オーシャン·ヴォンによる読書リスト：パート2

This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine (see Part One here):

A Confession and Other Religious Writings by Leo Tolstoy

“A sobering and illuminating account of Tolstoy’s great disenchantment of his own career and literary achievements. I was lucky enough to come across this early in my writing life and was taken by Tolstoy’s warning of the devolvement of altruism and self-belief into delusion and pettiness which runs rampant in every epoch of artistic production. The whole essay is a beautiful and elegant reckoning, reminding us that even those who achieve the pinnacle of their work are capable of immense and debilitating doubt, not prior or during the creation of indelible works – but even after that work has been recognised and celebrated by the public.” – Ocean Vuong

But strange to say, even though the utter falsehood of this creed was something I came quickly to understand and to reject, I did not discard the rank these people bestowed on me: that of artist, poet and teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet and an artist. And this is what I did.

Through my association with these men I acquired a new vice: an unhealthily developed pride, and an insane conviction that it was my vocation to teach people without knowing what I was teaching.

Now, when I think about this period and about my state of mind and that of those around me (and incidentally there are thousands of them nowadays), I feel sad, terrible, ridiculous; it arouses in me precisely the same feelings as one might experience in a madhouse.

At the time we were all convinced that we must talk and talk and write and publish as quickly as possible, and as much as possible, and that this was all necessary for the good of mankind. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, published and wrote with the aim of teaching others. Failing to notice that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the most basic question of life – what is good and what is evil – we all spoke at the same time, never listening to one another. At times we indulged and praised each other in order to be indulged and praised in return, at other times we grew angry and shrieked at each other, just as if we were in a madhouse.

Thousands of workers toiled day and night, assembling millions and millions of words, which were distributed by post over the whole of Russia; and we taught and taught, but never managed to impart all that we had to teach, and were always annoyed that we were given so little attention.

Horribly strange, but now I understand it all. Our genuine, sincere concern was over how to gain as much money and fame as possible. And the only thing we knew how to do in order to achieve this aim was to write books and journals. This is what we did. But in order for us to pursue this utterly useless task and have the assurance that we were very important people we needed an argument that would justify what we were doing. And so we devised the following; everything that exists is rational and all that exists evolves. And it evolves through enlightenment. Enlightenment is measured through the distribution of books and journals. We are paid and respected for writing these books and papers, so we must be the most important and useful people. This theory would have been all very well had we been in agreement; but since any thought expressed by any one of us was always contradicted by the diametrically opposed views of another, we should have been forced to rethink. But we did not notice this; we were paid money and those who sided with us praised us, consequently every one of us believed himself to be in the right.

It is now clear to me that there was no difference between our behaviour and that of people in a madhouse; but at the time I only dimly suspected this and, like all madmen, I thought everyone was mad except myself. 

Excerpt from A Confession and Other Religious Writings by Leo Tolstoy. The first attempt at its publication took place in 1882 (Russkaya Mysl, No 5), but Tolstoy’s work was removed virtually from the whole edition of the journal by Orthodox Church censorship. The text was later published in Geneva, in 1884, and in Russia as late as 1906 (Vsemirnyj Vestnik, No 1)

The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison

“One of the most accurate warnings and depictions of the great pitfalls of contemporary literary culture, and one that is startlingly more relevant now than ever. Morrison, in her usual prophetic prowess, never misses.” – OV

First novels shouldn’t be successes – they are supposed to be read by a few. They are not supposed to be profitable – they must be limited. If a first novel “makes it”, then there is some suspicion about its quality. A minority artist in this game and in this climate of ambivalence is required either to abandon his minorityhood and join the prevailing criteria, or he has to defend and defend and defend ad nauseam his right to hear and love a different drummer. That’s part of the romanticism that clings to the idea of the individual artist – the artist as beggar. It keeps him begging, and when he is successful, he should feel guilty – even apologetic.

Excerpt from The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches and Meditations by Toni Morrison, first published in the US by Alfred A Knopf in 2019

The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura

“A deeply informative and profound book that holds language accountable to projects of power and nation-building. Mizumura tackles this project both as a Japanese native but also as a traveller in the Anglophonic world, creating a kaleidoscopically complex nexus of vexation and difficulty around which language, and therefore which writers, are allowed to prevail in the modern world.” – OV

Ever since Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, what can be called “how-I-became-a-writer” stories have flourished in the world. Shishōsetsu from left to right is no doubt a variant. You may even detect in my novel that self-complacent, self-congratulatory tone that is characteristic of such stories. Yet my novel is also something else. For it is not just a how-I-became-a-writer story; it is also a how-I-became-a-Japanese-writer story. And this story is inseparably connected to another story that runs parallel to it and yet is a far more sober tale, full of regret: a how-I-failed-to-become-a-writer-in-the-English-language story. The female protagonist of Shishōsetsu from left to right went to the United States at a privileged age, a time when she was still young enough to adopt a new language and make it her own. Why was she so fixated on the Japanese language – a language that does not even belong to a major linguistic family, one that’s used only in an island country in the Far East, one that’s singularly isolated?

Excerpt from The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura, first published by Chikuma Shobō in 2008. First translated into English by Columbia University Press in 2015

Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso by Eduardo C Corral

“Simply a masterclass of associative leaping in the lyric poem. A poem I look to again and again with awe and bewilderment.” – OV

I’m drumroll and voyeur.  
I’m watermark
and fable. I’m weaving
the snarls
of a wolf through my hair  
like ribbon. At my feet,
chisels  

and jigsaws. I’m
performing  
an autopsy on my shadow.
My rib cage a wall.  
My heart
a crack in a wall,  
a foothold. I’m tumbling

upward:  
a French acrobat. I’m judder
and effigy.  
I’m pompadour
and splendid. I’m spinning  
on a spit, split
in half.  

An apple
in my mouth. I know  
what Eve
didn’t know: a serpent  
is a fruit eaten to the core. I’m
a massacre  
of the dreamers,

a terra cotta soldier  
waiting for
his emperor’s return.
When I bow,
a black fish leaps
from the small of my back.

I catch it.  
I tear it apart. I fix
the scales
to my lips.
Every word I utter  
is opalescent. I’m skinned
and Orphic.  
I’m scarlet

and threshold. At my touch,  
a piano
melts like a slab
of black ice. I’m
steam rising,  
dissipating. I’m a ghost undressing.
I’m a cowboy  

riding bareback.
My soul is  
whirling
above my head like a lasso.
My right hand
a pistol. My left
automatic. I’m knocking

on every door.  
I’m coming on strong,
like a missionary.  
I’m kicking back
my legs, like a mule. I’m kicking up
my legs, like a showgirl.

Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso by Eduardo C Corral, from the collection Slow Lightning, first published by Yale University Press in 2012

We, the Free by Matt Eich

“One of my favourite photos in Matt Eich’s complex, myriad and sprawling work. This image captures the often murky and undefinable ethos of American possibility and sorrow, which is here presented in one rare frame.” – OV

Photograph by Matt Eich, taken from The Invisible Yoke, Volume IV: We, the Free, published by Sturm & Drang in 2024

This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine, on sale internationally on 25 September 2025. Pre-order here.

This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine (see Part One here):

A Confession and Other Religious Writings by Leo Tolstoy

“A sobering and illuminating account of Tolstoy’s great disenchantment of his own career and literary achievements. I was lucky enough to come across this early in my writing life and was taken by Tolstoy’s warning of the devolvement of altruism and self-belief into delusion and pettiness which runs rampant in every epoch of artistic production. The whole essay is a beautiful and elegant reckoning, reminding us that even those who achieve the pinnacle of their work are capable of immense and debilitating doubt, not prior or during the creation of indelible works – but even after that work has been recognised and celebrated by the public.” – Ocean Vuong

But strange to say, even though the utter falsehood of this creed was something I came quickly to understand and to reject, I did not discard the rank these people bestowed on me: that of artist, poet and teacher. I naively imagined that I was a poet and an artist. And this is what I did.

Through my association with these men I acquired a new vice: an unhealthily developed pride, and an insane conviction that it was my vocation to teach people without knowing what I was teaching.

Now, when I think about this period and about my state of mind and that of those around me (and incidentally there are thousands of them nowadays), I feel sad, terrible, ridiculous; it arouses in me precisely the same feelings as one might experience in a madhouse.

At the time we were all convinced that we must talk and talk and write and publish as quickly as possible, and as much as possible, and that this was all necessary for the good of mankind. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, published and wrote with the aim of teaching others. Failing to notice that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the most basic question of life – what is good and what is evil – we all spoke at the same time, never listening to one another. At times we indulged and praised each other in order to be indulged and praised in return, at other times we grew angry and shrieked at each other, just as if we were in a madhouse.

Thousands of workers toiled day and night, assembling millions and millions of words, which were distributed by post over the whole of Russia; and we taught and taught, but never managed to impart all that we had to teach, and were always annoyed that we were given so little attention.

Horribly strange, but now I understand it all. Our genuine, sincere concern was over how to gain as much money and fame as possible. And the only thing we knew how to do in order to achieve this aim was to write books and journals. This is what we did. But in order for us to pursue this utterly useless task and have the assurance that we were very important people we needed an argument that would justify what we were doing. And so we devised the following; everything that exists is rational and all that exists evolves. And it evolves through enlightenment. Enlightenment is measured through the distribution of books and journals. We are paid and respected for writing these books and papers, so we must be the most important and useful people. This theory would have been all very well had we been in agreement; but since any thought expressed by any one of us was always contradicted by the diametrically opposed views of another, we should have been forced to rethink. But we did not notice this; we were paid money and those who sided with us praised us, consequently every one of us believed himself to be in the right.

It is now clear to me that there was no difference between our behaviour and that of people in a madhouse; but at the time I only dimly suspected this and, like all madmen, I thought everyone was mad except myself. 

Excerpt from A Confession and Other Religious Writings by Leo Tolstoy. The first attempt at its publication took place in 1882 (Russkaya Mysl, No 5), but Tolstoy’s work was removed virtually from the whole edition of the journal by Orthodox Church censorship. The text was later published in Geneva, in 1884, and in Russia as late as 1906 (Vsemirnyj Vestnik, No 1)

The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison

“One of the most accurate warnings and depictions of the great pitfalls of contemporary literary culture, and one that is startlingly more relevant now than ever. Morrison, in her usual prophetic prowess, never misses.” – OV

First novels shouldn’t be successes – they are supposed to be read by a few. They are not supposed to be profitable – they must be limited. If a first novel “makes it”, then there is some suspicion about its quality. A minority artist in this game and in this climate of ambivalence is required either to abandon his minorityhood and join the prevailing criteria, or he has to defend and defend and defend ad nauseam his right to hear and love a different drummer. That’s part of the romanticism that clings to the idea of the individual artist – the artist as beggar. It keeps him begging, and when he is successful, he should feel guilty – even apologetic.

Excerpt from The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches and Meditations by Toni Morrison, first published in the US by Alfred A Knopf in 2019

The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura

“A deeply informative and profound book that holds language accountable to projects of power and nation-building. Mizumura tackles this project both as a Japanese native but also as a traveller in the Anglophonic world, creating a kaleidoscopically complex nexus of vexation and difficulty around which language, and therefore which writers, are allowed to prevail in the modern world.” – OV

Ever since Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, what can be called “how-I-became-a-writer” stories have flourished in the world. Shishōsetsu from left to right is no doubt a variant. You may even detect in my novel that self-complacent, self-congratulatory tone that is characteristic of such stories. Yet my novel is also something else. For it is not just a how-I-became-a-writer story; it is also a how-I-became-a-Japanese-writer story. And this story is inseparably connected to another story that runs parallel to it and yet is a far more sober tale, full of regret: a how-I-failed-to-become-a-writer-in-the-English-language story. The female protagonist of Shishōsetsu from left to right went to the United States at a privileged age, a time when she was still young enough to adopt a new language and make it her own. Why was she so fixated on the Japanese language – a language that does not even belong to a major linguistic family, one that’s used only in an island country in the Far East, one that’s singularly isolated?

Excerpt from The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura, first published by Chikuma Shobō in 2008. First translated into English by Columbia University Press in 2015

Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso by Eduardo C Corral

“Simply a masterclass of associative leaping in the lyric poem. A poem I look to again and again with awe and bewilderment.” – OV

I’m drumroll and voyeur.  
I’m watermark
and fable. I’m weaving
the snarls
of a wolf through my hair  
like ribbon. At my feet,
chisels  

and jigsaws. I’m
performing  
an autopsy on my shadow.
My rib cage a wall.  
My heart
a crack in a wall,  
a foothold. I’m tumbling

upward:  
a French acrobat. I’m judder
and effigy.  
I’m pompadour
and splendid. I’m spinning  
on a spit, split
in half.  

An apple
in my mouth. I know  
what Eve
didn’t know: a serpent  
is a fruit eaten to the core. I’m
a massacre  
of the dreamers,

a terra cotta soldier  
waiting for
his emperor’s return.
When I bow,
a black fish leaps
from the small of my back.

I catch it.  
I tear it apart. I fix
the scales
to my lips.
Every word I utter  
is opalescent. I’m skinned
and Orphic.  
I’m scarlet

and threshold. At my touch,  
a piano
melts like a slab
of black ice. I’m
steam rising,  
dissipating. I’m a ghost undressing.
I’m a cowboy  

riding bareback.
My soul is  
whirling
above my head like a lasso.
My right hand
a pistol. My left
automatic. I’m knocking

on every door.  
I’m coming on strong,
like a missionary.  
I’m kicking back
my legs, like a mule. I’m kicking up
my legs, like a showgirl.

Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso by Eduardo C Corral, from the collection Slow Lightning, first published by Yale University Press in 2012

We, the Free by Matt Eich

“One of my favourite photos in Matt Eich’s complex, myriad and sprawling work. This image captures the often murky and undefinable ethos of American possibility and sorrow, which is here presented in one rare frame.” – OV

Photograph by Matt Eich, taken from The Invisible Yoke, Volume IV: We, the Free, published by Sturm & Drang in 2024

This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine, on sale internationally on 25 September 2025. Pre-order here.