On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a poetical novel about Little Dog, his mother, and his grandmother, his grandmother’s ex-husband, their relationships, Vietnamese culture, the Vietnam War, a teenage companion, and his homosexuality. It lacks chapter but has some breaks. It moves forward and backward in time in sometimes sudden shifts.

So I had said in my review of In the Dream House that I couldn’t finish Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and then here comes Ocean Vuong with an autobiographical novel. It’s first person, and the main character is mostly called Little Dog, but it is clearly about Vuong’s life, but since so much of it is imagined and he wasn’t there in real life for those scenes, this moves into a grey area of literature. Really On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a giant prose poem or a collection of prose poems. It could have gone on forever or it could have ended halfway through. I wouldn’t call it a novel though. It is novel length, but I believe to qualify for the realm of the novel, the work must have a plot; otherwise, it is just some sort of character examination. Usually not a very good one. By this point, I imagine a lot of you have heard me complain about the plotlessness of recent novels, but I’m giving On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous a pass because it isn’t really a novel. Its closeness to Vuong’s real life and his beautiful mastery of language make this novel length piece hold a reader’s attention in a way the plotless novels in the literary world do not. You can break any rule you want to as an author as long as it works, and this works. It’s not for everyone and if you’re looking for a traditional novel, this ain’t it. If you like poetry, then this long ass poem might be for you.

Because Ocean Vuong comes from a Vietnamese-American family, there is a lot about the Vietnam war and Vietnamese culture and the immigrant experience in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I’ve spoken before about how I dislike the left talking points about the Vietnam war, mostly because it lacks any kind of nuance. The idea that there weren’t Vietnamese people who had been relying on the US military, who hadn’t wanted to be steamrolled by the North Vietnamese, that hadn’t died in prison for fighting on the losing side, that children hadn’t been killed or raped by the winning side, that people’s dreams hadn’t been crushed by the outcome—not white people, not Westerners, or even some Westerners who had fallen in love with some locals and the culture, but mostly the South Vietnamese themselves—is all very stupid. This is willful blindness. This is the kind of self-hatred that pretends because the US should have never been there that the South Vietnamese were misled or didn’t exist at all, so that when their lives were destroyed, those self-hating Westerners could sleep at night thinking of themselves as the good people. No, we shouldn’t have been there. I won’t argue that. But I also won’t pretend that there wasn’t a large group of Vietnamese that wanted us there and that when we left, because they relied on us—perhaps too much, but that could be our fault and not theirs—their lives were ruined. Sadly, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Regardless of how I feel about interventionism, when a mess is made, it’s better to clean it up then allow innocents to slip in it and break their necks. Honestly, with all that is going on right now, it was difficult for me to write this and even more difficult to say it. A lot of people want to sweep what’s happening under the rug with sentiments like “that was a good speech”, but good speeches cannot raise the dead. Good speeches are not plans. Good speeches do not erase the fact that soldiers were not supplied with ammunition, intelligence, air support, or even food. Good speeches do not mitigate the fact that people with plans were ignored. I had been struggling to write this review but it became more important to do so. It also became a struggle between how much I say on the topic of today or just in a clandestine way. Speaking of today specifically though, the military contractors have learned they can make a lot of money if they convince the US government to sell bullshit hope in less stable nations. But I am getting off topic.

When some of the younger crowd talks about Vietnam, they like to smile with glee at the destruction of South Vietnamese capitalism because they think those people were monsters and thus got what they deserved. This horrendous canary-eating is worse than the willful erasure of the dead and destroyed, only in that it takes pleasure at the pain of others. I wasn’t aware of how common this was until this last year, and the only word I can think that explains it is sickness. Vuong does a brilliant job of bringing home the reality of those people who were lost, much like Viet Thanh Nguyen does in The Refugees, but it doesn’t seem to matter to either of the two personalities I’ve described. It doesn’t matter that Vuong Dang Phong was “sent to a reeducation camp where he was tortured, starved, and committed to forced labor” or that he died after only a year of this treatment at the age of forty-seven. The so-called Good Person can pretend that the US military simply mislead Tiger Phong into his death, as opposed to laying the blame at the feet of those who had actually run the reeducation camp, held the torture devices, withheld the food, and cracked the metaphorical whip. Because when it comes down to it, the Good Person doesn’t believe in Tiger Phong’s agency nor the agency of his destructors. No, they are subtly racist in their inability to see the sapience of those in other cultures. We should know better, because we are better? But they are like children. It is disgusting. The pro-communist is an ends justify the means thinker. It doesn’t matter that a person like Tiger Phong died, because he didn’t support the good ends. So who is convinced by this story? The person who hasn’t given it much thought but also doesn’t just take what someone else says on the subject as gospel. To put it more cleanly, the critical thinker. And what exactly are they convinced of? That the Vietnam debacle was complicated and messy. That people were murdered or destroyed and that their lives still mattered.

Speaking of lives that matter but closer to home for many of us, On Earth We’re Briefly also goes into the US opioid epidemic. This has been going on for decades. It has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, from kids to veterans. And it seems like no one in power gives a shit. Some of this might come down to moralizing those deaths into unimportance, much like the pro-communists do the South Vietnamese. They got addicted to drugs, and that’s a moral failing, so they got what they deserved. As opposed to doctors prescribing drugs like oxycontin for minor injuries because pharmaceutical sales reps told them it wasn’t addictive. Talk about a gateway drug. It is so easy to become addicted to pain medication. I have been prescribed it many times in my adult life and am very careful not to get addicted. I will go without and just deal with the pain if it lowers my chances of an addiction. But when an uninformed person is given the medication by a doctor and thinks that means there are no risks to taking it, they can easily get addicted. When that happens and the doctor cuts them off, they turn to illegal drugs because their doctor doesn’t then treat the patient’s addiction which they caused in the first place. Just because a doctor supports a treatment, doesn’t mean it is the right one. Doctors are not biochemists. They are not scientists. They are there to diagnose a problem and find a solution, and yes, sometimes pain medication is an interim solution, but sometimes, it’s not. One cannot assume their doctor has read all the clinical studies on the treatments they prescribe. This is one reason why I read clinical studies, to give myself a better picture of what I am getting into with a treatment, but most people just trust their doctors, and that’s why we have an opioid epidemic in the US. There’s a reason why getting a second opinion is an action people talk about so much, not that most people can afford to get a second opinion. Another problem. But when so many doctors bought the lie that oxycontin was safe, that wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway. I’m not sure why doctors would trust anything a pharmaceutical sales rep would say, as I certainly wouldn’t because when someone is trying to sell something and their job depends on it, of course, they’re willing to bend the truth to do so. That’s just human nature! I appreciated the depiction of the opioid crises in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, because I feel like the kind of people who it hasn’t touched needed to see it in such a personal way.

So On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous being a contemporary “novel” means it’s got to have some shit in it about identity. Vuong is gay, mixed race, Vietnamese American and the story is very autobiographical, so a lot of it has to do with all of that. But to be fair to Vuong, it’s not that cringey, it’s just too on the nose for the time. His story hits all the major buttons that the literary publishing world is looking for. Which means this is just one more novel in a sea of novels that covers the immigrant experience, homosexuality, race, etc, etc. which is fresh if it is the first one you’ve read, and trite after the fifth one. Vuong hit the intersectionality jackpot and could only really make himself more attractive to woke ideology by announcing that he’s trans. To some extent Vuong is successful because he fits the mold that the literary world is looking for right now. But that doesn’t detract from what he is good at, which is beautiful prose and a more nuanced view of life. Even bringing up Tiger Phong proves that last point, but so does Trevor. Trevor’s story is by far more tragic than Little Dog’s. For one thing, he dies. Spoilers. But his story captures two stories, many times related, that happens all across the United States that the current literary world doesn’t really want to see: white men in poverty and white men suffering under the opioid epidemic. These stories are common, but apparently literary publishers are done with them because they are about white men and “we’ve already read those stories”. This is bullshit. For one thing, it is bullshit because everyone’s story matters, especially if it is a tragedy, and while everyone’s story has the same kernel of joy or pain at the center, the particulars are always special to that person. While I would rather hear Trevor’s story from a man more like Trevor, because I know there are men out there writing those stories and being ignored, I do appreciate Vuong showing it to an audience who would probably rather ignore it. It’s also interesting to note that nearly all the men in the novel are white men, with the exception of the few Vietnamese men once partnered with the women in his family. Paul and Trevor are the most fleshed out men in the novel and come off as likeable, even Trevor with all his problems. Paul acts as Little Dog’s grandfather even though he isn’t, and I think we can forgive Trevor some of his gruffness given his dire childhood and clear inner turmoil. Both come off as sympathetic. Real people with hearts. I’m not sure many other authors would be so kind to white males these days. To some extent, I do believe Vuong is trying to get a very narrow-minded audience to open things up just a crack, to see more of the world, and I can respect that.

I’d read so many contemporary novels in a row that they started to blend together. I had a moment where I remembered the mouse scene and went “Where did I read that?” But of course, it had to be On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous because Vuong does beautifully with imagery. He makes it stick in your mind. I was eating chips and salsa during the monkey brains scene, so while they’re scooping out this monkey’s brain and eating it, I’m doing the same motion. I laughed when I realized it, but if that is a real thing that people do or have done in Vietnam, I’ve got to say, that’s just fucking cruel. There’s no need to do it while the animal is alive. Jesus, have a heart! That’s a being that can feel pain, for fuck’s sake. But again, I applaud Vuong for not shying away from going after imagery like this and just shoving it at the reader with all the gory details. I hate authors without a stomach for the harshness of reality, so good job, very gross. Not gross enough to make me stop eating chips and salsa while I read it though, but that probably has something more to do with me than writing itself.

Would I recommend On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous? Hard to say. I liked it, mostly, but calling it a novel is still more than a stretch of the definition. I think if you go into it knowing what it is, you’ll enjoy it more. Also if you’re into prose poetry, you’ll probably like it. I do think this book has a lot to give especially in the pile of bullshit that seems to be en vogue these days. While it has a lot of the same issues as other literary novels, because it relies more on its beautiful prose to move the reader along, it’s more worthwhile than most of those novels. Hell, maybe I would like those novels if they were more poetic. At least then they would be demonstrating skill of some kind. So On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous relies on your taste for if you would like it. It is good poetry though, and that’s worth something. But let me know what you thought of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Did you love it? Hate it? Something else you wish I’d brought up?