On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel

Written and Narrated By: Ocean Vuong

Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins

Stunning, gorgeously written, but a poem that just goes on and on and beautifully on

So that’s it, basically. I don’t know what to tell you, whether I liked this or not.

I think it’s basically Vuong’s memoir, perhaps with some clever misdirection away from actual people in his life so they don’t sue the bejesus outta him.

Or, if they happen to be Ma, so they don’t beat him with a box of Legos.

This is written as a letter from Little Dog to his illiterate mother; it is, as a few others have stated, kinda sorta a coming of age story.

And from my own experience with it? Kinda sorta a brutal indictment of American society: An homage to cruelty of all stripes, an homage to devastation brought on by drug/opioid addiction.

It’s parsed into three parts with the first being of Little Dog’s childhood with his mother who’s beyond damaged, PTSD from a horrific life in Vietnam. She isn’t feeling pain, we’re told: She IS Pain. Raw, overworked, easy with the damning words, the flying fists. She fascinates Little Dog—There is no such thing as too close for him, as when he wears a dress of hers to feel closer to her (And NATurally, since this is a brutal little book, we’re told the consequences of this, of what happens at school the next day); she terrifies him—Didn’t put away his toy soldiers before she got home from work, and now grandma Lan has to pull her off Little Dog, she’s just tearing him to bits. He gets beaten into the glass by kids at school, on the school bus, and Ma beats and shrieks at him: He has to find a way to get on; she doesn’t have the English to speak up for him; she will NOT speak up for him. Her love is limited to foisting glasses of milk on him to make him strong. Such is the way love is shown.

Then it goes on to Little Dog’s first love—Trevor, a white American young man who hates his abusive drunk of a dad. They bond over their work in the tobacco fields, and they bond over shared drugs. Little Dog fawns and doggedly follows, and the two initiate each other into some pretty graphic sex scenes which don’t feel like sex so much as shared anger, shared confusion, a sense of controlling and damning even as each event is enjoyed (Enjoyed being a topsy turvy word). Drugs are part of the world, but mostly it’s the awakening of both Trevor and Little Dog, a sense of ugly love in a world that will accept neither of them.

The last part is of death and devastation. Little Dog, tho’ we’re never told how on earth it happened, has a shot to leave Hartford, to go to the Big City and try to build something there, build a life, live with hope. Trevor is left behind, the angry young man who was prescribed opioids for a broken bone, never knowing that the drug company was pushing it, raking in money, touting it all as harmless. Trevor has tried to get clean; Trevor has failed and has even almost died a few times. There’s really nothing about their relationship here, just opining about addiction and the duplicity of drug companies.

This really is one long and rambling work of gorgeously written prose, littered with the poetical, stunning with its imagery. But really, all the rambling just kinda started wearing on me after a certain point. Grief? Got it, can we move on? Trauma and violence? Got it, can we move on? Cruelty and love being one and the same? Got it, oh pleeeeeease can we move on?!? The pain, the brutality is clear and everywhere, exquisitely narrated by Vuong himself. The love within the agony; the brokenness that will never heal; the self-loathing even as the self becomes aware of itself for the first time. Simply gorgeous, but oy how it goes on.

This might be better in print. Not that Vuong doesn’t read his work marvelously. It’s just that, truly, this is a poet’s attempt at prose and, as such, you might want to linger on this or that sentence, marvel at its beauty even as what it describes breaks the heart. I went over to the Look Inside on the kindle book page, and I was amazed to read lines that had rather slipped right past me. I’ll own that I’m a bit of a git, but I think hearing something just lets it flow onward and outward, leaving an empty space for the next stunning line to take its place.

So maybe I’m considering (GASP!!!) the PRINT version?! For the way the work is crafted, yes.

-However-

I think I’ve mucked in the exquisite mud enough for now…