On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019) By Ocean Vuong

 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a novel of incredibly painful memories told in a beautifully written, hopefully cathartic, letter.  The author, and the book’s main character, are Amerasians, a termed coined to define children born of Vietnamese women and American soldiers during the Vietnam War.  These children have had to navigate many issues in their lives.   

The letter writer is a young man living in Hartford, CT.  He was born in Vietnam near the end of the war. The English translation of his name is Little Dog.  His mother gave him this name, because she hoped it would help him be "overlooked" by many evils: napalm bombs, American guns, Viet Cong guns, and the taunts of those who knew his mother slept with American soldiers.  Post-war, Little Dog, his mother Mai, and Grandmother Lan will be treated horribly because they were considered traitors.  Eventually they will make their way to a refugee camp in the Philippines.  An American soldier, who may or may not be the boy’s biological father, will help them resettle in the States -- and then disappears from the story. 

Little Dog grows up as an immigrant living in a low/no income neighborhood of Hartford; he will learn ESL and begin school; neither his mother nor grandmother will learn English. They exist on his mother’s meager income from working in a nail salon.  Both the mother, and to a lesser extent the grandmother, suffer from PTSD.  Once he becomes a teenager, Little Dog will work summers on a farm on the outskirts of town.  There he will work with and becomes friends with the grandson of the farm’s owner, a friendship that will develop into a closeted relationship.  Dealing with his own issues, the grandson will progressively slip into a severe opiate addiction and die of an overdose.

The novel/letter is Little Dog’s attempt to make sense of this life.  

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, is written by Ocean Vuong, an Amerasian born in 1982.  He is one of three millennial authors I have read in the past year or so who are already racking up literary awards.  The other two are: Pajtim Statovci, an immigrant to Finland, born in Kosovo in 1992, who wrote My Cat Yugoslavia; and Tommy Orange, a member of the Cheyenne Nation, author of There There, born in California in 1982.  Each of these books deals with the survival skills needed to grow up as a minority inside a dominate culture.  

The House of the Seven Gables (1851) By Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

One of my winter reads has been The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is one of the most recognized titles in American literature, yet I suspect today it is probably one of the least read. It is regarded a Gothic masterpiece.

Set in puritan Massachusetts Colony, the book follows the blue-blood Pyncheon family from the Salem Witch Trial era through multiple generations. The patriarch of the family, Colonel Pyncheon, swindles the property he wants to build a mansion on from a poor carpenter named Matthew Maule by accusing him of being a wizard. As he is being hanged for witchcraft, Maule pronounces a curse on Pyncheon and his hereditary successors who would live on the land. When the mansion, The House of the Seven Gables, is completed the Colonel throws a party to celebrate. As the guests arrive, they will discover the Colonel’s body, dead by “natural” causes in the manner described in Maule’s curse. 

The mansion will pass down through generations of the family, eventually being bequeathed to unmarried Hepzibah Pyncheon for her and her brother Clifford to reside in as long as they may live. The annual stipend she inherited however proves insufficient and the mansion will fall into disrepair, even as she opens a “cent shop” and takes in a boarder to make ends meet. What Hepzibah does not know is that the boarder is a descendent of Matthew Maule, using an assumed name.    

There have been many movies made of The House of the Seven Gables, the first being a 1920 silent film. The 1940 movie is the most prominent. It stars Margaret Lindsay as Hepzibah, Vincent Price as her brother Clifford, and George Sanders as their cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. It's on Amazon Prime.  It is a good movie even though it takes major liberties with the book’s narrative (for example, the book ends with a death, the movie ends with a double wedding). Another fun version was an adaptation for the Shirley Temple Storybook hour on 1960s television. While its script is shortened, it is more faithful to the book, though it slants the script toward the role of cousin Phoebe Pyncheon, the part played by Shirley Temple. Agnes Morehead played Hepzibah. 

Recommendations: Book YES, but with the warning it is not a quick read, it has a very convoluted plot and is written in prim & proper, formal, puritan English. Also, Yes to the 1940 movie version. It is one of those great black & white Turner Classic Movie films, but understand it is significantly not faithful to the book. As for the Shirley Temple Storybook version, a Yes, because the 1960 television production quality is campy, particularly if you grew up to be a Dark Shadows fan.

The Buried Giant (2015) By Kazuo Ishiguro

 

The Buried Giant is a book of mythology set in the years after what could be the ultimate mythology: King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable.  The story has mists, ogres, a dragon, a young boy who has been bitten by the dragon, a warrior hero, and King Arthur’s nephew, Sir Gawain.  What it doesn’t have is a giant, at least not in the generally known sense.

The novel, a fun read, is the creation of Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature.  He's better known to the public as the author of The Remains of the Day, which is better known as a movie starring Anthony Hopkins.  He’s a versatile author, to say the least.

On two levels the plot deals with memory, addressing the question: Is it better to protect oneself by burying bad memories, nightmares that include tragedy, or to remember these things and try to learn from them?  This is not as easy of a question as you might think.

The story begins in a cave-dwelling village of the Britons where none of the residents have a memory more than a day long.  Living there is an elderly couple who are beginning to have short, unexplained dreams harking back to earlier times.  One such dream is of a son who moved away from the village.  Another dream entails a test of love that a ferryman administers before he will row couples across a river together.  After discussing these dreams with each other Axl and his wife Beatrice, who is not in good health, decide to try and find their son, setting off on an adventure filled trip.

Along the way they come across a village which has just been attacked by ogres.  There is also another traveler in the village, a Saxon warrior.  He leads a small band, including a young orphan boy, out to hunt down the ogre. They find and destroy it, but during the fight the young boy is injured by a dragon that has been dormant for many years.  The villagers fear the boy, having been so “marked” by the dragon, will cause it to return. 

When Axl and Beatrice leave the village the next morning to continue their trip the warrior and the boy will accompany them part of the way, before going their own way.  Along the route they will encounter Sir Gawain.  In full Knight regalia, Gawain is the nephew of the late King Arthur.  Piecing bits of learned knowledge together, it becomes clear that the memory loss is caused by a mist in the land, and that the mist is the breath of the dragon.  The only way to end it is to slay the dragon. While both the warrior and Sir Gawain vow to do so, they each have ulterior missions.

What they do not acknowledge is the role played by none other than Merlin, King Arthur’s magician.  Merlin had conjured up the dragon & its mist-breath to make the warring Britons and Saxons of Arthur’s time forget their past hostilities toward each other, putting an end to their wars of revenge.  That the people forget everything, not just the wars, was an accidental byproduct of the curse. 

What the warrior figures out is that Sir Gawain’s actual quest is to protect the dragon, not kill it – thereby forever maintaining the peace.  The warrior on the other hand, has been sent undercover by the Saxon King to the East (outside of the range of the memory loss aspect of the mist) to kill the dragon, and scout the Briton’s territory in advance of a second Saxon invasion.  To slay the dragon, the warrior must first destroy Sir Gawain.  He will do both.

As Axl and Beatrice continue on their way, and the mist clears, their personal memories will return. Near the journey’s end they will remember that their son had gone to an island, and to get to it they must cross a river.  When they encounter the ferryman that Beatrice has dreamt of, they submit to his test.  

With memories intact, Axl will pass the test, Beatrice will not.  And, with the dragon slain, the Saxons are free to resume their conquest.

This not particularly happy ending however, leaves the question unanswered:  Are Axl and Beatrice better off having remembered their past?  Is the conjured loss of memory the only way for King Arthur’s peace to survive?  Is anyone better off for having slain the dragon, waking the buried giant of memories?

Recommendation:  Clearly in writing the above I have shamelessly violated spoiler alerts. Nevertheless, The Buried Giant is still a fun read.