[Fiction question] What was the cost of a bowl of noodles in a Phnom Penh market in 1973?
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Jeruba (
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November 11th, 2009
Here is a picture of a 1000-riel note in use in Cambodia in 1973. That spring the American troops were to withdraw; two years later, the Khmer Rouge would advance on the city and evacuate all the inhabitants, launching one of the worst acts of genocide in history.
For a little while between 1973 and 1975, something resembling normal life went on in Cambodia’s capital.
How much would a bowl of noodles at an open market stall have cost in riels in 1973?
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5 Answers
Wow, your book is so much more exotic than mine. Mine takes place in the same damn town the entire time. :)
I don’t know about a bowl of noodles, but a bowl of depression is free on Fluther.
@Jeruba: Are you sure that this isn’t simply Volume 1? Look what Balzac did with “La Comédie humane.” It consists of “95 finished works (stories, novels or analytical essays) and 48 unfinished works (some of which exist only as titles).”
Fabulous, @Harp! Thank you. Great find, and exactly right!
@DominicX, it sounds as if you were writing a story that makes some kind of sense. I am writing preposterous rubbish. Preposterous rubbish does have to be taken seriously, of course, while you are writing it, because taking it seriously is part of the entertainment. But I have cast off nearly all the restrictions that apply when I write earnest, intense literary fiction. So I allude to settings all over the world, whether or not scenes actually take place in them, just as if I knew what I were talking about. Istanbul, Barcelona, Phnom Penh, Moscow—they’re just names, but if I toss them around, all of a sudden I’ve got this flavor. I’ve never written this way before the present month of November, and something tells me that afterward I won’t be writing the same way as before.
@gailcalled, thanks for the reminder of a great model. I don’t know if I’ll have to resort to works that exist only as titles, but the month isn’t half over yet.
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