Celebrating the Ordinary
I once told a fine art professor that I had no interest in painting famous people, to which he replied: What would happen if you did? The question inevitably was posed to stir my preconceived ideas about influence, and whether the technique I was using, if combined with a known figure, might actually become infinitely more influential than painting mere, ordinary people. Looking back on that conversation, that has always stayed with me, I still agree with my younger self.
There is a similar attentiveness to ordinary lives in the work of Ocean Vuong, acclaimed Vietnamese-American poet, essayist, and novelist. Vuong describes the characters in his most recent novel, The Emperor of Gladness (2025) as living ordinary lives, much like the majority of people do, around the world. Lives that are largely filled with economic and circumstantial challenges, often without any clear prospect of escaping them.
Vuong, remarks that human beings tend to fetishise the hero’s journey, revelling in narratives that follow individuals as they conquer, overcome, and rise up, to obtain greater things. While these stories are enjoyable to read and to watch in movies, they often do not reflect the realities that most humans actually experience themselves, or witness inside their own families or communities around them. Instead, the majority of people’s lives tend to play out with their fair share of tedious monotony; a myriad of ordinary happenings between working, commuting, eating and sleeping, interrupted by periodic low periods, brief moments of relief and when we are lucky the occassional bout of joy.
The Emperor of Gladness is a novel whose characters did not go on to obtain better jobs, newer cars, bigger homes or noble achievements. Instead, Vuong’s portrayals of human life feel infinitely closer to reality, circling the quieter movements between people, where what is offered is simply love, kindness, and care — with nothing more than themselves to give to one another. This literary decision makes an important distinction – that the ordinary life, no matter how small or unchanging, is nevertheless full of meaning and dignity. For the immigrant author, these stories emerge from a place of attentive observation and genuine interest in people, just as they are, offering the reader a way of seeing that gently affirms that ordinary lives matter.
In describing the book’s title, The Emperor of Gladness, Vuong draws on the image of “Emperor Hogs,” animals traditionally raised to feed a king. At the same time, “Gladness” refers to the town in the novel, later renamed Milsap. In this way, the title brings together ideas of grandeur and ordinariness, ultimately suggesting what Vuong describes as “the emperor of nothing” — a figure of apparent power that is, in fact, empty. In doing so, he gently unsettles the importance we place on naming, hierarchy, and status.
What appears significant begins to dissolve, while the ordinary life, often overlooked, re-emerges as something complete in itself. The gesture is one of noticing and recognising what is already there. Reading him, I found myself understanding why that earlier conversation with my professor had stayed with me. It clarified where my own interest lies: in the ordinary, where meaning already exists, celebrity or not.
