashion, whether in Saigon or New York. It is however evident that he's outgrown New York, at least in his last incarnation, and seems to be spending most of his time contemplating whether there will be anything next, aside from being a VF contributer, or not.

What I get out of the whole exercise at this point, is that a man in a more than influential publishing position has taken a shine to the seemingly curious travails of an old friend from another life and has given him a platform in which to excorcize whatever late-mid-life demons he may have left and that a tourist - an ex-NYC restauranteur as he might have been - is writing his still naive impressions of a place he had only fantasized about through the decor, staff and dishes of a restaurant he once held sway over.

For my readers, after nearly a year on this blog and three posts a week, I will carry on as their Man In Saigon as a worker, resident, writer and provocateur of a city of which I still believe holds the promise that New York may have had for Mr. McNally in his beginning years there.

For the entire "You man in Saigon Experience" check below:

IV: The search for Brian McNally ends
III: The second Vanity Fair Story
II: The first Vanity Fair story
I: Your Man In Saigon"

Your Man In Saigon II

You've got to have a lot of respect for Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair Magazine to begin with. After all, he was one of the cofounders of Spy Magazine in 86 and one of our heroes as fans of Art Buchwald, H. L. Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson and MAD Magazine from the 60s through today – and if you didn't get Spy, not in the subscription sense but the intellectual one, it's a good bet that you just didn't get it totally, and probably still don't.

........................Carter's notes to the April issue include the following:

"With the fragile economy of the U.S. in a state of collapse, oil hitting $100 a barrel (it was $25 in early 2001), our judicial system in crisis, our environment in the hands of polluters, our military stressed beyond stress, our image in tatters abroad, and our influence on the wane, George W. Bush, the man responsible for so much of this misfortune, took a page from Brian McNally’s book and hit the road, searching the planet for Third Worlders who do not read the newspapers."

– Bush was here in Vietnam just over a year ago in late 2006.

As Editor of Vanity Fair since 1992, Carter has blazed more than a few trails and continues to do so this month featuring a solid piece of investigative work in writer David Rose’s exposé on our State Department's recent bungle in Palestine. Imagine Charlie Wilson's War but without the hot tub, champagne, coke, awesome babes, Hollywood A-listers or winning conclusion.

I hear a lot of rumbles both inside and outside the US that our mainstream media are not doing the job of free speech our constitution tells us they should be doing, and so in that case, it seems painfully clear what needs to be done – stop looking toward the the mainstream for guidance. None of the writers or publications listed above were ever particularly mainstream but they each etched out a market based on the idea that we could believe them, even if we didn't agree with them. And God knows, we all wanted to believe Hunter S. and flat out knew little of it was true – but the ideas were just so totally from the heart – and what warmed us to him.

........................And Thomas Jefferson said:



"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."


I suspect Mr. Carter would agree as much with this at least as much as he seems to agree with Mr. Jefferson's choice in hairstyles.

My reintroduction to Graydon Carter in a place as far away as Vietnam started out innocently enough. I posted a blog with the first few chapters of Wild Wild East to get feedback from readers and help promote the book to agents and publishers. Then my friend Hugh MacLeod got ahold of it and posted a link on his Gapingvoid blog using an excerpt with the title "Microsoft and Leo Burnett". Then some shit hit the fan. Or a whole bunch of itty-bitty shits. Inside of a day my click-o-meter flies off the charts like I'm a coin-searching beachcomber at Chernobyl – and the ball begins to roll. The snowball, that is. I quickly decide that a 75 page single post is not what most blog readers are interested in and hastily put up the WWE "Dailies" page – with just three quickie posts. It gets more hits than the original page and a nice batch of subscribers and regular readers. Old friends find me. Old enemies find me but most happily, new friends find me. Enter: Fan mail.

Two weeks ago I received an email from a woman in New York named Rhona that went like this:

"Fell on your WWE page by accident very recently and of course, got hooked. Then, in the same week, up pops the Brian McNally piece in Vanity Fair. Much more predictable than yours, but still fun. And Graydon Carter says 'I am hoping this is the first of man such reports from Our Man in Saigon.'

But to your readers, David, you are Our Man in Saigon! So of course I wondered if you had read it and what you thought of it."

At the time VF had not posted the Brian McNally story on their site so I asked Rhona to send it to me. It arrived yesterday. Thanks Rhona. One day I'm writing into space and the next I understand both the concept that I have regular readers and the idea that at least one of them has seen that I was on the beat well before a rather respected magazine. Oh sure, I did it without fact checkers, a legal staff, typesetters, designers, photographers and god-forbid, an editor – the number of journalistic ethics violated could easily beat the number of American missteps in recent world affairs – but then again, I'm working on the spirit of the law and not the letter. If I were getting paid for this, I'd be a lot less fun to read.

McNally's story is well done and interesting from the standpoint of one who seems relatively new to life in Asia. Many parts of his travails remind me of my first days in Korea.

From Wild Wild East:

"Driving down the small city block is how one’s selection is made. No one walks. This was a drive through sex mart with all its wares on display behind plate glass windows, presented on tall stools, and decorated with all the charm of a vintage video game. We circled the block twice assessing the shops that were non-foreigner friendly and marveling at the seemingly endless selection of attractive ladies. For a man with his wife napping back at a five-star hotel, this might seem to have been kid-in-a-candy-shop stuff but I don’t recall feeling that way at all. More like fish-in-a barrel stuff – much too easy. To me the surreality of it all was the reality of it all – the kind of thing that throws one’s moral compass into a tailspin. Drive-by fucking – marshaled by police and brightly lit for all to see, yet still technically illegal. This was the Korea I had come to see – my little handful of dirt under the rock my ship had been cast upon."

Brian McNally's story and mine will not turn out to be similar. Just two different guys at two different places in time who happen to be in the same city at the same time – writing letters back to a place we used to call home – and thanks to whatever higher power you believe in that we still can. With our government at it's own citizen's heels for lack of a credible enemy, it's a damn good time to look back to Jefferson and be happy we can write anything at all.

"I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too." – Thomas Jefferson




For the entire "You man in Saigon Experience" check below:

IV: The search for Brian McNally ends
III: The second Vanity Fair Story
II: The first Vanity Fair story
I: Your Man In Saigon"

Your Man In Saigon

A big thanks to Rhona in NYC for pointing out that The Wild Wild East Dailies is now being shadowed by Vanity Fair.

From Rhona's note to me:

"I fell on your WWE page by accident very recently and of course I got hooked. Even the music was pretty addictive... Then, in the same week, up pops the Brian McNally piece in Vanity Fair (April issue). Much more predictable than yours, but still fun. And Graydon Carter says 'I am hoping this is the first of many such reports from Our Man in Saigon.' Ha! But to your readers, you are Our Man in Saigon. So of course I wondered if you had read it and what you thought of it."

Vanity Fair has now been apprised of this duality and I'm sure Mr. Carter is busy scanning this blog to see if I really live in Saigon or am just trying to ride VF's Calvin Klein coattails. The Vanity Fair piece deals with a restauranteur who came here a year ago and sends emails back to Mr. Carter. I haven't met the man but on advice from his article, I'll be hunting down his barbershop ASAP. Vanity Fair also saw fit to send a photographer to get shots of the writer, very similar to ones that those of us who have been here for awhile, already have on our cel-phones. Call the Enquirer! We could already be sitting on shots of Spitzer's next girlfriend. Rhona has been nice enough to send me a copy of the story, so in a week or so I'll have a full report for you all.

Until then, I will remain Your Man In Saigon and urge you not to accept any cheap imitations from Vanity Fair or any other high minded celebrity gossip rags!

And oh, by the way... I saw Bentley #4 this week. Things are just going chirping mad around here.

For the entire "You man in Saigon Experience" check below:

IV: The search for Brian McNally ends
III: The second Vanity Fair Story
II: The first Vanity Fair story
I: Your Man In Saigon"