Ocean Vuong Teaches the Art of Writing (NYU Professor)

Writing requires cultivating a capacity for "estrangement," the artistic practice of disrupting familiar perceptions to restore the sensation of life. Ocean Vuong argues that modern prose often suffers from a "newspaper sentence" style—a standardized, mimetic, and efficient form that prioritizes clarity over wonder. This homogenization, driven by commercial pressures and corporate tools, stifles the imagination by discouraging the idiosyncratic and the strange. Instead, writers should embrace observation and metaphor as tools to create sentences the species has never encountered, moving beyond the "assignment" of plot to capture the nuanced, threshold moments of existence. By resisting the urge to conform to institutional expectations, writers can reclaim the power of language to haunt the reader, transforming mundane subjects into profound, resonant experiences that transcend simple recognition.