The library copy of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous still had that new book smell when I slid it through the return slot, unfinished. The blue placeholder ribbon hung limp from the pages I’d never turn. It was 2019, and I’d just buried my mother. The novel’s central premise—a son writing letters to his illiterate mother—felt like pressing on a fresh bruise.
Ocean Vuong’s prose undid me in ways I couldn’t articulate then. Lines like “The first time you hit me, I must have been four. A hand, a flash, a reckoning” carried such distilled force that most writers would need paragraphs to achieve similar impact. But I wasn’t ready for that rollercoaster between tenderness and violence, between love and despair.
Then the pandemic arrived. While field hospitals sprouted in parking lots and refrigerated trucks stored bodies outside New York hospitals, something curious happened. Vuong’s novel became a literary phenomenon, selling over a million copies as the world locked down. It garnered nominations and awards, appearing on best-of lists from The New York Times to The Guardian. The very book I’d abandoned was comforting strangers in isolation, its fragmented structure perhaps mirroring our shattered realities.
Meanwhile, I kept working, kept writing, kept living. Masks came off, schools reopened, and Ocean Vuong faded from my consciousness like yesterday’s news. Life has a way of marching forward, leaving unfinished stories in its wake.
I didn’t know about his second novel’s release this past May. Didn’t know about the controversy brewing in literary circles. The internet, in its infinite algorithmic wisdom, decided I needed to know. My feeds began filling with reactions—not just reviews but visceral responses that transcended literary criticism and veered into personal attack.
The tone of these responses startled me. One particularly scathing critique dismissed his first novel as plotless, calling it clumsy and self-indulgent. The reviewer claimed reading Vuong’s second book was one of the “worst ordeals” of his reading life. Another took portions of text and “corrected” them, questioning how a creative writing teacher could write so poorly while simultaneously attacking his personality.
This phenomenon extends beyond any single author. We’re living through a peculiar moment in literary culture where algorithms prioritize engagement over nuance, where rage generates more clicks than measured analysis. The digital ecosystem rewards certainty over curiosity, hot takes over deep reading.
There’s something almost epidemiological about how these criticisms spread—reminding me of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. Much like cholera contaminates water systems, certain types of discourse seem to infect our digital spaces, leaving everyone… well, let’s just say it creates a lot of noise and very little signal.
Amidst this digital cacophony, I found myself thinking about the actual human behind the controversy. The story of how Ocean Vuong got his name reveals volumes about the immigrant experience that informs his writing. His teenage mother, arriving from Vietnam illiterate and unable to speak English, worked in a nail salon telling customers she wanted to see the “bitch”—her mispronunciation of “beach.” Until one day a customer gently corrected her: “Just say ‘ocean.'” When she learned the ocean connected Vietnam to America, she renamed her son accordingly.
This context matters. The broken English that some critics dismiss as clumsy represents a profound linguistic journey. The experimental structure that some call plotless represents an intentional artistic choice recognized by publishers like Penguin Random House, who include Vuong’s work in their experimental fiction collection alongside authors like Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner.
Perhaps what unsettles critics most is the realization that traditional metrics of literary merit are expanding. Books like Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown or George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo challenge conventional storytelling, trusting readers to co-create meaning. Vuong’s vignette-style narrative operates in this tradition, offering not a plot but an emotional landscape.
The vitriol directed at his work often carries an unspoken subtext: “You don’t deserve this success.” There’s that peculiar human tendency to build up underdogs only to tear them down when they achieve mainstream recognition. We love rags-to-riches stories until the riches part makes us uncomfortable.
Before his novelistic success, Vuong was an acclaimed poet. His collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds won both the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize—only the second debut collection to achieve the latter honor. His poetry readings often featured his mother in the front row, having turned her chair to watch the audience applaud her son. She died before his novel published, never holding the book he wrote for her.
Which brings me back to that library copy I returned unfinished. Sometimes timing is everything in reading, just as in writing. The books we need find us when we’re ready for them, not necessarily when they’re published or praised or criticized.
The most highlighted passage in Vuong’s novel on Kindle reads: “Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.” Some 10,678 readers paused there, perhaps recognizing some truth about the relationship between creators and critics, between artists and their audiences.
I can’t speak to the quality of Vuong’s second novel, having not read it. Nor can I fully defend his first, having not finished it. But I can observe the ecosystem surrounding them—the way we discuss art, the metrics we use to judge success, the human tendency to build up and tear down.
Maybe what we need isn’t more criticism but more context. Not more hot takes but more humble attempts to understand. In an age of algorithmic amplification, sometimes the most radical act is simply to listen before we judge, to understand before we dismiss, to recognize that sometimes the books we’re not ready for might be exactly what someone else needs.
The Economy of Rage
Algorithms have a peculiar appetite. They feed on engagement, and nothing engages quite like outrage. The digital landscape thrives on strong reactions—the angrier the comment, the longer the thread, the more likely content will spread. This isn’t accidental; it’s engineered. Platforms prioritize content that triggers emotional responses, creating what’s known as rage bait: deliberately provocative material designed to generate clicks through indignation.
When Ocean Vuong’s second novel arrived, this mechanism swung into action. Critics didn’t merely dislike his work; they eviscerated it with personal attacks that had little to do with literary merit. Someone actually took passages from his book, rewrote them according to their own standards, and published these “corrections” as proof of his inadequacy. The subtext was clear: How dare this immigrant writer achieve success without conforming to traditional expectations?
These attacks follow a predictable pattern. First comes the dismissal of artistic merit (“clumsy, self-indulgent”), then the questioning of credentials (“a creative writing teacher should write better”), and finally the personal character assassination. It’s a three-act play of diminishing returns that says more about the critic than the creator.
Reading these comments reminded me of Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera—not the romantic elements, but the epidemiological metaphor. Cholera spreads through contaminated water, infecting entire populations with uncontrollable symptoms. Online vitriol operates similarly: one bitter comment contaminates the discourse, soon followed by waves of others, until the original work becomes almost irrelevant beneath the sludge of collective outrage.
What’s particularly striking is how this criticism often masks itself as helpful guidance. “Let me show you how to write properly” becomes a weaponized form of gatekeeping. The unspoken assumption seems to be that certain voices deserve amplification while others require correction—especially when those voices emerge from marginalized communities or challenge conventional narrative structures.
This phenomenon isn’t limited to literature. We see it across creative fields: musicians criticized for evolving their sound, visual artists condemned for moving beyond their established style, filmmakers attacked for experimenting with new formats. The pattern reveals a discomfort with innovation that doesn’t come pre-approved by established cultural gatekeepers.
Yet beneath the surface of these literary criticisms often lies something more visceral than aesthetic disagreement. There’s a palpable sense of territorial anxiety when artists from non-traditional backgrounds achieve mainstream success without following conventional paths. The subtext whispers: You didn’t pay your dues in the expected ways. You didn’t earn this according to our rules.
This digital environment creates peculiar distortions. A writer might spend years crafting a work, only to have its reception determined within hours by people who haven’t read past the first chapter. The algorithm doesn’t distinguish between thoughtful critique and reactive ranting—it simply amplifies whatever generates engagement.
The irony is that this system ultimately serves nobody well. Readers miss out on challenging work that might have transformed their perspectives. Writers become cautious about taking creative risks. And critics—the thoughtful ones who actually engage with work on its own terms—find their voices drowned out by the noise of performative outrage.
But this isn’t really about Ocean Vuong, or any single artist facing this digital firing squad. It’s about what happens to our cultural ecosystem when we prioritize engagement over understanding, when we value quick reactions over thoughtful responses, when we mistake popularity for importance and controversy for significance.
We’re all swimming in these contaminated waters, both as consumers and creators. The question isn’t how to avoid the criticism—that’s impossible in the connected age—but how to navigate it without losing our humanity in the process.
The Unconventional Craft of Ocean Vuong
What happens when English isn’t your first language but becomes your primary instrument of expression? Ocean Vuong’s writing demonstrates how linguistic limitations can transform into creative advantages. His prose carries the distinct rhythm of someone who learned the language through listening rather than textbooks, through survival rather than academic study.
That broken quality—what some critics dismiss as clumsy—actually creates a unique emotional intensity. When Vuong writes “A hand, a flash, a reckoning,” he’s not just describing violence; he’s replicating the fragmented way trauma imprints itself on memory. The grammatical imperfections become emotional truths, the syntactic struggles mirroring the psychological ones.
His mother’s journey from Vietnam to America, illiterate and unable to speak English, working in a nail salon where she told customers she wanted to see the “bitch”—this background isn’t just biographical trivia. It’s the foundational experience that shapes his relationship with language. When that customer gently corrected her—”just say the ocean”—and explained it was the body of water connecting Vietnam to America, we witness the moment where language becomes not just communication but connection, not just vocabulary but vision.
This naming story encapsulates the immigrant experience of transformation through language. The mother’s wonder at discovering this new word, her decision to rename her son Ocean—these moments reveal how language can redefine identity. Vuong’s writing continues this tradition of linguistic reinvention, treating English not as a rigid system to master but as clay to mold.
His experimental approach to structure often draws criticism from traditionalists expecting conventional plots. But the vignette style of “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” isn’t a failure of narrative construction—it’s a deliberate choice to mirror how memory actually works. We don’t recall our lives in neat chronological order with clear cause-and-effect relationships. Our most significant moments arrive as fragmented images, sensory details, emotional impressions. Vuong’s novel captures this psychological truth through its structure.
The connection between his poetry and prose reveals another layer of his creative approach. Before becoming a novelist, Vuong established himself as an award-winning poet, and that poetic sensibility infuses his fiction. Look at how he describes pulling his father from the water in “Night Sky with Exit Wounds”: “drag him by his hair/through white sand, his knuckles carving a trail/the waves rush in to erase.” This isn’t just description; it’s imagery working on multiple levels—literal action, metaphorical meaning, emotional resonance.
This interweaving of poetry and narrative creates what we might call a hybrid form of expression. The poetic fragments in his novel aren’t decorative embellishments; they’re essential to the emotional architecture of the work. They provide the lyrical intensity that makes the emotional experiences visceral rather than merely descriptive.
Vuong’s background as an immigrant who didn’t learn to read until he was eleven adds another dimension to his experimental style. Traditional narrative structures often presume certain cultural reference points and educational backgrounds. By breaking from these conventions, Vuong creates space for different ways of telling stories—ways that might feel more authentic to experiences outside the mainstream.
When critics attack his work as “self-indulgent” or “clumsy,” they’re often applying standards developed for writers from different backgrounds working with different intentions. The experimental nature of his writing challenges readers to expand their understanding of what literature can be and do. It asks us to consider whether our criteria for judgment might need to evolve alongside the evolution of literature itself.
The commercial success of his approach—over a million copies sold—suggests that many readers find value in this different way of storytelling. They’re not looking for perfectly constructed plots but for emotional authenticity. They’re not seeking grammatical perfection but psychological truth. In this sense, Vuong’s experimental writing isn’t an academic exercise; it’s a response to genuine reader needs in the contemporary landscape.
His work raises important questions about who gets to define what “good writing” means and whose experiences get to shape literary standards. When we encounter writing that challenges our expectations, we have a choice: we can dismiss it as failing to meet established criteria, or we can consider whether our criteria might need updating to accommodate new forms of expression.
This doesn’t mean abandoning critical judgment but rather developing a more nuanced critical framework—one that can appreciate different kinds of excellence. We can recognize the skill in crafting a perfectly structured traditional novel while also appreciating the innovation in experimental forms. The literary world has room for both, and readers have need of both.
Vuong’s writing journey—from poetry to experimental fiction—demonstrates how artistic evolution often involves crossing boundaries and challenging categories. His work reminds us that literature isn’t a fixed set of rules but a living, evolving conversation. Each generation of writers brings new experiences and perspectives that expand what literature can encompass.
The resistance his work sometimes encounters reflects a natural tension between tradition and innovation that exists in all art forms. Some readers find comfort in familiar structures; others find excitement in new approaches. The health of the literary ecosystem depends on having both—the preservation of valuable traditions and the space for valuable innovations.
What makes Vuong’s case particularly interesting is how his experimental approach emerges so directly from his personal history. The fragmented narrative mirrors the fragmented experience of immigration. The linguistic innovation reflects the process of learning a new language. The emotional intensity channels the trauma of displacement. The form and content aren’t just related; they’re inseparable.
This integration of life experience and artistic method suggests a different model of what authorship can mean. Instead of mastering established techniques, some writers develop new techniques better suited to expressing their particular experiences. Their innovation isn’t about being different for difference’s sake but about finding forms adequate to their content.
For writers working outside mainstream experiences, this approach might be not just aesthetically preferable but necessary. Traditional forms developed primarily to express certain kinds of experiences might feel inadequate or even oppressive when trying to express different ones. Experimental writing then becomes not self-indulgence but survival—finding ways to say what hasn’t been said before because the experiences haven’t been represented before.
The criticism Vuong faces often misses this crucial point. The attacks on his personality and background, the mocking of his name, the dismissals of his style as incompetent—these responses often reveal more about the limitations of the critics than about the limitations of the work. They demonstrate an inability or unwillingness to engage with writing that operates outside familiar frameworks.
For developing writers, Vuong’s example offers both inspiration and caution. The inspiration comes from seeing how personal history and artistic innovation can combine to create powerful, original work. The caution comes from recognizing how the literary establishment often responds to innovation with resistance and sometimes hostility.
The internet age amplifies both the opportunities and challenges. On one hand, writers can find audiences for work that traditional gatekeepers might reject. On the other hand, they face instant, often brutal criticism from anonymous commentators. Navigating this environment requires both creative courage and emotional resilience.
Vuong’s mother turning her chair around at poetry readings to watch the audience applaud her son—this image captures something essential about the writer’s relationship to their community. The writing might be personal, even experimental, but it exists within a social context. The approval that mattered most to Vuong came not from critics or algorithms but from that one woman in the front row.
Perhaps that’s the ultimate lesson for writers working in experimental modes: to remember who you’re writing for and why. The negative comments might be loud, but the meaningful connections—the readers who find something in your work that speaks to their experience—are what sustain the creative journey. The innovation serves not just artistic ambition but human connection.
In the end, Vuong’s creative approach challenges us to expand our understanding of what counts as good writing. It asks us to consider whether our standards might need updating to accommodate new voices and new forms. And it reminds us that literature’s greatest strength has always been its capacity to evolve, to include, to surprise.
The Unwritten Rules of How Stories Get Told
We grow up learning there’s a proper way to tell a story. Beginning, middle, end. Clear protagonist. Rising action. Resolution. These conventions become so ingrained that we rarely question whether they’re the only way—or even the best way—to capture human experience.
Then someone like Virginia Woolf comes along and asks: Is that really how consciousness works? Do our thoughts arrive in neat paragraphs with topic sentences? Her stream-of-consciousness technique in works like Mrs. Dalloway wasn’t just stylistic experimentation; it was an attempt to represent the actual texture of human awareness—the way one thought triggers another seemingly unrelated memory, how sensory details interrupt linear narration.
Faulkner took this further in The Sound and the Fury, employing multiple narrators with disjointed timelines, forcing readers to actively piece together the narrative rather than passively receive it. He trusted readers enough to do the work, to sit with confusion until clarity emerged organically. These writers weren’t being difficult for difficulty’s sake; they were responding to the increasing complexity of modern consciousness.
Today, Penguin Random House maintains an entire section dedicated to experimental fiction, recognizing that these boundary-pushing works aren’t marginal curiosities but vital contributions to literary evolution. Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown turns the reader into the protagonist through second-person narration. David Levithan’s The Lover’s Dictionary constructs a relationship through dictionary entries rather than chronological scenes. George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo creates a chorus of ghostly voices that collectively tell a story no single narrator could capture.
Perhaps most famously, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves uses typographical experimentation—text running upside down, sideways, in boxes—to physically manifest the disorientation of its characters. The book became a cult classic not despite its difficulty but because of it; the reading experience itself mirrored the novel’s themes of uncertainty and perceptual collapse.
Ocean Vuong’s placement on this experimental list makes perfect sense when viewed through this tradition. His vignette-style narrative in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous follows emotional logic rather than plot logic. Scenes connect through thematic resonance rather than causal relationship. The English language itself becomes pliable in his hands, bending to accommodate the rhythms of Vietnamese speech patterns and the fragmented nature of memory.
This approach divides readers dramatically. Some find it frustratingly unstructured; others find it more authentic than traditional narrative. The criticism that the novel “doesn’t have a plot” misses the point entirely—it has something else instead: a emotional throughline that carries more weight than mere events could.
Reader response theory suggests that we don’t simply extract meaning from texts but actively create meaning through the reading process. Experimental literature demands more participation from readers, requiring us to become co-creators of meaning rather than passive consumers. This might explain why such works often develop devoted followings; the mental effort invested creates deeper engagement and personal connection.
The market validation of experimental works shouldn’t be overlooked. Vuong’s novel sold over a million copies despite—or perhaps because of—its unconventional structure. House of Leaves has remained in continuous print for over two decades, spawning online communities dedicated to unpacking its mysteries. These aren’t obscure academic exercises; they’re living, breathing works that continue to find audiences hungry for something beyond conventional storytelling.
Literary awards have increasingly recognized such innovation. The Man Booker Prize shortlisted Saunders’ experimental Lincoln in the Bardo, while the National Book Award nomination for Vuong’s debut signaled institutional recognition of his narrative approach. This isn’t to suggest that experimental work always deserves praise simply for being different—but that difference alone shouldn’t disqualify it from serious consideration.
What often gets lost in debates about experimental literature is the question of appropriateness of form to content. Vuong’s fragmented style mirrors the fragmented nature of immigrant identity, the way memory works in trauma, the distance between a son and his illiterate mother. A conventionally plotted novel might have told the same story, but it wouldn’t have felt the same way.
The resistance to experimental forms often masks a deeper discomfort with being made to feel uncertain, with having to work for understanding. Traditional narrative provides the comfort of predictability; we know how it works, where it’s going, what’s expected of us as readers. Experimental writing asks us to surrender that security and trust the writer to take us somewhere worthwhile, even if the path isn’t clearly marked.
There’s room for all types of storytelling, of course. Not every work needs to reinvent narrative form. But the literary ecosystem requires innovation to remain vital, just as forests require new growth to stay healthy. The writers who challenge conventions today expand possibilities for everyone who follows, creating space for future voices that might not fit existing molds.
When we encounter writing that confuses or frustrates us, perhaps the question shouldn’t be “Is this good writing?” but “What is this writing trying to do that conventional writing cannot?” The answer might still be that it doesn’t succeed—but we’ll have asked a better question.
The Ecosystem of Creation in Digital Age
We’re living through a peculiar moment in literary history, one where algorithms have become the uninvited critics in every writer’s studio. The quiet struggle to shape sentences that matter now happens against the constant hum of digital judgment, where engagement metrics often outweigh artistic merit in determining what gets seen and what disappears into oblivion.
This algorithmic environment favors conflict over nuance, simplicity over complexity, immediate reaction over thoughtful consideration. Writing that challenges, experiments, or makes readers uncomfortable often gets punished by systems designed to maximize time-on-site through easily digestible content. The very mechanisms that should help diverse voices find audiences instead frequently reinforce conventional patterns and punish innovation.
What happens to experimental fiction when the digital gatekeepers prioritize content that confirms rather than challenges? How does a writer maintain faith in their vision when the immediate feedback suggests they’re speaking into a void or, worse, attracting the wrong kind of attention?
Navigating the Psychological Landscape
Every writer I know has faced that moment of hesitation before checking notifications, that visceral tightening in the stomach when confronting the possibility of public dismissal. The digital age has amplified this ancient anxiety, transforming what was once occasional criticism into a potential deluge of instant feedback.
There’s no magic solution to developing thick skin, but there are practices that help. Many successful writers I’ve spoken with maintain what they call “creative insulation”—periods of focused work where they deliberately avoid external validation or criticism. They write first for themselves, then for their ideal reader, and only finally for the unpredictable crowd.
Some keep what a novelist friend calls “the evidence file”—a collection of meaningful messages from readers whose lives were touched by their work, positive reviews that felt particularly understanding, reminders that their writing reached someone. When the noise becomes overwhelming, they return to this evidence that their work matters to real people beyond the metrics.
The healthiest creators I know maintain what I’ve come to think of as “permeable boundaries”—open enough to learn from thoughtful criticism but closed enough to protect their creative core from those who would damage rather than construct.
The Ethics of Engagement
We’ve all witnessed literary discussions devolve into personal attacks, seen valid criticism morph into character assassination. This isn’t just unpleasant—it fundamentally changes what’s possible in our cultural conversations about literature.
Thoughtful criticism elevates the entire literary ecosystem by creating spaces for meaningful dialogue about what writing can do and be. It respects the work while challenging it, understands context while pushing for growth. The destructive criticism we too often see today serves only to silence voices and narrow possibilities.
As readers and writers, we have more power than we realize to shape these norms. We can choose to engage with work we dislike thoughtfully rather than destructively. We can question our own reactions—am I dismissing this because it’s truly unsuccessful, or because it challenges my expectations? We can model the kind of engagement we want to see, remembering that behind every book is a human being who risked something to put those words into the world.
From Isolation to Community
The most heartening development I’ve witnessed in recent years is the growing number of writers moving from seeing themselves as solitary competitors to recognizing themselves as part of an ecosystem. They’re creating networks of mutual support, sharing resources, and defending each other’s right to create challenging work.
This shift from scarcity mindset to abundance mentality might be our most powerful defense against the corrosive effects of digital criticism. When we understand that another writer’s success doesn’t diminish our opportunities but expands what’s possible for all of us, we become less susceptible to the divisive tactics of rage-based algorithms.
Several writing communities have developed what they call “critical response processes”—structured methods for giving feedback that begins with identifying what’s working before moving to questions and suggestions. These approaches maintain respect for the creator’s vision while offering meaningful engagement. They recognize that most writing isn’t good or bad but at various stages of becoming what it wants to be.
Reclaiming the Narrative
Ultimately, the most radical act available to writers today might be the reclamation of their own narrative about what constitutes success. When external validation systems become distorted, we must develop internal compasses guided by different questions: Is this work true to my vision? Does it risk something meaningful? Might it connect with even one reader who needs exactly these words?
The writers who thrive in this environment often share a quality that’s difficult to quantify but easy to recognize: they’ve made peace with the fact that some people will misunderstand their work, that some will actively dislike it, and that this doesn’t necessarily reflect on the work’s value. They write from a place of conviction rather than seeking approval, understanding that meaningful writing often polarizes because it touches something real.
This doesn’t mean ignoring feedback or refusing to grow. It means developing the discernment to distinguish between criticism that helps the work become more itself and criticism that seeks to make it something else entirely. It means remembering that every innovative writer in history faced resistance, that new forms always feel uncomfortable before they feel inevitable.
The digital landscape might feel like hostile territory for serious writing, but it’s also filled with readers hungry for work that challenges and transforms them. They might be harder to find amid the noise, but they’re there—waiting for sentences that risk something, that trust them enough to demand their full attention, that offer not escape but deeper engagement with what it means to be human.
Our task isn’t to defeat the algorithms but to remember that they’re measuring the wrong things. They can track clicks and shares and time spent, but they cannot measure the quiet moment when a reader puts down a book and sees the world differently. They cannot quantify the sentence that echoes in someone’s mind for years. They cannot capture the private transformation that occurs when language reaches past our defenses and touches something essential.
These things remain unmeasurable, and therefore free. They belong to the ancient conversation between writers and readers that began long before algorithms and will continue long after they’re forgotten. Our work is to keep faith with that conversation, to write as if what we’re saying matters—not because the digital world confirms it, but because we know it does.
The Unfinished Book and the Unfinished Conversation
That library book still sits on my shelf, a bookmark frozen in time about halfway through. Some books we don’t finish not because they’re not good, but because they’re too good at exactly the wrong moment. Ocean Vuong’s novel became that for me—a conversation I wasn’t ready to have with a stranger about the most intimate of relationships.
Years have passed since I slid that book through the return slot. The world kept spinning through pandemics and protests, through personal losses and small victories. I kept writing, kept reading, kept living. The algorithms kept feeding me content designed to provoke reaction rather than reflection. And through it all, that unfinished book remained a quiet presence in the back of my mind.
Then came the storm of criticism against Vuong’s second novel, and I found myself thinking not about the quality of his writing, but about the quality of our discourse. The internet had done what it does best—turned art into ammunition, transformed nuance into battle lines, and reduced a human being’s life work to like/dislike binary.
Which brings me back to his poetry, specifically that haunting piece from Night Sky with Exit Wounds. There’s something about the image of pulling a father from the water, of knuckles carving trails that waves rush to erase, that stays with you. The bullet hole brimming with seawater, the green bottle containing a year never touched—these aren’t just pretty phrases. They’re emotional mathematics, compressing entire lifetimes of loss into handfuls of words.
What strikes me now isn’t whether Vuong’s writing is “good” or “bad” by some arbitrary standard. What matters is that it makes people feel something deeply enough to either defend it passionately or attack it viciously. In an age of endless content and diminishing attention, that emotional response might be the highest compliment literature can receive.
The most highlighted line in his novel—”Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey”—takes on new meaning in this context. We’ve created a digital ecosystem where everyone is both hunter and prey, where criticism becomes predation, and freedom means maintaining just enough distance to avoid being caught in the crossfire.
But here’s what I’ve come to understand about writing and criticism in the algorithmic age: the same mechanisms that amplify outrage can also amplify beauty. The same platforms that spread vitriol can connect readers across continents with stories that change their understanding of what’s possible in literature. The problem isn’t the technology; it’s how we choose to inhabit it.
Vuong’s mother never got to see her son’s novel published, but she got to sit in those poetry readings, turning her chair to watch white people clap for her illiterate son who became a writer. There’s something profoundly beautiful in that image—a woman who pronounced “beach” as “bitch” now witnessing her child master a language so completely that he could bend it to his will, could make it express things native speakers never imagined.
Maybe that’s what experimental writing really is—not just challenging literary conventions, but challenging power structures. Not just playing with form, but questioning who gets to decide what counts as “good” writing in the first place.
I still haven’t finished On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Some part of me wants to keep it suspended in that state of potential, that middle ground between beginning and end where all possibilities remain open. Maybe I’ll finish it tomorrow. Maybe I never will. The choice feels significant in a world that constantly demands definitive opinions and instant judgments.
What I have done is order his poetry collection. There’s something about the spareness of poetry that feels like an antidote to the noise—each poem a small island of quiet in an ocean of shouting.
As writers and readers, we’re all navigating uncharted waters. The algorithms want to categorize us, the attention economy wants to monetize our emotions, and the cultural discourse often feels like it’s losing its capacity for nuance. But the beautiful thing about literature is that it stubbornly refuses to be reduced to simple binaries. A book can be both flawed and brilliant. A writer can be both pretentious and profound. A reader can be both critical and compassionate.
Perhaps the most radical act in this environment is simply to remain open—to acknowledge that some conversations are too complex to be settled by likes or shares, some artworks too multifaceted to be rated out of five stars. To understand that sometimes the most honest response to a piece of writing is not a definitive judgment, but a thoughtful silence.
That library book taught me that some stories meet us exactly where we are, even if where we are isn’t ready for them. The criticism taught me that art always exists in relationship to its culture, even when that relationship is contentious. And the poetry taught me that sometimes the most powerful statements are the ones that acknowledge all they cannot say.
I don’t know where the future of writing is heading. I don’t know if algorithms will eventually learn to appreciate ambiguity or if attention spans will continue shrinking until novels become impossible. But I do know that as long as people keep trying to translate their humanity into words, and as long as other people keep trying to understand those words, something essential will endure.
The conversation about what makes writing “good” will continue, as it should. But perhaps we can expand that conversation to include not just technical proficiency, but emotional honesty. Not just market success, but cultural impact. Not just critical acclaim, but human connection.
That copy of Night Sky with Exit Wounds arrived yesterday. I haven’t opened it yet. For now, I’m content to let it sit on my desk, a promise of future conversations, a reminder that some things are worth approaching slowly, without predetermined conclusions, with room for surprise.
After all, the most interesting stories are often the ones we haven’t finished yet.
