Earnestness as Survival, Irony as Armor: Notes from Ocean Vuong's London Talk

26th May 2026, Emmauel Centre, London

【注：本文档对话内容与中文翻译由 AI 辅助听写、提取与排版。纯私人记录使用。】 Part I: Summary • 文学的民主化与权威消解：BookTok 摧毁了传统文学的阶级壁垒。文学品味的“塑造权（Taste-making）”被交还给了普通读者，阅读不再需要精英机构的盖章认证。 • 佛教生死观与“遗留物”的超脱：人生如同暂住的旅馆，书籍则是顺流而下的木筏。创作者必须留在岸上，不能被自己过往的作品困住。 • AI 的冷漠与人类存在的偶然性：艺术的真正震撼力来自具体历史境遇下的人类肉身经验（如经历核爆创伤的宫崎骏，或底层出身的詹姆斯）。AI 永远无法复制这种带着创伤与挣扎的“人类问题解决过程”。 • 平装本的物质性：书在完全可及时才处于最佳状态。平装本是知识的终极民主化。 • 真诚是生存本能，反讽是阶级特权：精英阶级将“冷漠”包装成智力优越感的表演，用“反讽（Irony）”作为防御连接的盔甲。而对于底层工人阶级来说，真诚不是一种选择，而是唯一的生存模式。 • 伟大美国小说的神话：所谓“伟大的美国小说”只是一种国家建构的营销工具。真正的美国叙事发生在边缘，发生在两个不同大陆的难民于美甲店或工厂里的相遇。 • 书写暴力的伦理克制：反战文学的挑战在于不把苦难写成供人消费的“奇观（Spectacle）”，而应将笔触锚定在废墟之上的“人类韧性”与余波。 Part II: Transcript （中文部分由AI翻译，错漏还请指正。） Ocean Vuong & Jack Edwards: Interview Transcript

【Host】

Welcome, Ocean Vuong.

欢迎，Ocean Vuong。

【Ocean Vuong】

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to share this space with you. I think especially what you've done to democratize literature and reading for people across the world. And in a way, to me, spearheaded BookTok as a new mode of influence in taste-making. I think for the first time in our species, we have never had until now taste-making in literature truly in the hands of readers. Gatekeepers have almost been influences throughout literary history. Governments, authoritarian machines have been influences. And for the first time, somebody anywhere with access to a phone and Wi-Fi could speak their mind with an intellect, a curiosity, a charm that could be shared. It's really exciting to see where it takes us. I just thank you for being a part of it. I think it breaks down a really important class barrier for what is legible and what is possible to be read with dignity and without institutional verification. It means a lot to me as someone who comes outside of so many institutions growing up to see what is possible now with folks like yourself and many people doing this work.

非常感谢邀请。能与你共享这个空间是我的荣幸。特别是你为全世界读者的文学和阅读民主化所做出的贡献。对我而言，你在某种程度上引领了 BookTok 成为一种全新的品味塑造影响力模式。我认为这是人类历史上第一次，文学品味的决定权真正掌握在了读者手中。纵观文学史，一直是守门人（Gatekeepers）在施加影响，政府和极权机器在施加影响。而这是第一次，任何一个只要有手机和 Wi-Fi 的人，都可以用他们的智慧、好奇心和魅力来表达自己的想法并进行分享。看到这一切将把我们带向何方真的令人兴奋。我感谢你成为其中的一部分。我认为它打破了一个非常重要的阶级壁垒，重新定义了什么是值得被有尊严地阅读的，而不再需要体制机构的认证。作为一个从小游离于众多体制之外的人，看到像你这样的人以及许多正在做这项工作的人所创造的可能，对我来说意义深远。

【Host】

I appreciate that. I did not expect an Ocean Vuong being defensive of BookTok! But something to note is that a book like 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous', that book predates BookTok, and yet finds itself in a bookshop under a sign that says 'As seen on BookTok'. Does that link mean anything to you, or are you just celebrating it?

我很感激。我真没想到 Ocean Vuong 会这么坚定地捍卫 BookTok！但值得注意的是，像《On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous》这本书早在 BookTok 出现之前就出版了，可现在它却挂着“BookTok 推荐”的牌子出现在书店里。这种关联对你来说有什么特殊意义吗？还是你只是单纯为此感到高兴？

【Ocean Vuong】

I don't know what it means. I'm very lazy to share about my work. I was asked a couple nights ago, how would you like to be remembered? And I think as a Buddhist, I don't think about legacy at all. The very useful metaphor for Buddhists is that our life is like a hotel room. You eventually have to leave it and you try your best not to leave it in a mess. The work that you do, the books that you make will be placed neatly on the desk and maybe the maid comes and sweeps it right into the bin as soon as you walk down the hall, as soon as your soul floats. So I think while we are here, you do what you can. But it's important to see the book as a technology. You put it on a raft and then the technology of the book and publication floats the raft down the river and the writer has to stay on the shore. You don't want to be trapped on your own book because you can't make a new book. To me, I just send four rafts down the river and I have to stay here. It's a rigorous exercise in the ego and the lack of attachment to the self. That's more important to me, that practice, than being a writer, whatever that may be. I don't see being a writer as an altar. It's more like a performance. I have written, but right now, I don't see myself as a writer. I'm not writing anything. I don't have anything at all. And that form of clarity is all there is. That's a really good run. That's a really lucky run. So I don't know what BookTok or any talk means, but I love this era because I see the excitement young people have. My only regret, I have a sadness—my only regret is that this is coinciding with AI. I wish for this democratization of taste-making to have had a little longer run before it hits this intersection of AI. I would like to see a few more decades, maybe even half a millennium of what would happen if literature was taste-making as it is now.

我不知道那意味着什么。我对分享自己的作品很懒散。前几天晚上有人问我，你想如何被世人铭记？作为一个佛教徒，我根本不考虑所谓的“遗产（legacy）”。对佛教徒来说一个很有用的比喻是，我们的生命就像一间临时的旅馆房间。你终究是要离开的，你尽力不把它弄得一团糟。你所做的工作、你写的书，会被整齐地摆放在桌子上，也许你刚走过走廊，灵魂刚刚飘走，保洁员就会过来把它们统统扫进垃圾桶。所以我觉得，当我们还在的时候，尽力去做你能做的。但重要的是，要把书看作是一种技术载体。你把它放在木筏上，出版物的技术让木筏顺流而下，而作家必须留在岸上。你不能被困在自己的书里，因为一旦被困住，你就写不出新书了。对我而言，我只是放了四只木筏顺流而下，然后我必须留在这里。这是一项对于消解自我和破除执念的严酷修行。这种修行对我来说，比做一个“作家”（不管作家意味着什么）更重要。我不认为做作家是处于神坛之上，它更像是一种表演。我以前写过，但现在，我不把自己看作作家。我什么都没写。我一无所有。这种极致的纯粹就是我现在的一切。这已经是一段非常美好、非常幸运的旅程了。所以我不知道 BookTok 意味着什么，但我喜欢这个时代，因为我看到了年轻人的热情。我唯一的遗憾，也是我的悲哀——唯一的遗憾是这一切与 AI 的爆发撞车了。我真希望这种品味塑造的民主化能再持续久一点，再去迎头撞上 AI 时代的十字路口。我多希望能再看几十年，甚至半个世纪，看看如果文学品味继续按照现在这样被普通读者塑造，世界会变成什么样。

【Host】

As a literature professor, the one thing I fear is AI becoming unidentifiable. Do you think that your students and also people within the profession are able to recognize signs of AI?

作为文学教授，我担忧的一点是 AI 变得无法识别。你认为你的学生以及业内人士能认出 AI 生成的痕迹吗？

【Ocean Vuong】

I don't think it's about recognition because the technology will change. It will eventually get indiscernible. It also depends on who. I've seen people run programs on Emily Dickinson's work because there's such a robust body in the open market, and it does decently well because there's a lot of it to study from. I don't think it's about recognition or catching it. It's really, to me, a philosophical spiritual question of: is that valuable? Because to me, the technology of the sentence, the wonder is that it becomes the vehicle to test human consciousness. And if you offload that to a machine, you offload a major portion of humanity from which we have uploaded our greatest civilization. So the question is an existential one, do we want to give that away? Because I think there's a lot to be said about publishing and being an author. And some authors might see, 'Oh, let me do it easier, let me avoid the pain and whatever, easier finish the work, get an ISBN, make a deal.' Sure, there are plenty of reasons already in human history for taking the easier way out. But to me, the greatest reward of being a writer is drafting, because you have a thought, you have a desire, and then you enact it using this organic system called syntax that we have collectively consented to some extent. And then you watch your consciousness manifest through this synchronous mechanism. So when you're writing a sentence, you're kind of writing the thumbprint of yourself manifesting linguistically. But unlike the thumbprint, it's inexhaustible. The wonder of that consciousness made felt and then shareable. Why would you give that away? Why would you deny yourself that? And so, if you want to use the technology to intentionally offload yourself out of the equation, then you miss the point of dreaming and thinking in the first place. And so the greatest loss is the 'author' using this.

我不认为这是关于辨认的问题，因为技术会进化，最终它会变得无法区分。这也取决于对象。我见过人们用艾米莉·狄金森的作品运行 AI 程序，因为她在公开市场上有如此庞大的语料库，AI 学得相当不错，因为它有足够多的东西可供学习。所以我觉得重点不在于识别或抓住它。对我来说，这真正是一个哲学和精神层面的问题：那有价值吗？因为对我来说，句子的技术，其奇妙之处在于它成为了测试人类意识的载体。如果你把这个过程外包给机器，你就外包掉了人性中极其重要的一部分——我们正是基于这一部分建立了我们最伟大的文明。所以这是一个存在主义问题：我们要把这个交出去吗？因为关于出版和成为作家有很多说法。有些作家可能会觉得，‘噢，让我轻松点，让我避开痛苦，轻松完成作品，拿个 ISBN 书号，签个出版合同。’当然，在人类历史上早就有无数个理由去选择捷径。但对我来说，身为作家的最大回报就是起草的过程，因为你产生了一个想法、一种渴望，然后你使用这个被我们集体约定俗成的、名为‘句法（syntax）’的有机系统将它具象化。然后你看着你的意识通过这种同步机制显现出来。所以当你写下一个句子时，你其实是用语言写下了你自己灵魂的指纹。但与真的指纹不同，它是取之不尽的。看着那种意识被感知，然后被分享出来的奇迹——你为什么要把它交出去？你为什么要剥夺自己的这种体验？因此，如果你想利用技术故意把自己从等式中剔除，那么你从一开始就错失了梦想与思考的意义。所以，真正的巨大损失，在于‘创作者’去使用它。

【Ocean Vuong】

And I think what becomes really felt is not so much the work, but the fact that a human being didn't make it. This became true years ago. AI appropriated aesthetics. You saw all those images, right? They generate cartoons of yourself within seconds. But why did it suddenly feel so cold? Why did it not last when it felt magical in such a momentary way? Why are people still watching Miyazaki's films? Because Hayao Miyazaki was a human being who was historically contingent to his times, coming out of a failed Japanese fascist empire after the wake of two nuclear bombs dropped on his people. And he was attempting to solve a kind of monolithic problem, to tackle modernity, the darkest pages of that history, themes of ecological decline, consumerism, existential loss, humiliation, ethics, and the frailty of national morality. And he made it accessible to the next generation, making a charming, soft, whimsical aesthetic to talk about blood, death, and the monstrous acts of humanity using magic as a fulcrum. So you see a human being attempting to solve a human problem, and that cannot be replicated by a machine.

我认为人们真正感受到的，不在于作品本身如何，而在于‘那不是人类创作的’这一事实。这在几年前就成真了。AI 挪用了人类的审美。你见过那些 AI 生成的图像对吧？几秒钟就能生成你自己的卡通形象。但为什么它突然感觉如此冰冷？为什么它明明在一瞬间让人觉得很神奇，却无法持久？为什么人们今天依然在看宫崎骏的电影？因为宫崎骏是一个活生生的人，他受到他所处时代的历史境遇的影响——他从一个战败的日本法西斯帝国中走出来，经历了两次落在同胞头上的核弹创伤。他试图去解决一个庞大的命题：探讨现代性、那段历史最黑暗的篇章、生态衰退、消费主义、存在主义的丧失、屈辱、伦理，以及国家道德的脆弱。他把它变得让下一代人可以接受，创造了一种迷人、柔软、异想天开的美学，以魔法为支点，去讲述鲜血、死亡以及人类的残暴行径。因此，你看到的是一个人类在试图解决属于人类的问题，那是机器绝对无法复制的。

【Ocean Vuong】

And this became more true when I visited a high school recently and the kids were showing me this program called Suno. You can ask it to make music and you can say something like, 'Do early 2000s hip hop, but with country lyrics,' or what have you. And it comes out. It takes like 30 seconds and it shoots it out. And it's good. It sounded good. They're all cheering, right? They started to make up a rapper. They wrote all these things. So they invented a persona, a rapper. I think his name was Lil Eazy or something. He's like a bearded kid who realizes he's actually a rapper. So they wrote all these beautiful personas and they played it and they're all cheering for Lil Eazy like this is Lil Eazy's album. And I'm sitting there and suddenly I felt the supreme vacuum of it all. But Lil Eazy is not here. He'll never be here. We are manifesting the art without the artist at all. And suddenly I had this moment of severe grief that, oh gosh, the music is so good, I wish all this was true. I wish he was here to have manifested it. And it wasn't just the result of technocrats harvesting and destroying the planet with water coolers. And suddenly I was immediately mourning it. And when I brought it up to them, they kind of deflated as well. And so the awe of it suddenly went away and it was just like, 'Oh, it's neat.' But we don't have a historic human being solving human problems, even if it's created. And it suddenly felt as empty as a tin can, which is what it was.

最近我去参观一所高中，孩子们向我展示了一个叫做 Suno 的程序，这就显得更加真实了。你可以要求它制作音乐，你可以说，“给我来一段 2000 年代早期的嘻哈音乐，但要配上乡村音乐的歌词”，或者别的什么。然后它就出来了。大概只花 30 秒就生成了。而且很好听。听起来确实不错。他们都在欢呼，对吧？他们甚至开始虚构一个说唱歌手。他们写下了所有的背景设定，发明了一个名为 Lil Eazy 的说唱歌手人设。像是一个长着胡子的孩子突然发现自己其实是个说唱歌手。他们写下了这些漂亮的人设，播放那首歌，所有人都在为 Lil Eazy 欢呼，就好像这真的是 Lil Eazy 的专辑一样。而我坐在那里，突然感到了一种极度的空虚。Lil Eazy 并不存在。他永远也不会出现在这里。我们在展现艺术，却完全没有艺术家。突然之间，我感到一阵强烈的悲哀：天哪，这音乐真好听，我多希望这一切都是真实的。我多希望他真的存在并创作了它。而不是技术官僚们用液冷服务器消耗并破坏着地球的产物。突然之间，我立即开始为之哀悼。当我向孩子们点出这一点时，他们也像泄了气的皮球一样。于是，那种敬畏感瞬间消失了，一切变得就像是：“哦，挺酷的。”但我们没有一个深处历史境遇中的人类来解决人类的问题。它突然让人觉得就像一个空易拉罐一样空洞——事实上它就是。

【Ocean Vuong】

And similarly, now we're having robots who can dunk in a basketball court. And I think the only interesting thing about it is conceptually, 'Oh, human beings created a robot.' Beyond that, what LeBron James does in the arena, you're stunned because it's a human being who grew up in Akron, Ohio, raised by a single mom, who manifested through hard work this tradition of basketball to elevate one's life in a capitalistic country founded on slavery. That is the contingency. That's interesting. And it's endlessly compelling, the fact that he's still doing it at 41, etc. But taking a machine to do it is instantly dead because it was never alive. And so I think it's less about recognizing what's real and what's not, but having a real existential question as readers, as consumers: Do I want this?

同样的，现在我们有了能在篮球场上扣篮的机器人。我觉得这事唯一有趣的地方在于概念层面：“噢，人类造了一个机器人”。但除此之外，勒布朗·詹姆斯在球场上的表现之所以让你震撼，是因为他是一个在俄亥俄州阿克伦长大、由单亲妈妈抚养的真实人类，他通过艰苦的努力，在这个建立在奴隶制基础上的资本主义国家里，发扬了篮球的传统，从而提升了自己的人生。这就是历史的偶然性。这才是吸引人的。他到了41岁还在打球，这事实让人永远为之惊叹。但如果让一台机器来做，那种震撼瞬间就死了，因为机器从未活过。所以我认为，这已经不再是去分辨真假的问题，而是作为读者和消费者，我们需要面对的一个真正的存在主义问题：我真的想要这东西吗？

【Host】

This room is filled with readers who enjoy your stories. You spoke about the four rafts you put out down the river. They have made it down the River Thames as well. So I wanted to ask in this room for a show of hands, how many of you have read 'On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous'? Okay, what about the poetry? And how many have read 'The Emperor of Gladness'? Okay, none of you, good job, because I made it up. We've now reached the paperback release here in the UK of 'Time Is a Mother'. How do you feel about a paperback novel?

这个房间里坐满了喜欢你故事的读者。你刚才提到了你放进河里的四只木筏。它们也漂流到了泰晤士河。所以我想请在座的各位举手表决一下，你们中有多少人读过《大地上我们转瞬即逝的绚烂》？好的，那诗集呢？又有多少人读过《The Emperor of Gladness》？好的，一个都没有，干得漂亮，因为那是我瞎编的书名。我们现在迎来了《Time is a Mother》在英国的平装本发行。你对平装本小说有什么感觉？

【Ocean Vuong】

To me, I only consume paperbacks. My hands are so small. And also as a student, like I'm a forever student, there's nothing like that back pocket fold to walk with a paperback. There's something really sentimental about it. I could only afford paperbacks when I was very young. To me, my most perennial bookshop was the charity shop, as you call it here. Oxfam, you call it too. You were at the mercy of the detritus of the community. But it was completely brilliant. You would have The Babysitters Club, you'd have J.K. Rowling, you would have culinary books, and then you had The Iliad. The greatest education for me was going into those cheap paperback productions and literally putting this source of power, this portal in your pocket and knowing that it can live with you. There's something so tender and true to that. To me, a book is not really out until it's in the handbag. It's also better for students, for syllabuses. I don't assign hardcovers on my syllabus because, despite my publisher, I don't think a book should cost $35. I know that's just how the economy works, but the paperback price is one that I truly believe in.

对我来说，我只读平装本。因为我的手太小了。而且作为一个学生——就像我是一个永远的学生——没有什么比把平装本折起来塞进后口袋里边走边读更棒的事了。这有一种非常深的情结。我小的时候只买得起平装本。对我来说，我最常去的书店就是慈善商店（charity shop），也就是你们这里说的乐施会（Oxfam）。你在那里买什么，完全取决于社区居民捐赠的废弃物。但这绝对是一件精彩的事。你会找到《保姆俱乐部》、J.K.罗琳的书、烹饪食谱，然后你还能找到《伊利亚特》。对我来说，最棒的教育就是走进那些廉价的平装本书堆里，字面意义上地把这种力量的源泉、这扇传送门塞进你的口袋，并知道它可以与你共存。这其中有一种非常温柔而真实的东西。对我来说，一本书直到它能被塞进手提包里，才算真正出版了。平装本对学生和课程大纲也更友好。我从来不在我的课程大纲里指定精装书，因为尽管我的出版商可能不高兴，但我认为一本书真的不应该卖到 35 美元。我知道这就是经济规律，但平装本的定价才是我真正信仰的。

【Host】

Thank you for building your book club around it. It's much more politically charged than we like to think. It's also the go-to method of publishing poetry, which is the cornerstone of my life. There are many things people refer to me as, but I think 'poet' is the truest sense of myself. With the root of poet being 'maker,' I think at our best, we're all poets. We're making something, even if it's not literature or what have you. A mother, father, brother at home, someone who makes things.

谢谢你围绕平装本建立你的读书俱乐部。这其实比我们以为的更具政治意味。平装本也是出版诗歌的首选方式，而诗歌是我生命的基石。人们给我贴了很多标签，但我认为“诗人（poet）”才是我最真实的自我。考虑到 poet 的词根是“创造者（maker）”，我认为在我们状态最好的时候，我们都是诗人。我们都在创造着什么，哪怕它不是文学。家里的母亲、父亲、兄弟，任何一个创造事物的人都是诗人。

【Host】

I don't think I would have a career if it weren't for the Oxfam on Kentish Town Road, one of my favorites. I guess there must have been a book critic or someone who found their way to many advance copies of books and left them very kindly, patiently in the Oxfam. And I would go once a week, check what was there. And that was why I was able to start making content online about new release books. So with the book club, we chose to always focus on paperback books. Now I'm sure some of the people in this room have been anxiously waiting for this book to be released in paperback so that they could read it too. For the uninitiated, would you mind introducing the premise of The Emperor of Gladness?

如果不是因为肯蒂什镇路（Kentish Town Road）上的那家 Oxfam（我最爱的一家），我想我都不会有今天的职业生涯。我猜那里附近肯定住着某位书评人，或者某个能拿到很多新书预读本的人，他们非常善良且耐心地把书捐到了 Oxfam。我以前每周都会去一次，看看有什么新货。这就是为什么我能在网上开始制作关于新书发布的内容。所以在我们的读书俱乐部，我们总是选择专注平装本。我相信这个房间里肯定也有人一直在焦急地等待这本书出平装版，好买来阅读。对于还没读过的读者，你介意介绍一下《The Emperor of Gladness》的背景设定吗？

【Ocean Vuong】

Well, it's a book about intergenerational friendship. I think so much of at least American fiction is about the love inside of a nuclear family or eros between two lovers. A lot of queer fiction is about two people falling in love, which is a natural way to think through it. But I wanted to write about love that is not even found or deliberate, but circumstantial, accidental. Can love come out of obligation, civic, communal work? It's something that has been haunting me ever since I took my first classics class as an undergraduate. My classics professor laid down the Iliad and the Odyssey and he said these are two very divergent texts that created the Western canon in many ways. It's really interesting that the Odyssey seems to have prevailed. It seems to have prevailed as the marketable raison d'être for Western storytelling: one man's journey to reclaim his wife. It's really interesting how that is favored in patriarchal cultures. But I think the Iliad has kind of fallen to the wayside for the most part in popular imagination because it's a harder sell. It's a civic text. It's really about ethics and reciprocal bonds. What you owe someone because of what their ancestors have done for your ancestors. So when characters are introduced, they are introduced via a series of debts. Every character has a parenthetical civic obligation. It's an ensemble cast, a crew. And the war starts in media res. So it's not really about winners and losers. It's about the tragedy of violence and, to me, survival, acts of generosity that are not always quantifiable, and then errors based on ego and vengeance, particularly the story of Achilles and Patroclus. That really stuck with me. I didn't know how to orchestrate it in any of my books until this book. I wanted to write a book about reciprocal bonds that did not involve these socially obligatory modes of love. These are two intergenerational strangers who find this uncanny reciprocal civic duty. Society didn't tell them they had to care for each other, but they found it themselves. I've been constantly haunted, perhaps forever drawn to that premise from the Iliad. I'm not saying that I'm writing anything close to that, but that project, that so much of American storytelling has fallen to the wayside in favor of an Odyssey-like Hero's Journey, was something really interesting to me and, quite frankly, really moving.

嗯，这是一部关于跨代际友谊的小说。我认为，至少美国小说中很大一部分是关于核心家庭内部的爱，或者是两个恋人之间的爱欲。很多酷儿小说也是关于两个人坠入爱河的，这是一种很自然的切入方式。但我想写一种甚至不是刻意寻找或设计的爱，而是一种受环境驱使的、偶然的爱。爱能从责任、从公民的、社区的劳动中产生吗？自从我本科上第一堂古典文学课起，这个问题就一直萦绕在我的心头。我的古典学教授把《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》摆出来，他说这是两部极其不同的文本，在很多方面塑造了西方正典。很有趣的是，《奥德赛》似乎占据了上风。它似乎成了西方故事体系里最具市场价值的生存理由：一个男人夺回妻子的旅程。在父权文化中它如此受青睐，这真的很耐人寻味。但我认为《伊利亚特》在很大程度上被大众的想象力边缘化了，因为它很难推销。它是一部公民文本。它真正探讨的是伦理和互惠的纽带。你欠某人什么，是因为他们的祖先曾为你的祖先做过什么。因此，当引入人物时，是通过一系列的债务来介绍的。每一个角色都有着附带的公民义务。这是一出群像戏，一个团队。战争是从半途（in media res）直接开始的。所以它真的不在于谁输谁赢。它关乎暴力的悲剧，对我来说，它关乎生存、关乎那些无法量化的慷慨之举，以及基于自负和复仇犯下的错误，特别是阿喀琉斯和帕特罗克洛斯的故事。那深深震撼了我。在写这本书之前，我一直不知道如何在自己的作品中编排它。我想写一本关于互惠纽带的书，这种纽带不涉及那种社会强制规定的爱。这是两个有着年龄代沟的陌生人，他们发现了一种不可思议的、互惠的公民责任。社会并没有规定他们必须互相照顾，但他们自己找到了这种羁绊。我一直被《伊利亚特》的那个设定所萦绕，也许会永远受其吸引。我不是说我写的东西能和它媲美，而是那个文学项目本身——那么多美国故事都为了追求《奥德赛》式的“英雄之旅”而被边缘化——这对我来说真的非常有趣，坦率地说，也非常动人。

【Host】

So we have these two characters who meet each other and they're different ages. One is coming from a very youthful perspective on the world, and one is closer to the end of her life. What I find really interesting too is that they're also two immigrants encountering America in different ways. One is a refugee from Lithuania, the other is from a Vietnamese family. So I want to ask you about that collision between those two people and how this is really an American story.

小说里我们有两个不同年龄的角色相遇了。一个带着非常年轻的视角看待世界，另一个则接近生命的尾声。我觉得非常有趣的是，他们也是两个以不同方式遭遇美国的移民。一个是来自立陶宛的难民，另一个来自越南家庭。我想问你关于这两个人之间的碰撞，以及为什么说这才是真正的美国故事？

【Ocean Vuong】

Oh, 100%. We have a quintessential Americana, particularly from Connecticut. You have John Cheever, and I love those writers just as much as anybody. But it seems like post-World War II America arrived at the same time as the upper-middle-class experiment of institutionalized creative writing in the MFA program. I say this as a product of it myself. We kind of forged a certain kind of class novel around suburban vexation, which is great, but it really dominated what fiction could be. Especially after Melville wrote Moby Dick, a book about a multiracial group of laborers on a vessel on a self-destructive quest to harness a finite resource in the whale to light the New World via mercantile or existential ambitions. It became a very prophetic book. A 19th-century novel about laborers who self-destruct chasing profit—a foretelling of 21st-century American life. We're in that now. We're on the ship now. And where does the destruction happen? I don't know, it seems quite close. And then you have Steinbeck's work about class consciousness. Somewhere along the line, we privatized the American novel. Why not have a different consideration of American lives? It is quite central to have two refugees from two different continents, 60 years apart, from two different wars in the same century, live and depend on each other in one room. Maybe that's not so much of an American story; maybe that's the human story. Perhaps the story of migration and surviving political upheaval actually outnumbers the story of suburban relaxation. Maybe suburbia is truly the niche story, and from the Iliad onwards, the story of war and violence and the attempt to heal is the more universal story.

噢，百分之百是。我们有一种典型的美国叙事，特别是康涅狄格州那种。你有像约翰·契弗（John Cheever）那样的作家，我像所有人一样热爱他们的作品。但似乎二战后的美国，与 MFA（艺术硕士）项目中中上阶层对创意写作的体制化实验是同时到来的。我作为这种体制的产物说出这番话。我们塑造了一种围绕“郊区生活烦恼”的特定阶级小说，这很棒，但它极大地主导了小说的可能性。尤其是在麦尔维尔写出《白鲸记》之后——那是一本关于一群多种族劳工在一艘船上的书，他们进行着自我毁灭式的探索，试图去驾驭鲸鱼这种有限的资源，用以照亮新世界，这背后是商业主义和存在主义的野心。它成了一本极具预言性的书。一本 19 世纪的关于劳工追逐利润而自我毁灭的小说——那是对 21 世纪美国生活的预言。我们现在就处在其中。我们现在就在那艘船上。那么毁灭发生在哪里？我不知道，似乎已经很近了。然后你还有斯坦贝克关于阶级意识的作品。但在发展过程中的某处，我们将美国小说“私有化”了。为什么不能对美国人的生活有不同的考量呢？让两个来自不同大陆的难民、相隔 60 年、经历同一世纪内两场不同的战争，住在一个房间里并相互依存，这是非常核心的体验。也许这不仅仅是一个美国故事；也许这是人类的故事。也许关于迁徙和在政治动荡中幸存的故事，在数量上其实远远超过了在郊区放松享受的故事。也许“郊区生活”才是真正的冷门小众故事，而从《伊利亚特》开始，战争、暴力以及试图治愈的故事，才是更具普世性的。

【Host】

How do you feel about the term 'The Great American Novel'? For me, this certainly feels like a contribution to that canon. You mentioned Moby Dick, you mentioned Steinbeck. I think of the books that people might call the great novel, Gatsby. To me, this feels like a great novel. It talks about the people who make the world.

你对“伟大的美国小说（The Great American Novel）”这个概念怎么看？对我来说，这（你的书）绝对算是对这一正典的贡献。你提到了《白鲸记》，提到了斯坦贝克。我想到人们可能会称为伟大美国小说的书，比如《盖茨比》。对我来说，这就感觉像是一本伟大的小说。它讲述了那些塑造这个世界的人。

【Ocean Vuong】

I always ask, why does America get a Great American Novel? What's the Great Filipino Novel? I think that's America's own branding. It's very dependent on that because its foundation is so fraught. It's built on stolen land and stolen labor. This constant declaration of greatness is part of the cycle of amnesia that the project depends upon. If it looks back too clearly or too carefully, it will see a nation founded on blood and severed roots. Maybe all nations have such histories, but America especially is dependent on that amnesia, on that sort of marketing. The first time the 'Great American Novel' was introduced to the public was in 1868 by a critic named William DeForest. He was writing right after the American Civil War, calling for a text that would suture this great wound. It was a very earnest, viable question. That coincided with a time when fiction started to become serious literary production; it was no longer just something for women at home to consume in between house chores, which is how it mainly functioned in America for much of the 18th and 19th century. So you have this question: can a text become synonymous with a country's modern times? I think it's an interesting question, but futile in execution because I don't think any one book can do it. But we often want that. It's a very American thing to want to buy one product to solve our problems and give us absolution. 'This will be the last couch you ever buy.' It makes sense that they keep searching for it. I don't think about that. I think the project of responding to who you are, whether you do it through sci-fi or fantasy, is viable. Sometimes you see a lot more of the world in George R.R. Martin than you do in any realistic American novel. The reader is allowed to come in and map themselves. And it's similar for the writer. Even if I wrote a book about another planet, complete science fiction, I think there would still be a historical consciousness arising out of a very specific Asian American perspective. So I don't think about that term. It's useful to consider, but I wouldn't hang my hat on it, mostly because I think it's unfair to the rest of literary production across the world.

我总是会问，为什么美国能拥有“伟大的美国小说”？什么是“伟大的菲律宾小说”？我认为那是美国自己的品牌包装。它非常依赖这种包装，因为它的国家根基充满了裂痕。它是建立在被盗取的土地和被掠夺的劳动力之上的。这种不断地宣称“伟大”，是这个国家项目所依赖的失忆循环的一部分。如果它回头看得太清楚或太仔细，它就会看到一个建立在鲜血和被斩断的根须之上的国家。也许所有国家都有这样的历史，但美国尤其依赖那种失忆，依赖那种营销。“伟大的美国小说”这个词第一次进入公众视野是在 1868 年，由一位名叫威廉·德福雷斯特（William DeForest）的评论家提出。他是在美国内战刚结束时写下的，呼吁需要有一部能缝合这个巨大国家创口的作品。那是一个非常真诚、可行的设问。那也正值小说开始成为严肃文学产物的时期；它不再只是家庭妇女在做家务的间隙用来消遣的东西，而在 18 和 19 世纪的美国，小说主要就是这种功能。所以你面临这样一个问题：一部文本能成为一个国家现代时代的同义词吗？我觉得这个问题很有趣，但在执行上是徒劳的，因为我不认为有任何一本书能做到。但我们总是想要那种东西。想靠购买一件产品来解决我们所有的问题并获得救赎，这是一种非常美式的思维。“这将是你买的最后一张沙发。”所以他们一直在寻找这样一本小说也就说得通了。我不去想那些。我认为去回应你到底是谁，无论你是通过科幻还是奇幻去写，都是可行的。有时候你在乔治·R·R·马丁的作品里看到的世界，比在任何现实主义的美国小说里看到的都要多。读者被允许进入其中并找到自己的位置。对作家来说也是一样。即使我写了一本关于另一个星球的纯科幻小说，我认为它依然会涌现出一种源自非常具体的亚裔美国人视角的历史意识。所以我不会去考虑那个头衔。它拿来探讨一下是有用的，但我不会把它奉为圭臬，主要是因为我觉得这对世界上其他的文学创作是不公平的。

【Host】

I suppose part of the reason the novel as a form was chosen specifically is because the timeline of the novel coming into its own coincides with modern America. So when they were trying to define themselves against art from the rest of the world, it was something that was happening in North America. I suppose the reason I think of that is because this book is set in one of these small towns. You describe it as an area where the towns are so small you could light a cigarette as you drive in, and be someplace else before you blow your drag out. I wanted to talk to you about putting these settings on the page, giving them the dignity of being written about. The establishments you write about—fast food, retail, the local store. Why is it so important for you to make sure those things are seen by us as readers on the page?

我想小说这种形式被特别选中，部分原因是因为小说的成熟期与现代美国的时间线是重合的。所以当他们试图将自己与世界其他地方的艺术区分开来时，那恰好是在北美发生的事。我想之所以提到这个，是因为这本书的背景设定在那些小镇里。你把它描述成一个很小的地方，小到你开车进去时点根烟，还没吐出一口烟圈就已经开到别的地方了。我想和你聊聊把这些背景写进书里，赋予它们被书写的尊严。你描写的那些地方——快餐店、零售店、当地的便利店。为什么确保这些事物能被读者在书页上看到，对你来说如此重要？

【Ocean Vuong】

I don't see myself as a social rectifier in society. I don't want to assume that I know more than the reader. I think a book really creatively falls apart when you can tell the writer assumes a more capacious intelligence than the reader. I think that's a fool's errand, and it's unethically unsound to assume that. I don't feel like I have a specific reader in mind. To me, the sentence is a linear technology. It's on a track. With any art that lives on a track—film as well, music—you can recalibrate the hierarchy of value. This book opens with seven pages of description before any action happens. I don't think I would have gotten away with it with my debut. An editor might sensitively say, 'Get on with it. Give people what they ask for.' But I felt like I could use the trust that I built, use my laurels if you will, to ask a reader to stay with me a while. And that's the only kind of awareness I have: if you picked up my book and are interested in it, then maybe you can trust me to stay here. When you slow down, you can build value through description. The town that I write about is a place most people would drive past and not think about at all. They might not even look up. They might only stop to get gas or unload. It's a place that I grew up in and it's quite beautiful. I wanted to be patient and build into the story by slowing down and flattening the hierarchy via description. Description is a political act. How you describe something reveals your position. I want to reveal it with a kind of beauty without dishonesty. The ugliness is within the beauty and vice versa.

我不认为自己是社会中某种进行纠偏的人。我不想去假设我比读者知道得更多。我认为当你能察觉出作者自以为拥有比读者更广阔的智慧时，一本书在创作上就彻底崩溃了。我觉得那是徒劳的，且这种预设在伦理上也是站不住脚的。我不觉得我有一个特定的目标读者群。对我来说，句子是一种线性的技术。它在轨道上运行。对于任何在轨道上运行的艺术——电影也是，音乐也是——你都可以重新校准价值的等级。这本书在发生任何动作之前，用七页纸的篇幅进行了描述。我不认为如果在我的处女作里我能侥幸过关。编辑可能会很委婉地说，‘切入正题吧。给人们他们想看的东西。’但我觉得我可以利用我已经建立起来的信任，可以说是利用我的声誉，来邀请读者和我多待一会儿。这就是我唯一的自觉：如果你拿起了我的书并且对它感兴趣，那也许你能信任我，留在这里。当你慢下来，你就能通过描述来构建价值。我笔下的小镇是大多数人会开车经过而根本不会去想的地方。他们可能都不会抬头看一眼。他们可能只是为了加油或卸货才会停下。那是我长大的地方，它其实很美。我想保持耐心，通过放慢节奏，用描述来抹平价值的等级，以此构建故事。描述是一种政治行为。你如何描述一件事物，揭示了你的立场。我想用一种不带欺骗性的美来展现它。丑陋存在于美丽之中，反之亦然。

【Ocean Vuong】

Class awareness is really important in British fiction, because the Industrial Revolution began here, and with it the idea of unionizing and workers' rights. The Romantic poets have often been depoliticized in university as these whimsical dreamers. But in fact, they retreated to the countryside as a rebellion against the factory to preserve humanity. When Shelley and Wordsworth retreated, it was an act of rebellion against the death machine. I want to focus on that, but also write a story where there is no 'rags to riches.' I don't know if I would have gotten published if this was my debut, because I remember people saying, 'You gotta give us something. They gotta escape. You can't just have poor people stay poor.' I think that's again an American principle about having our art rescue us when our policies cannot. There are more Americans, unfortunately, who are rescued in films than in actual America. We pay good money to feel good. But I wanted to do something else. I thought, what about centering economic and spiritual failures, but imbuing the people with equal value as the novel progresses in time and plot? It felt really important for me to think of this novel kind of like a sonnet—a contained, restrictive form of 14 lines that has been one of the most innovative forms in Anglo poetry, from Shakespeare to Milton, all the way to contemporary America. I knew as a poet that I was not afraid to have no outward change, because a profound internal transformation can happen within the cage. It's a restrictive form that demands innovation from you. It's a tornado in a mason jar. That challenge felt really refreshing for me on the page: can I use a poetic device to tell a fictive story?

阶级意识在英国小说中非常重要，因为工业革命始于这里，随之而来的是建立工会和工人权利的思想。浪漫派诗人经常在大学里被去政治化，被描绘成异想天开的梦想家。但事实上，他们退居乡村，是对工厂制度的叛逆，是为了保存人性。当雪莱和华兹华斯隐居时，那是一种反抗死亡机器的行动。我想专注于此，但也要写一个没有“白手起家（rags to riches）”戏码的故事。我不知道如果这是我的处女作还能不能出版，因为我记得有人说过，‘你总得给我们点盼头。他们必须逃离。你不能就让穷人一直穷下去。’我认为这又是一种美国的信条，即当我们的政策无法拯救我们时，我们要让我们的艺术来拯救我们。不幸的是，在电影里获救的美国人，比现实美国社会里的还要多。我们花大价钱买个好心情。但我想做点别的。我想，如果把经济和精神上的失败作为中心，但随着小说情节和时间的推进，赋予这些人同等的价值呢？把这部小说看作是一首十四行诗，这对我来说非常重要——那是一种包含在14行内的受限形式，却一直是英语诗歌中最具创新性的形式之一，从莎士比亚到弥尔顿，一直到当代美国。作为诗人我知道，我并不害怕没有外部的改变，因为在牢笼内部也能发生深刻的内在蜕变。这是一种强迫你进行创新的受限形式。它是装在玻璃罐里的龙卷风。这种挑战在纸面上让我感到非常新鲜：我能否用诗歌的机制来讲述一个虚构的故事？

【Host】

We get to see what happens when goodness exists just for the sake of goodness, altruism without reward. Your descriptions of shift work are as authentic as they are poetic and beautiful to read. These people who work in the fast-food restaurant forge camaraderie for sure, but it's a sort of transient type of friendship that exists in that space. As you say, they come to know the sound of each other's coughs and exhales better than those of their kin and loved ones. Talk to me about the people you meet in these temporary spaces.

我们得以看到当善良仅仅为了善良而存在、没有回报的利他主义发生时会怎样。你对倒班工作的描写既真实又充满诗意，读起来很美。这些在快餐店工作的人确实建立起了战友般的情谊，但那是一种存在于那个空间里的短暂友谊。正如你所说，他们甚至比熟悉自己亲人和爱人那样，更熟悉彼此咳嗽和呼气的声音。跟我说说你在这些临时空间里遇到的人吧。

【Ocean Vuong】

There's something deeply curious about the human psyche and emotion when you're in a place like a fast-food restaurant, where I've worked, where many people in this audience have worked. The major difference now that I am a kind of class trespasser—I'm now in the halls of universities, often begging for money for the arts—is that when you're in a university department, a publishing house, a dentist's office, or a doctor's office, everybody who's in there worked deliberately to be there. Whether they like the job or not, they are where they intended to be. But in a fast-food restaurant, the elephant in the room is that nobody truly wants to be there. And so there's this kind of grief. There's an empathy that is held very close to the chest because you're almost afraid to ask, 'Hey, what do you really want to do?' Because that conversation becomes unbearable in its impossibility. I wanted to write a novel about that because it's worthy to me to explore a place where dreams are constantly deferred, and yet human beings still depend on each other to make it through. When you work those shifts, it can be 104 degrees on a hot day, the grill is on fire, you're sweating, and you really depend on each other. Even if your coworker is an evangelical Christian who truly believes you will burn in hell, you still depend on her. You need her, she needs you. I found that ideologies often degrade through that kinetic kinship. It falls apart to a point where we can just see each other as human beings. I can see the sweat on her brow. I know exactly how many hours it takes for her drugstore deodorant to wear off, and I can smell the real her come through. There's a kind of eloquence and beauty to that manifestation. One of the most powerful things a novel can do is reorient value through deceleration. When you decelerate in a scene, you add value, and the person steps out of their ideologies and becomes absolutely themselves. With automation, I don't know what will happen to that kinetic kinship.

当你身处快餐店这样一个地方（我曾在那里工作过，台下肯定也有很多人工作过），人的心理和情绪是非常奇妙的。既然我现在算是一个阶级入侵者——我现在出入大学殿堂，经常为了艺术到处化缘——我发现最大的区别在于，当你在大学系里、出版机构、牙医诊所或医生办公室时，那里面的每个人都是经过深思熟虑、努力工作才到了那个位置的。无论他们喜不喜欢这份工作，他们都处于自己预期的位置。但在一家快餐店里，最显而易见的事实（the elephant in the room）是，根本没有一个人是真心想呆在那儿的。于是这里就笼罩着一种悲伤。存在一种被捂在胸口的、极其隐秘的共情，因为你几乎不敢开口问：‘嘿，你真正想做的是什么？’因为在那种不可能实现的现实下，这种对话会让人痛苦得无法承受。我想写一本关于这个的小说，因为我觉得，去探索一个梦想不断被搁置、然而人们依然相互依靠着熬过去的地方，是非常值得的。当你做着那种轮班工作，酷暑天里气温高达华氏 104 度（约 40 摄氏度），烤架上火光冲天，你大汗淋漓，你们真的只能互相依靠。即使你的同事是个保守的福音派基督徒，打心底里坚信你将来会下地狱，你依然要依靠她。你需要她，她也需要你。我发现，意识形态往往会在这种充满体力的动能纽带中瓦解。它分崩离析，直到我们只能把彼此看作纯粹的人。我能看到她额头上的汗水。我确切地知道她在药妆店买的体香剂（deodorant）几个小时后就会失效，然后我就能闻到那个真实的她散发出来的味道。那种真实的显现中带有一种雄辩与美感。小说能做的最强大的事情之一，就是通过减速（deceleration）来重新定位价值。当你在一个场景中放慢节奏，你就增加了它的价值，那个人就从他们固有的意识形态中走了出来，成为了绝对真实的自己。随着自动化的普及，我不知道那种基于肉身劳作的纽带以后会变成什么样。

【Host】

Some elitist gatekeepers have used words like 'earnest' and 'sentimental' to detract from your work. I can't believe those words are used negatively; to me, they feel wholly positive. What is your relationship to those words, and what is the power of writing something that is unapologetically earnest?

一些精英守门人曾用‘真诚（earnest）’和‘多愁善感（sentimental）’这样的词来贬低你的作品。我简直不敢相信这些词会被用作贬义；对我来说，它们是绝对正面的。你是如何看待这些词的？写出毫不掩饰的真诚之作，其力量何在？

【Ocean Vuong】

I think there is a lot of fear in expressing earnestness. It makes a lot of sense that those who come from more privilege will be very skeptical of it, because earnestness is tied to this push and pull of modern capitalism. John Berger talks about this in his book Ways of Seeing. To be sincere and earnest means you've kind of been duped. And the worst thing an American can be is a fool, right? It's supposed to be the most self-effacing thing—'Oh, you fell for it.' So it's cooler to suspend faith and belief, pull back, put on the leather jacket and sunglasses, smoke, and say, 'Oh, you believed in that.' Cynicism becomes a performance of intelligence, but it's actually cowardice and fear. Nothing is made out of cynicism, but it dominates, and you have to break through a lot of that. It takes tremendous courage and you have to risk being foolish. I tell my students you can learn the craft, but the hardest things to teach are two central modes of working: disobedience and daring. Both will require you to risk looking foolish among your peers. But if you're committed, you can push the sentence into something absolutely raw. This also comes from a social unease with being captured by the market. If you look, for example, at high fashion, the model will almost always look past you. Why is the model's position of cool, unmoved detachment so powerful for selling products? Because there is this promise that if you buy this exorbitantly priced garment, you too could be immune to the onslaught of advertising around you. We are constantly being bombarded by the seduction of language trying to get us to vote a certain way or buy certain things. The most powerful person in the room is the person who is not sincere, who appears to have seen it all and remains unmoved. But of course, it's only a performance. Having worked in fashion photography in the back rooms, as soon as the models walk back there, they are themselves again—they're having espresso, chatting, they're lovely people. It's very telling that they are asked to perform a cold, unmoved superiority in order to sell the magic of the brand: 'Buy this, and you will be inoculated against being seduced into being a fool.' So the person who looks at the world and says, 'I earnestly, sincerely want to solve this,' is viewed as the one who has been duped. It's easy to laugh at that person. But an interesting thing I've noticed is that we actually deeply hunger for sincerity and earnestness in America. We just don't want it in the room inside a living, breathing thing. The best-selling books every year are some of the most earnest, sincere books in American literature. We love deeply earnest writing, but we prefer the authors overseas and dead. When that raw sincerity is living and breathing in front of us, it is very uncomfortable. You're right to bring up class and elitism. When you grow up in factories and nail salons, you realize that it's actually really hard to be detached. Are you going to be detached about trying to get a good job to raise your family and pay your bills? Can you imagine being ironic about trying to pay your bills? Can you imagine being nonchalant or ironic while asking for food assistance? That posture of cool disassociation is a performance of the wealthy. Some of us cannot afford to be anything but earnest because our lives depend on it.

我认为表达真诚伴随着巨大的恐惧。那些出身更优渥的人对真诚抱有怀疑，这是很有道理的，因为真诚与现代资本主义的推拉博弈紧密相连。约翰·伯格（John Berger）在他的《观看之道》中谈过这一点。表现得真诚热切，就意味着你有点‘被骗了’。而作为一个美国人，最糟糕的事莫过于做个傻瓜，对吧？那被认为是最丢脸的事——‘噢，你居然上当了。’所以，悬置信仰、收起感情、穿上皮夹克戴上墨镜抽着烟，然后说‘噢，你竟然相信那个’，这样显得更酷。愤世嫉俗变成了一种展示智商的表演，但实际上它是懦弱和恐惧。愤世嫉俗创造不出任何东西，但它却主导了社会，你必须冲破很多这类的东西。这需要巨大的勇气，你必须冒着像个傻瓜的风险。我告诉我的学生，写作技巧是可以学的，但最难教的是两种核心的创作状态：不顺从（disobedience）与敢于冒险（daring）。这两者都会让你在同龄人中面临显得愚蠢的风险。但如果你足够投入，你就能把句子推向极其赤裸生猛的境地。这也源于一种社会性的不安——害怕被市场捕获。举个例子，你去看看高级时尚摄影，模特几乎总是把目光越过你，不看你。为什么模特那种冷酷、无动于衷的抽离姿态在推销产品时如此有力量？因为这其中隐含着一种承诺：如果你买了这件昂贵的衣服，你也能对周围铺天盖地的广告免疫。我们不断被语言的诱惑轰炸，它们试图让我们以某种方式投票，或购买某些东西。在这个房间里，最有权力的人是那个不真诚的人，那个看起来看透了一切并且无动于衷的人。但当然，那只是表演。我曾在时尚摄影的后台工作过，只要模特们一走回后台，他们就又变回了自己——他们喝着浓缩咖啡，聊着天，是很可爱的人。这很能说明问题：他们被要求表演出一种冷酷、不可撼动的优越感，就是为了推销品牌的魔力：“买下它，你就能打上疫苗，防止自己被诱惑成一个傻子。”所以，当一个人看着世界说：“我真诚地、热切地想要解决这个问题”时，他就会被看作是那个被骗了的傻子。嘲笑那个人很容易。但我作为美国人注意到一个有趣的现象：我们实际上极度渴望真诚。我们只是不希望这份真诚存在于同一个房间里、存在于一个活生生的人身上。每年最畅销的书都是美国文学中最真诚的作品。我们热爱极度真诚的文字，但我们更喜欢那些作者在海外，而且最好已经死了。当那种赤裸的真诚活生生地站在我们面前呼吸时，我们会感到极度不适。你提出阶级和精英主义这一点非常对。当你在工厂和美甲店里长大，你会发现，想要保持“抽离感（detached）”其实是非常困难的。当你为了养家糊口、支付账单而努力找一份好工作时，你能保持抽离吗？你能想象在努力付账单时玩反讽吗？你能想象在申请食品救济时表现得满不在乎或讽刺挖苦吗？那种冷酷的抽离姿态是富人的表演。我们中的一些人别无选择，只能拼尽全力保持真诚，因为这关系到我们的身家性命。

【Host】

I wanted to ask you about the process of writing auto-fiction based on your experiences. Writing a book is one thing; promoting it and taking it on the road is another. In that process, a lot of people ask you to dredge up traumatic moments from your life. How do you reconcile writing so honestly and earnestly, while also protecting yourself from having to continually relive those experiences in the public eye?

我想问问你基于自身经历创作自传体小说（auto-fiction）的过程。写书是一回事；宣传新书并在路上奔波是另一回事。在这个过程中，很多人会要求你挖出生命中的创伤时刻。你如何平衡如此真诚的写作，同时又能保护自己，不必在公众面前不断重温那些经历？

【Ocean Vuong】

That's a very beautiful question. I reject the idea that I write about trauma. It's a very strategic position for society to say, 'Oh, he writes about trauma,' because trauma is about the self. It pathologizes the self. It is important for me to always push back and correct that: I write about violence. When you say I write about violence, you now have to ask, where did it come from? Now you're in a historical negotiation. It can't just be about pathologizing the individual. To me, auto-fiction doesn't just come from a modern subgenre. If you look at St. Augustine's Confessions, it's one of the oldest first-person narratives witnessing the fall of the Roman Empire. Also, Japanese writers had a term called I-novel (Shishōsetsu) writing about the self during the Meiji Empire, when citizens were asked to efface themselves for the larger imperial good. The I-novel of Tanizaki, Mishima, and Soseki became deeply powerful acts of resistance. So the tradition is much older. But for me, I was deeply inspired by the women who raised me: my mother, my grandmother, my aunts. They came from a patriarchal country in Vietnam into another patriarchal country in America, but without English. The sons acquired English rapidly, which meant the sons had access to self-dignity and power in ways the women did not. The women were losing their foothold on the world and perhaps within their own children. So they started to tell their stories of survival very openly. Every time they told them, they would embellish, details would change, and I realized right away that I was at the feet of master storytellers. They used dialogue, exposition, scene building. They decelerated. They described certain objects and the weather. And their stakes were much higher than mine. I'm doing a literary project; it's so unserious compared to what they were doing. They were doing something existential: 'Can we, a group of women, maintain and enhance self-respect for ourselves and our sons using stories of testimony?' That is the central foundation of how auto-fiction functions for me, and it becomes immediately applicable in the Asian American context. I was writing about a history where I was previously only written about as an anecdote in a textbook written by white men. There's a double standard. When Tim O'Brien writes about war and violence, it's considered witness and testimony. When a writer of color does it, it's reduced to 'trauma.' Toni Morrison dealt with this too. When folks said, 'Oh, you're just writing trauma,' she resisted. Any psychiatrist will tell you that trauma is a psychological condition, whereas violence is the physical event. I'm far more interested in writing about violence and survival.

这是一个非常美丽的问题。我拒绝“我写的是创伤”这种说法。社会说“噢，他写的是创伤”，这是一种非常具有策略性的站位，因为创伤只关乎自我。它将个人病理化了。对我来说，必须不断反击并纠正这一点：我写的是暴力。当你说我写的是暴力时，你就必须要问：它是从哪里来的？这时你就进入了一场关于历史的谈判。它不能仅仅是关于个人的病理化。对我来说，自传体小说不仅仅是一个现代文学子类型。如果你看圣奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》，那是见证罗马帝国衰亡的最古老的第一人称叙事之一。还有，日本作家在明治时期有一种叫“私小说（Shishōsetsu）”的写法，当时公民被要求为了宏大的帝国利益抹杀自我。谷崎润一郎、三岛由纪夫和夏目漱石的私小说变成了极具力量的反抗之举。所以这个传统的历史要悠久得多。但就我个人而言，我深受抚养我长大的女人们的启发：我的母亲、祖母和阿姨们。她们从越南的父权制国家来到美国另一个父权制国家，且不懂英语。而儿子们很快掌握了英语，这意味着儿子们拥有了获取个人尊严和权力的途径，而女人们却没有。她们正在失去对这个世界的立足点，甚至可能在自己孩子面前也一样。于是她们开始非常公开地讲述自己幸存的故事。每次讲述，她们都会添油加醋，细节会有所改变，我立刻意识到我是坐在大师级讲故事人的脚下。她们使用了对话、交代背景、构建场景。她们懂得放慢节奏。她们描绘特定的物件和天气。而她们这么做的赌注比我高得多。我在做的是一个文学项目；和她们比起来显得太不严肃了。她们做的是关乎生存的事：“我们这群女人，能否用作证式的故事来维持并提升我们自己以及儿子们的自尊？”这就是自传体小说对我如何发挥作用的核心基础，而且它立刻适用于美国的亚裔语境。因为我正在书写的这段历史，以前只存在于白人男性编写的教科书中的轶事里。这里存在双重标准。当蒂姆·奥布莱恩（Tim O'Brien）写战争和暴力时，那被认为是见证和证词。但当一个有色人种作家这么写时，就被贬低为“创伤”。托妮·莫里森（Toni Morrison）也处理过这种事。当人们说“噢，你只是在写创伤”时，她进行了反抗。任何精神科医生都会告诉你，创伤是一种心理状况，而暴力是物理事件本身。我远比写创伤更感兴趣的，是书写暴力与生存。

【Ocean Vuong】

The other part of that is Buddhism. In the Buddhist tradition, we believe that all of our work, art or otherwise, is called Dharma. Not necessarily 'teachings,' but the manifestation of your consciousness made shareable. There's a long tradition, all the way back to the historical Buddha, of using personal anecdotes as a way to share insight and experience. Not to say, 'This is my absolute truth,' but rather, 'I saw this as a human being. Do you see it too? Does it mean anything to you?' For me, my strategy and interest in autobiographical work is asking: Can this personal anecdote be implemented into a larger system of ideas? If it cannot, it won't be in the work. There are many things from my personal life that I've never written about because I cannot find a way to implement them into a larger system of thinking. The ideas come first. An experience that can be mapped onto the idea comes later. That's true with the Dharma work in the Buddhist tradition, and it's true with writers like James Baldwin. Between the testimony of the women who raised me, and the Buddhist framework of sharing human life, those are the foundations I work through.

另一部分原因与佛教有关。在佛教传统中，我们相信我们所有的工作，无论是艺术还是其他，都被称为“法（Dharma）”。不一定是指“教义”，而是将你的意识显现并使之可被分享。有一个源远流长的传统，一直追溯到历史上的佛陀，就是用个人的轶事来分享洞察和经验。并不是说，“这就是我绝对的真理”，而是说，“作为一个人，我看到了这个。你也看到了吗？这对你有意义吗？”对我来说，我对自传体作品的策略和兴趣在于问自己：这段个人轶事能否被植入一个更庞大的思想体系中？如果不能，它就不会出现在我的作品里。我个人生活中的很多事情我从来没写过，因为我找不到方法将它们纳入一个更大的思考体系里。思想永远是第一位的。能够映射到这个思想上的经验，是后来才加入的。在佛教传统的弘法中是如此，在像詹姆斯·鲍德温（James Baldwin）这样的作家那里也是如此。在抚养我长大的女人们的证词，以及佛教分享人类生命的框架之间，这些就是我进行创作的根基。

【Host】

My final question for you is about violence, specifically anti-war themes. A character in the novel says the U.S. is purposely built on war, like a fertilizer for crops. Meanwhile, soldiers coming back are addicted to the war, described as guys who 'can't get right' so they keep going back for another tour. Tell me about writing war and this reckoning.

我最后一个问题是关于暴力的，特别是反战主题。小说里的一个角色说，美国是故意建立在战争之上的，就像农作物的肥料一样。同时，从战场回来的士兵对战争上了瘾，被描述成那种“无法适应正常生活（can't get right）”的人，所以他们一次次重返战场。跟我谈谈书写战争以及这种清醒的认识吧。

【Ocean Vuong】

For as long as there have been soldiers, there have been poets. War and poetry are human inventions. On good days, when I'm really optimistic, I want to believe that poetry is the first invention, and it can be the last act of our species. If we can capture this and prophesy with poetry, we might have done some good. Love and war, death and war—it is our central subject. You try to buy a house or rent an apartment in America, and right away you encounter the language of war. You hear, 'Oh, this is a pre-war build,' or 'This is an antebellum ranch' (a former plantation). We measure ourselves through war, for better or for worse. My interest is to ask, 'Okay, well what next?' I admire Tolstoy and Baldwin for asking that again and again. My events now in America are flanked by armed guards with machine guns. If this event was in the States, in Ohio or Texas, there would be armed guards, and it is necessary because of the mass shootings that happen every day. So the reality is violence, as opposed to trauma. Trauma is an easy way out of the harder conversation. I resist that tremendously. I say no, it's not about trauma. I didn't write things I haven't worked through. I chose to look at these things and implement them into a system of thoughts around violence. Just as it is important that we say 'enslaved people' instead of 'slaves'—because making it into a verb forces us to ask, who were the authors of that violence?—every generation must be tasked with using the sentence like a shovel to dig. Unfortunately, anytime you dig, you'll find some bones. And the question is: whose bones are they, why did it happen, and what happens now?

只要有士兵存在，就有诗人存在。战争和诗歌都是人类的发明。在心情好的时候，当我非常乐观时，我愿意相信诗歌是人类的第一项发明，也可能会是我们这个物种最后的壮举。如果我们能捕捉到这一点，用诗歌来预言，我们也许已经做了一些好事。爱与战争，死亡与战争——这是我们永恒的主题。在美国，你试图买房或租公寓，立刻就会遇到战争的词汇。你会听到，“噢，这是一栋战前建筑（pre-war build）”，或者“这是一个战前牧场（antebellum ranch）”（曾经的种植园）。无论好坏，我们都在用战争来衡量自己。我的兴趣在于问：“好吧，那接下来呢？”我钦佩托尔斯泰和鲍德温，因为他们一次又一次地提出这个问题。现在我在美国的活动，两边都有拿着机枪的武装警卫守卫。如果这个活动是在美国，在俄亥俄州或德克萨斯州，肯定会有武装警卫，而且这是必须的，因为每天都在发生大规模枪击案。所以现实是暴力，而不是创伤。用“创伤”一词来概括，是逃避关于暴力的艰难对话的捷径。我对此极其抗拒。我说不，这不是关于创伤。我写出来的东西，都是我已经处理消化的。我选择注视这些事物，并将它们植入一个围绕暴力展开的思想体系中。就像我们强调要说“被奴役的人（enslaved people）”而不是“奴隶（slaves）”一样——因为把它变成一个被动动词会迫使我们去问，谁才是施加暴力的主使者？——每一代人都必须肩负起将句子当作一把铲子去挖掘的重任。不幸的是，任何时候你往下挖，你总会挖到一些尸骨。而我们需要问的问题是：那是谁的尸骨？为什么会发生这种事？以及现在我们该怎么办？

（完整访谈会在主持人Jack Edward的频道：Inklings Book Club）