Review: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
a novel by Ocean Vuong
I don’t want to forget this is a novel. But when the main character is adressing the story to his Ma, it’s hard to keep that thought in mind.
I can’t forget for a minute that Ocean Vuong is a poet. Every page shimmers with his gorgeous poetic sensibility.
He performs at the limits of human sensibility and sensual experience, as if he is throwing down a dare. So what if I have given my all? If all of this is me? And so what if it isn’t? If we have moved beyond any one person’s experience?
His character, Little Dog, a Vietnamese immigrant, wonders:”Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us.”
Life is brief. Art is longing.
