Here is a childhood memory. My mother took me to a street downtown where several Chinese bookshops were located. A couple of these bookshops are still around but they are no longer selling books. They sell stationery, paint brushes, calligraphy brushes, art papers and materials.I was seven or eight years old and I had wanted to spend my prize money on a story book. My parents had to pay the difference between the cost of the book and the prize money. It was a story book about Confucius or Mencius as a child. Both of them had lost their fathers at the young age of three and they had been raised by their mothers. There were pictures accompanying the text and it was the size of a pocket dictionary with a hard cover. In my memory, the illustrations were colourful and the cover was plain in beige colour.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Such a gorgeous title and book cover for a novel. The protagonist, twenty-eight years old, writes to his mother who cannot read. He is nicknamed Little Dog. In his letter, he tells of his family’s history that began before he was born. It is about the damaging impact of the Vietnam war, how his family has to struggle to forge a new future. And it also tells of his life that his mother has never known. From the narration in the first person’s voice, we know that the protagonist who is now a writer, was brought up by his mother who suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. His mother, Rose has left her abusive husband to begin life in Hartford, Connecticut. She works at a nail salon.Little Dog’s grandmother, Lan also lives with them. Lan escapes an arranged marriage and marries an American soldier when she is expecting Rose.
Little Dog is empathetic of his mother’s sufferings though she behaves like a monster when she gets violent. He reads that parents suffering from PTSD are more likely to hit their children. ‘Perhaps to lay hands on your child is to prepare him for war.’When he is ten years old, he tries to run away from home. Lan looks for him and tells him that his mother loves him but she is sick in the brains. He learns that he’s called Little Dog because “To love something … is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched — and alive.” When he is thirteen, he stops his mother from hitting him.
Vuong’s prose is beautiful.
‘Memory is a choice. You said that once, with your back to me, the way a god would sasy it. But if you were a god you would see them. You would look down at this grove of pines, the fresh tips flared lucent at each treetop, tender- damp in their late autumn flush. You would look past the branches, past the rusted light splintered through the brambles, the needles falling, one by one, as you lay your god eyes son them . You’d trace the needles as they hurled hemselves past the lowest bough, toward the cooling forest floor, to land on the two boys lying side by side ,the blood already dry on their cheeks.’
When he is working at a tobacco farm, he meets Trevor who is older. Trevor is addicted to prescriptive drug . When he finds out that Trevor has passed, he is in a class. Trevor dies at twenty-two due to ‘an overdose from heroin laced with fentanyl‘.
In his voice,
‘I did not tell anyone I was coming. I was in the Italian American Lit class at a city college in Brooklyn when I saw, on my phone, a Facebook update from Trevor’s account, posted by his old man.Trevor had passed away the night before. I am broken in two, the message said. In two, it was the only through I could keep, sitting in my seat,how losing a person could make more of us, the living, make us two.’
The writer also writes :
‘ I know. It’s not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter.‘
He hears Trevor’s voice. You should stay. Little Dog is going to a college in New York. They meet to say goodbye. They go to a diner for waffles. In his voice,’I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see him’.
The protagonist and his family live with the memory of the war.The present is always intertwined with the past. ‘Whether we want to or not, we are travelling in a spiral, we are creating something new from what is gone.’
Ocean Vuong‘s debut is autobiographical. It is a moving story about familial love, identity, desires and impermanence. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is not a read you can devour in one sitting as its prose is melancholic and poignant. I read it in small doses. The book title reminds me of the song ‘Dust in the Wind’ by Kansas.
In The Editor by Steven Rowley, James Francis Smale has written a story about his mother and his dysfunctional family. After years of trying to make it as a writer in 1990s New York City, he manages to sell his manuscript to an editor at Doubleday, a major publishing house. Imagine how elated James is when he meets his editor, none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Jackie or Mrs Onassis as she is known in the office. Jackie pushes him to write a more honest ending. She encourages him to return home to speak to his mother. When his mother reveals a family secret during thanksgiving gathering , he has to navigate the truth about his upbringing and who he is.
He is ecstatic after his first meeting with his editor.
‘ I manage to stay collected until I reach the bank of elevators, even though I can feel everyone’s eyes on me as I walk down the hall, back through the paper and push-pins and cubicles and past the framed book covers; I trip and pause only when it hits me that my cover will perhaps one day be among them. Miraculously, I get an elevator to myself for four floors, leaving just enough time for me to self-defibrillate before the doors reopen and three chatty coworkers enter the elevator and join me for the rest of the ride to the lobby complainint the whole way about a new brand of powdered coffee creamer that leaves a residue in their mugs. I wonder if they have any idea what just happened .I’m curious if they can glimpse my secret, if they can smell it on me, my own residue, and the coffee-creamer conversation is a cover. I try to smell myself, to see if there is some trace of Jackie’s perfume, or , better yet, some faint whiff of American decorative arts from her White House restoration, leather or oils or fine upholstery. It occurs to me they think I’m crazy, a man in a corner with a stunned expression, smelling himself for any trace of 1962.’
Hilarious. To be agented and have your manuscript accepted by an editor is a leap forward to making a writer’s dream come true. It is certainly magical when James finds that his editor is Jackie Kennedy Onassis formerly Mrs Kennedy. To top it all, after sending him her edits, Jackie invites him to work from her home on Martha’s Vineyard. He tells his mother about the book and who his editor is. His mother is not interested to read it even when the character in the book is about her. His mother is adamant that the mother character is not her. She does not want to be written about. When James tells his mother that Jackie responds to the book so strongly because she admires the mother character, she says,’ And you believed her.’ Jackie is portrayed like a fairy godmother in the story.
James muses: ‘Editors are mothers of sorts‘. Steven Rowley explains in the interview by Denise Davidson why he wrote that.
‘Editors help guide you, they correct you, get you to see your potential, help you find your way when you feel lost. They’re cheerleaders, they pick up after you — certainly my copy editors do — they talk you through important decisions and see you across the finish line. That sounds a bit like mothering to me — in the best possible way.’
Mothers are usually our cheerleaders. This is so true.
The Editor by Steven Rowley is a delightful read. To land a book deal is no easy feat, and to have a historical character as your editor is far out. The main story is about how James finds out the reason for the split between his parents through his writing journey. He also has to re-evaluate his relationship with his partner, Daniel, play director, who has been supportive of his work all the time.
Steven Rowley is the author of Lily and the Octopus, a memoir he has written about his grief after the loss of his dog, Lily.
Bookaholic Macchiato 