Ocean Vuong and the Poetics of Sincerity
On the occasion of his new novel, 'The Emperor of Gladness,' an interview with poet and novelist Ocean Vuong prompts me to think deeper about the work of figuring out my place in the world.
I. The Quiet Moments
LAST WEEK, IN THE QUIET MOMENTS BETWEEN grocery shopping and pumping gas, returning library books and mailing packages at the post office, I sat in my car listening to David Marchese’s conversation with poet and novelist Ocean Vuong for the New York Times’ podcast, The Interview. For as long as I have been driving, particularly the many years spent commuting long distances for work, the car has been a welcome (and sometimes unwelcome) isolation booth. It offers a temporary retreat from the noise of the world, and a pause that—for better or worse—leads to introspection and, in darker times, unhealthy rumination. In this case, it was the former.
Marchese, who has been conducting high-profile interviews since his days at New York magazine, always asks thoughtful questions, but Vuong’s openness and sincerity in this interview is what caught me off guard. Not because I view it as foreign for the writer—I’ve heard interviews with him before, I know how disarming he can be—but because it was the right time for me to hear what he had to say. His articulation of the very human experience of what it means to figure out your place in the world and how you go about doing that—whether it’s through conversation, thinking, writing, whatever—left me feeling weirdly validated.
Talking on the occasion of his new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, which was published this past Tuesday, Vuong told Marchese that the book was tough to write. Not formally tough, but existentially tough because he viewed the book as deeply personal. “It wasn't clear to me why anyone should read it,” he told Marchese. “If I wrote for myself, I don't think anyone should read it. Whereas, if I wrote to support my family, it was very clear, right?”
That Vuong was making this distinction interested me, the idea that writing done for yourself is different than writing done with a broader audience in mind (i.e., writing to “support my family”). In many ways, of course, it is different. If you keep a journal or diary, that writing is often intended for an audience of one—whether it is your current or future self, it is for you. As someone who has written many personal essays, published a book about shopping malls that mirrors my own life, and is at work on a memoir about masculinity and mental illness, I’ve often questioned my motivations for sharing such personal stories. For example, I derive no joy in writing about living with depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder. But if doing so creates a story that resonates with people, and helps them feel less alone in their own suffering, it may be some of the best work I can do. But that doesn’t mean I have no reservations, or that I don’t second-guess myself. At times, it feels like that is all I do.
One particular exchange between Voung and Marchese speaks not only to these ideas of reason and motivation, but also what it takes to figure out your place in the world:
Marchese: Writing for yourself seemed selfish or hollow?
Vuong: It felt just very neutral, you know? It just felt very limp, where I'm like, ‘Oh, yeah, I'm excited. It's a creative work.’ But when I lost that myth— and it is a myth, right?—that quintessential oldest immigrant son myth, except that [where] other people said I'm going to be a doctor or a lawyer, I said I'm going to be a writer. And even as I tried to betray that Asian stereotype of the immigrant making good, and I thought I would be like this radical writer, I end up doing it.
Marchese: You took a different path, but you did it.
Vuong: It's the same thing, the same goal. And so when I finally got to do what I thought I was doing this whole time, which is like writing on my own terms, it felt really empty to me. But I don't fetishize an identity of writer. To me, this, what we're doing, is the same work. My teaching is the same work. When I give a talk at a university in front of people, it's the same thing.
Marchese: How do you characterize that work?
Vuong: A kind of sincerity of figuring this out. I think that's it. In the Buddhist sutra, it says, engage the phenomena of the world with earnestness. And I've always valued that.
Viewing the work that he does—teaching, speaking, writing—as “figuring it out,” made me smile. In recent weeks, as I have continued building this newsletter into what I want it to be, I’ve thought at length about how place, identity, and home are all things you must perpetually figure out. They are ever-changing. Place is as much about geography as it is a condition. Identity is such a malleable concept, yet such an integral part of what it means to belong. Home takes on new meaning the older you get or the less familiar it becomes. My original name for this newsletter was going to be Everything Changes, because it is such a true phrase. But Homesick is the name that seemed right.
II. Home Away
On Tuesday, Ocean Vuong will be in Pittsburgh for a reading at the Carnegie Lecture Hall, an event that I wish I could attend. But life is funny that way. This week, while Vuong is in my city, I’m in a small town in South Carolina—a home away from home, of sorts—on a retreat with extended family, to say a final goodbye to my mom, whose ashes are being returned to this stretch of the country that she loved so much. I’ll write more on this later—as it is so innately connected to living with grief and continuing to figure out my place in the world—but for now today’s newsletter will have to do.
III. Recommended Reading
“Magnificent . . . In writing this book, Vuong may have joined the ranks of an elite few great novelists.” —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times
One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.
This piece contains affiliate links for Bookshop.org, a retailer that supports local bookstores. As an affiliate of Bookshop, Homesick earns a small commission when you click through and make a purchase there.