Pratica di Shadowing: Ocean Vuong: The NEW Waterstones Interview - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

Ocean, it's great to see you again.

Good to see you again, Will.

Always a pleasure.

Thank you for giving me some time to talk to you about your new novel,

The Emperor of Gladness.

I had that experience, which I think your readers will be very used to,

which is when you start a book of yours,

immediately there's this fantastic language that does an amazing job of describing a place,

a time, and a person often.

And it's very distinctive at the beginning when you're setting scenes.

It seems that you have an almost hyper-realistic detail to your writing.

Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Do you make a real effort in those sort of scene setting bits

and then moving on with the rest of the book?

I think they're all modes.

This book, I was deeply interested in allowing the town,

East Gladness, to be its own character.

And I think you earn your moves for me.

And as a debut novelist,

I couldn't have really done that.

I think, you know, you want to get on with the story.

But I felt like I wanted to show that a book can be built patiently,

that a place can come through,

and that specificity becomes a universal symbol because a reader will always map themselves.

When you say, even when I say railroad tracks,

right, a reader in Manchester will see a different railroad tracks than I do in Massachusetts or another one in South Africa.

And so it's impossible because as writers,

we're working with a medium that is not complete even once the book is finished.

Because this is just text.

It is only activated in the reader's mind once they read it.

And no other art is like this, right? music,

film, sculpture, all of it is finished.

You can have endless interpretations of those things,

but it doesn't need activation in the way text does.

And so that mode of activation,

to me, is a sacred space.

I don't mind being romantic about it because it takes a lot for someone to say,

I will commit my time and body and imagination to this place.

Because the text signals ideas and images,

which is a displacement of the reader.

So when you're reading a book,

you're saying, I'm going to forego my life for this life.

And I think setting the tone thoroughly is an act of care.

And I've never been able to write a good sentence carelessly,

as much as I like to.

I think it was Sontag who says,

there's no luck in writing.

And I think it's interesting because we have a lot of child prodigies in music and sculpture and paint,

but no prodigies, no true prodigies in literature.

Because literature, you can write a good sentence,

you can know language, but then you have to be able to empathize.

You have to talk to hundreds of people,

know sorrow, know how to pull back from sorrow, balance it out.

And unfortunately or fortunately, it takes thorough,

thorough observation

and living with a kind of faith even in how human beings interact with each other to write with care and purpose.

And that's what I, the first book gave me the privilege of writing even more carefully in the second book.

As you mentioned, the gladness of the title is a place,

it's a location, in a post-industrial town in Connecticut.

And we meet first a 19-year-old boy called Hai,

who is ready to throw themselves off a bridge into the river to commit suicide.

Could you tell us a little bit about Hai,

and I suppose what has brought him up to the point where we meet him?

I think like a lot of youth in America,

this book takes place in the Obama era.

We were told that the next age of hope would come.

And there was a political movement that would speak for our voices that will concern the working class.

And within months, that administration bailed out corporations that were quote unquote too big to fail.

And I saw my peers absolutely bereft of purpose and life.

I've, you know, suicide has touched my own life with my friends and my family.

And for the Asian American community,

it's a major blight on the youth.

We have suicide rates that,

you know, some of the highest among youth in America.

And it's a dramatic moment that often novels lead to.

And for me, I wanted to start there and to say,

well, if you're starting at the brink,

what would happen if you pull back?

What is life in the aftermath of that decision?

And I think I sympathize greatly with that character.

I think that character is also a summation of an era,

the post 9-11 era that I'm obsessed with and I write about often.

the hopelessness of those times where there was no,

you get a job working in fast food or you go to college,

you get a degree, and there's still no hope.

You get a decent wage job and you still can't pay your bills.

And so I wanted to put all of that social

and economic pressure onto one symbolic character and then let him meet an older woman,

Grigina, 82 years old.

The beautiful thing I found about the very young and the very old is that they're both closest to nothing.

And they're both on the outskirts of society.

This book takes place on the outskirts of a city.

And they're both, one is,

you know, Hai is deemed inadequate because he's too young.

He doesn't have qualifications, experience.

Grazina is deemed defunct by society.

She no longer contributes productively.

And so commerce have evacuated these two characters from the center.

But in fact, it's that evacuation that allows them to see each other because there's nothing for them to do.

100

And I insist that we kind of replace human connection with progress.

101

How many times have we forsaken time spent with our loved ones to get a better job,

102

to work the extra hours, to improve our lives.

103

It's a very human gesture.

104

But these people can't even do that.

105

They don't even have that possibility.

106

So in a way, all they have is each other.

107

And I actually think the young and the old have a lot in common

108

because there's a kind of deep isolation and loneliness that comes from being pushed out of the center of my society.

109

have a very interesting bond,

110

Hai and Grzina, as you say.

111

She hails from Lithuania and she is losing her mind to dementia and is being plagued by these dreams,

112

nightmares that come back from from wartime.

113

And Hai becomes effectively her carer.

114

So that there is this thing that's bonding them together.

115

But it's a complex relationship because there are elements of exploitation there in a way

116

because high is somebody who is not perfect and can see that there's an opportunity there.

117

That's quite a complicated relationship to write.

118

So I'm presuming that was quite a hard thing to negotiate,

119

to get right, I suppose.

120

It's a beautiful question.

121

And it's the heart of what I think I'm most interested in is what is goodness?

122

I'm always somehow always interested in goodness,

123

whether it's real or not.

124

I've always felt that the people around me in my life,

125

my brother, my partner, my friends,

126

in some ways, I feel like they were born with this moral compass of goodness.

127

Maybe they're not perfect.

128

Everyone has sides, but I don't think I had that.

129

I had to learn how to be good.

130

It wasn't clear to me.

131

And so I think I'm deeply in awe of that.

132

And I wanted to see how goodness functions.

133

It's easy to be good when you have the means to do so,

134

to give, to be kind.

135

It's very hard to be kind when you can't eat,

136

when your home is leaking,

137

you can't pay the bills,

138

when you're strapped down and out of luck.

139

It's very hard to be kind.

140

And I wanted to ask myself,

141

of how can these characters deceive each other benevolently?

142

Is deception always bad?

143

Is the chameleon always the demon or the devil, as we've often said?

144

Anything that deceives is corrupt.

145

And here, I wanted to showcase deception as an innovative mechanism towards care, towards equal exchange.

146

When I was an undergraduate at Brooklyn College,

147

I had the great luck of having a professor teach a class on the Iliad.

148

And he was a classicist,

149

and he started the class by saying,

150

I know you know this is a book about war.

151

There's a lot of blood and a lot of battles,

152

and sure, sure, sure, sure.

153

But I'm going to present to you something that's the most important thing about this book.

154

It's really a book about reciprocal bonds and civic duty and the breaking and the cohesion of those bonds.

155

Everyone owes each other something and everyone guilt trips each other to go to pay the debts.

156

And I was just so enamored of that concept of this,

157

the idea that an ecosystem is moved by volunteering your most precious commodity,

158

which is your body, to move towards care and what you owe each other.

159

And I've always wanted to write a novel that centered an entanglement,

160

a moral entanglement of reciprocal bonds.

161

And so you're absolutely right.

162

Every character both wants to give something to another,

163

but they also want to take something from another.

164

boy is that not humanity.

165

You know, I mean, I,

166

you know, everywhere I look,

167

it's like that even the most benevolent,

168

innocuous places in the world,

169

there is that idea of what can I do for you?

170

And we're also what do I owe you?

171

And so when you have that pressure,

172

the next greatest question is,

173

what will I give you for free?

174

What will I give you without asking anything back?

175

And so that set up allows moments where these characters can finally give themselves out of pure love,

176

which sounds, you know, saccharine to me,

177

but I wrote the book to find out if it is feasible.

178

You know, I don't know.

179

You write, you send these characters off and you say,

180

will you sacrifice yourself purely for another person based on your relationships?

181

I don't know that answer,

182

but writing the book, you find out.

183

One of the other fascinating things of this book is,

184

I suppose, it's about labour.

185

It's about working for a living, basically.

186

And this book is very much,

187

as you said, about people who live on the margins,

188

the working class in America.

189

And it's a very complex topic.

190

But what's interesting for Hai is he gets a job working in a restaurant called Home Market,

191

where every day is Thanksgiving.

192

And there is something, I suppose there is a nobility to that labour,

193

which they go through every day.

194

But there's an amazing scene where in order to make some extra money,

195

they go to slaughter pigs.

196

And it's a really, really grim reading experience, that whole thing.

197

But there's some fascinating stuff in there,

198

which I guess brings us to the emperor of the title.

199

You mentioned the emperor hog,

200

which is this amazing pig,

201

but it's not called the emperor because it is an amazing animal.

202

It is there to feed the real person in power,

203

which is the emperor.

204

And I suppose in many ways,

205

you seem to be depicting the working class in America as people who are there to feed

206

and fatten and enrich a different class of people,

207

the people who are at the top of the money tree,

208

if you like, in a capitalist society.

209

So there's this mixture of the nobility of the labor,

210

but the fact that they are being exploited by a system which they maybe don't realize is exploiting them so much.

211

Is that a fair summation of,

212

I suppose, your worldview of labor?

213

I believe so.

214

And the Hamlet epigraph helps me there in the beginning of the book.

215

we fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves for maggots.

216

And ultimately, death is the ultimate ending for all of this exploitation.

217

And, you know, when I started to want to be a writer,

218

I read the craft books.

219

I've never taken a fiction workshop,

220

so I can't speak on that.

221

But I read, I love being a student.

222

The truth is I like to learn more than I like to make.

223

My excuse for writing books is I can just research and learn.

224

Some people call that procrastination, I guess.

225

So to me, when I was studying the craft fiction,

226

which in the books that were available to me was this,

227

you know, Western canonical movement and coming from Aristotle's decree

228

that there should be catharsis at the end of the story to relieve the audience.

229

So right away you have a very commercial negotiation.

230

How do I please the audience?

231

And a lot of fiction works this way.

232

Well, you will find the killer.

233

There will be the body.

234

You will go from rags to riches.

235

You will have a windfall.

236

You'll get the girl, you get the guy, what have you.

237

So there's a kind of reversal of fates, as Aristotle says.

238

And it's very satisfying.

239

I don't knock those stories.

240

But it felt like a great lie to the American life that I was living.

241

I don't know people like that in my community.

242

My aunt works at FedEx.

243

She's been doing that for 15 years.

244

My brother works at Dick's Sporting Goods.

245

My stepdad worked in Standardine Car Factory, car parts.

246

My mother worked in a nail salon for 25 years.

247

The people in my family drive the same car for 20 years.

248

In other words, so much of American life is actually stasis.

249

But in fiction, we think stasis is death, imaginative death.

250

You must change.

251

And I wanted to kind of be, to resist that.

252

And I wanted to write a story where there is transformation without change.

253

I hope it's not a spoiler,

254

but nobody gets a better job.

255

Nobody's position in life is altered,

256

but they are altered by the relationships they have.

257

And ultimately, is people who live lives in which they can't improve,

258

which is beyond their capacity,

259

beyond the system that doesn't allow them to improve, are they just worthless?

260

Are they living meaningless lives?

261

Of course the answer is no. I'm inspired by films like Kiss.

262

And that film is so beautiful because it's all about a place that does not change.

263

But the people and the love and the tenderness and the heartbreak is what makes that.

264

So by divesting the novel from the plot of change,

265

what I gain is the people.

266

And ultimately, I think, if nothing else, I write about people.

267

To finish off, I wanted to bring us back to the writing.

268

There are a lot of amazing quotes in the book about writing.

269

Hai has been somebody who has been interested in writing and has,

270

I guess, lost faith in it as a means of expression.

271

But there's a moment where Guzina says to him,

272

you want to be a writer and you want to jump off a bridge.

273

That's pretty much the same thing though.

274

A writer just takes longer to hit the water.

275

So I want to ask,

276

first of all, are you okay?

277

And B, what does that mean?

278

Halfway down.

279

Yeah.

280

What do you mean by that?

281

Or rather, what does she mean by that?

282

And how does it apply to you as a writer?

283

I'm always thinking and being informed by deaf,

284

which I think is a little strange.

285

Perhaps it's a Buddhist concept that a meditation on deaf is actually not so dark,

286

but it's a reminder that all the petty,

287

you know, bristling that we feel in life,

288

all the vexations of the everyday goes away when we realize that we're all heading there.

289

If we're very lucky, we'll have a deathbed.

290

Many people don't have that luck.

291

And so, you know, when we're on our deathbed,

292

the way I saw my own mother's deathbed in I mean,

293

all the fights we had,

294

all the annoyances we had about life and our daily living felt so minuscule as to almost be myths.

295

They were just so non-present.

296

And I think for me,

297

writing and thinking about death is ultimately an illumination about life.

298

I think that's why I wanted to start this book with a meditation on death or near death,

299

and to ask of these characters,

300

if you're about to give it all up and you're one step away,

301

what will the life look like when you decide to step back into the world?

302

And I think that's a thesis I will forever be thinking about.

303

And if I'm a very lucky writer,

304

I will never find a finite answer to that.

305

A fantastic note on which to end, Ocean.

306

Thank you so much for giving the time to talk about the book.

307

It's a pleasure.

308

Like I said, I need to write books faster so I can talk to you more.

309

No one's going to be complaining about that.

310

Thank you so much.

311

Thank you.

312

Thank you.

313

Take care.

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

Pratica di Shadowing: Ocean Vuong: The NEW Waterstones Interview - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

Informazioni su questa lezione

Vocabolario e Frasi Chiave

Consigli per la Pratica

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?