“The first novel was my attempt to bring poetry’s ethos into the novel form. The novel is the youngest form; it’s a young genre. Because it’s so young, it rose alongside print culture with the Gutenberg printing press. And so, it has a very unique position in our history—in that it is both a genre and a container. It can hold the romance, it can hold the lyric, it can hold the essay, it can even hold drama, as Melville proved. But the lyric poem can’t hold the novel. I like to think of the novel as a bottom because it always makes room. It is a queer form, ultimately, almost like a container made of water. It’s undefined.”
-Ocean Vuong, episode 417 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
Since his bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous debuted in 2019, Ocean Vuong has become one of the most beloved writers of his generation. He first sat with Sam in 2021 amid the pandemic.
Today, Vuong returns to discuss the personal history within his latest novel, The Emperor of Gladness—a piece of fiction that draws from the contours of his own coming-of-age in East Hartford, Connecticut (5:43). We begin with the class dynamics at the heart of the book (9:27), the surrogate family he found working at Boston Market (21:22), and his formative college years in New York City (28:18).
On the back half, we walk through how Ocean’s work continues to honor the memory of his late mother (36:48), the devastating impact of the opioid crisis (41:40), and his own journey to sobriety (45:03). To close, Vuong reflects on the childlike wonder behind his poem “Dear Sara” from Time Is a Mother (1:04:52), why he still loves teaching creative writing (1:18:30), and how all of these experiences deliver him back to the page, each and every day (1:26:00).
Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at mail@talkeasypod.com.
Watch this conversation on YouTube:
Show-notes:
- Order Ocean’s new novel The Emperor of Gladness.
- Read Time Is a Mother, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Night Sky with Exit Wounds.
- Hear our first talk with Ocean in 2021.
- Learn more on his official website.
- Follow Ocean on Instagram.
- For more talks, find our episodes with Jhumpa Lahiri, George Saunders, and Elizabeth Gilbert.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
Illustrations by Krishna Shenoi. Reference photograph by Sarah Schneider.
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