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Book Review: Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness
55 Plays19 days ago
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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
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Transcript
Introduction and Initial Thoughts
00:00:03
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to Books Up Close. My name is Chris Lloyd. Today I am talking about a book that i really really really wanted to love but did not and it's The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong.
00:00:20
Speaker
Now I feel very conflicted about this.
Appreciation of Vuong's Style
00:00:23
Speaker
This is a is a nice little hefty book. And those of you that know me, and I'm sure i've said it before in here somewhere along the line, I love on Earth, we're briefly gorgeous.
00:00:36
Speaker
All of the people out there who are like, it's not that good. The writing is too poetic. It's too overblown. It's too pretentious. Like, I disagree strongly. I think it is really beautifully written. I think it's really interestingly crafted in a formal way.
00:00:53
Speaker
I think the story is really powerful. i think the way it weaves together all of these different parts. Little Dog's kind of letter to his mother, the kind of story of her childhood, his engagement with Trevor and Trevor's opiate addiction.
00:01:14
Speaker
the weaving of all these different kind of metaphors and parts of history and memory and all of the things i just loved in that book i like vong's poetry too i mean it's not my favorite like there are individual poems i think ah really stand out but both collections i like i like parts of them but not the whole However, I really like Ocean Vuong, I think he's really interesting to listen
Critique of Speaking Style and Book Length
00:01:37
Speaker
to. However, there is an element of him when he speaks of this kind of like, I'm always saying profound things.
00:01:45
Speaker
And I don't know everything he says is that profound. But anyway, that's me being shady off the bat. But I don't mean to be just that there's a certain element of the kind of, I'm here to tell you something serious.
00:01:57
Speaker
that you get a sense of in this book too in The Emperor of Gladness and i didn't love it. The book generally I think could be half the length.
00:02:07
Speaker
Like there is not much plot or story in this book and that's not a bad thing. I'm not usually a person that's here for just story for the sake of it. That's not my bag.
00:02:18
Speaker
However, because this book is quite kind of rambling and loose and fluid, it does mean that like a good 400 pages feels like 400 pages.
00:02:30
Speaker
There were times when I thought this needs to pick up or this could be streamlined in some kind of way.
Discussion of Book's Opening and Stylistic Shifts
00:02:36
Speaker
The opening chapter, in which you get this really lyrical beautiful description of the town of East Gladness, is probably some of the best writing in the book and from there it goes off.
00:02:46
Speaker
course in a way. Like that opening is the kind of poetic, lyrical, image-rich writing that people associate with Wong. And then after that, he kind of abandons it. I've seen a few reviews that like, oh, the book is characterized by his, you know, distinctive poetic prose. And don't think it is Lots of the book is quite...
00:03:05
Speaker
i' I'm not say plain, right, he's not like a Hemingway writer, but it isn't the kind of freewheeling images, metaphors that I would expect from him. There's lots of dialogue, the description is nice, but it's not standout in any way. There were no sentences that I thought, this this is it, this is the writing.
00:03:22
Speaker
So that's one that's one of my problems with it.
Character Dynamics and Emotional Depth
00:03:25
Speaker
The story kind of opens with this young Vietnamese American boy called Hai and he's about to jump off a railway bridge. and Grazina, this old woman that lives by the river, kind of stops him and she takes him into her home and he ends up living with her.
00:03:40
Speaker
And they form this really unlikely friendship, right? This old woman and this young queer boy. i found Hai and Graziena's relationship interesting but it does kind of sit in one kind of track and doesn't move from that track.
00:03:56
Speaker
I thought the depiction of her dementia was really moving but I wasn't totally kind of immersed emotionally. Like by the end i wasn't sad.
00:04:08
Speaker
Not any spoilers but like the ending doesn't didn't make me super emotional, I thought I might have been invested in these two people at least by the end of the book but I wasn't, let alone the kind of cast of characters that surround them, mostly Hai's fellow workers in a kind of local diner.
00:04:28
Speaker
And it's quite tender, it's funny in places but There wasn't enough to get me through the book to really grip me. You understand kind of why Hai tries to kill himself at the beginning, but I don't feel like there's enough of that story fleshed out.
00:04:46
Speaker
Similarly, Grazina's gradual deterioration and her relationship to her son, who we meet later in the book, he feels almost cartoonishly like a kind of villain. It felt sketched or sketchy.
00:05:00
Speaker
I don't know, this book just didn't do it for me.
Themes of Rural Poverty and Societal Decline
00:05:02
Speaker
There's some like nice moments and I think the story is good and the kind of depiction of poverty, of rural life, of This sense of America kind of becoming unmoored or kind of deteriorating in the aftermath of like deindustrialization and all of these things in the two thousand and the 2008 crash.
00:05:22
Speaker
Like that's good, but like I've seen this elsewhere though, like go to American Rust if you want to read another depiction of this world of like the Rust Belt and its kind of impact on the body and society.
00:05:34
Speaker
ah Philip Meyer's book, like that's fantastic. Like this book isn't the only one trying to depict this world in the kind of long downturn. And it's good, but I just didn't fully connect with it, which makes me sad because I really like Vong and I thought this book was going the one, right?
Response to Positive Reviews
00:05:54
Speaker
Like I was really excited to read it.
00:05:56
Speaker
And I keep seeing reviews that are kind of raving about it. I mean, even Andrea Long Chu, who, you know, I love Andrea's work. She wrote a really good piece on Vong recently.
00:06:07
Speaker
that you should definitely have a look at and in that she really takes into task over that first book it is scathing in certain ways but she also is reviewing this new book and really thinks this one is much better and is is more interesting and i just i disagree So, some of you may now be alienated from this video and disagree with me wholeheartedly, and if so, please let me know in the comments, it'd be great to hear from you, I'd love to hear what you think.
Final Recommendations and Upcoming Content
00:06:33
Speaker
But if you also didn't like this book, please let me know, and then I won't feel like I'm so on my own here, out on a limb.
00:06:40
Speaker
It's worth a read. I mean, I would maybe wait till paperback. Do not buy it in hardback. That's my strong warning. If you like Vong's work, I'm sure you'll get into it and you'll enjoy it. But the things that I love about Vong, his way with like words, his imagery, his way of looking at the world, his depiction of queerness and its intersections with masculinity and race and class and all these other things, like that's not as present here as I was expecting and wanting.
00:07:06
Speaker
So you get some of the stuff you want from Vong, but not some of the other stuff. So that's my rambling take on the Emperor of Gladness. I also hate the title, but anyway, that's just where I'm at.
00:07:19
Speaker
Let me know what you think. Next week in the podcast feed, there is going be another interview. There will also be some stuff on social media where I'm to give away some books of close merch.
00:07:31
Speaker
So please keep an eye out for that. I'm excited to send that to you all. Until next happy reading. me what you're up to. Subscribe all the platforms. Share this with a friend.
00:07:42
Speaker
Stay well. Look after each other.