In a bold departure from his lyrical first novel, Ocean Vuong has written a surprising second one, The Emperor of Gladness, that is as playful as it is picaresque.
Vuong’s two collections of poetry were widely praised, and his fictional debut, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, won the American Book Award. Earlier this year, Gladness was selected for Oprah’s Book Club. The author was also a 2019 recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant.”
The contrast between his two novels couldn’t be more stark. While Gorgeous was lauded for its spare poetical narrative, Gladness features an unlikely cast of characters on the downside of the economic divide, who find a zany and sometimes cosmic camaraderie in each other amid their ample suffering and loss.
The story opens on the brink of catastrophe: Hai, the nineteen-year-old son of a Vietnamese immigrant, seems ready to kill himself by jumping off a bridge, when he hears a shouting voice imploring him to desist. This is Grazina, an elderly Lithuanian survivor of the Second World War, who lives alone in a rundown house at the base of the bridge.
Suffering from dementia, she flits in and out of reality, but she has the wherewithal to intervene. Grazina invites Hai to stay and help her take her “vitamins” and he agrees to be her live-in caretaker. He monitors her medications (saving some for himself), helps her bathe and dress, and shops for groceries.
The setting is East Gladness, a small (fictional) town outside Hartford, Connecticut in 2009. This is not the leafy moneyed suburbia one might expect of southern New England, but rather a landscape as depressed and forgotten as any in America—a stunning metaphor for abandonment and decay. This is the writer at his elegiac best.
“Though the train never stops in our town,” Vuong writes, “its whistle can be heard in every living room three miles out. Nothing stops here but us, really. Hartford, the capital built on insurance firms, firearms, and hospital equipment, bureaucracies of death and catastrophe, is only twelve minutes by car down the interstate, and everyone rushes past us, either on their way in or to get the hell out.”
Hai slowly finds his bearings again. Through his cousin, Sony, he starts a part-time job at HomeMarket, a local chain restaurant that features family comfort food like corn bread and mac and cheese. The entry level job helps Hai re-connect with community and life purpose. There is dignity in this work, these people.
“He had become an employee and thus had obtained an eternal present, manifested only by his functional existence on the time card,” Vuong writes. “He had no history because one was not required of him, and having no history also meant having no sadness. Instead, he was part of a workforce that fed people. He was America’s fuel. And he was burning to be used, to be useful.”
All struggling in some way, his co-workers also comprise the cast for a number of humorous and manic misadventures including a pro wrestling performance by his supervisor, BJ, and a side job in a makeshift (and gruesome) slaughterhouse for pigs. At times the writing and the kaleidoscopic array of characters reminded me of counterculture guru Tom Robbins.
Hai’s backstory unfolds slowly here and there. We learn he is a not-yet-recovered drug addict, in and out of rehab. He is well read—dipping into Kawabata and Dostoevsky—but he has dropped out of college after the tragic death of his gay lover, which has fueled his profound alienation. He lies to his mother about his situation, telling her that he is going to med school. He frequently calls her pretending he is between classes or in a cadaver lab.
At his new home, he finds stability with Grazina, despite her elaborate delusions. She often imagines herself in the midst of a World War II battle or German invasion of the home country complete with pretend combat. Hai scrambles to play along, calling himself “Sgt. Pepper” and adding details to their scenarios from his basic knowledge of the U.S. Civil War. This is fascinating plot and character development. Even though the utterances and action are often made up or nonsensical, a strong bond forms between the two housemates based on empathetic listening. Grazina lives in a gray amalgam of past and present, yet she can also be cogent and wise.
Vuong excels in depicting the major moments and people in his story, but his descriptions sometimes fray at the edges. His portrayals of the minor characters (and there are many) can seem pat or cartoonish. The dialogue on occasion devolves into lingo and repartee that is less than credible.
But then he reels the reader back in with rich descriptions, laden with deeper meaning: “The ashen town streaked across the murky windows of Maureen’s Volkswagen as she yanked the shift into fourth gear and the car jolted down Orchard Street toward mud fields where deflated pumpkins, dusted with December frost and rejected by scavengers, lay strewn over the wasteland.”
This isn’t a perfect novel, but Vuong is a writer of immense gifts and promise who writes movingly about the shared trauma that families experience—wounds and secrets that can help bind us more closely together.
David Takami is the author of Divided Destiny: A History of Japanese Americans in Seattle, numerous essays and online content about Asian American history, and dozens of book reviews published mostly in The Seattle Times. He grew up in Cold Spring Harbor, NY and has lived in Honolulu, Tokyo and Seattle. He now lives in Kenmore, Washington.
