Micah Webber’s Reviews > The Emperor of Gladness > Status Update
Micah Webber
is on page 321 of 402
“As soon as [“Gettysburg”] started, Sony was hooked. He left his bowl of Kraft Mac & Cheese untouched, scooting closer and closer to the TV until his face was inches away. He sat running his finger down the scar in his head, back and forth, so oddly quiet Aunt Kim had to come to check on him, once, twice.
— Feb 20, 2026 12:21PM
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Micah’s Previous Updates
Micah Webber
is on page 289 of 402
First paragraph of 287 to second paragraph of 289, my favorite passage so far.
— Feb 14, 2026 09:16PM
Micah Webber
is on page 238 of 402
“There was so much space. That's what wealth is, he realized: to live in a house where all the tools of living are out of sight.”
This kind of insight—the precision of it, the sensitivity that affords it, the economical way of expressing it—is where I think I see the greatest difference in Vuong’s prose from “OEWBG” to “Emperor of Gladness.” He’s always looked closely, but here he’s zoomed out.
— Feb 10, 2026 07:48AM
This kind of insight—the precision of it, the sensitivity that affords it, the economical way of expressing it—is where I think I see the greatest difference in Vuong’s prose from “OEWBG” to “Emperor of Gladness.” He’s always looked closely, but here he’s zoomed out.
Micah Webber
is on page 175 of 402
“It was one of those days where you work your skin off and have no desire, no strength even, to go home. There was a kind of luxury to be amongst this place of sweat and ache and yet sit and suck a cigarette down to its soggy nub and have no one tell you anything because you're off the clock. A dignified, defiant rest.”
I’ve smoked this exact cigarette, myself. Surely many of us have!
— Feb 04, 2026 07:58AM
I’ve smoked this exact cigarette, myself. Surely many of us have!
Micah Webber
is on page 60 of 402
He. . .felt granted into a realm much greater than his sad, little life, which made his troubles seem suddenly ethereal and elsewhere. He not only had a position in the company—but the company had no idea what his past looked like because none of that mattered. He had become an employee and thus had obtained an eternal present, manifested only by his functional existence on the time card.
— Feb 01, 2026 06:01AM
Micah Webber
is on page 5 of 402
It's a town where high school kids, having nowhere to go on Friday nights, park their stepfathers' trucks in the unlit edges of the Walmart parking lot, drinking Smirnoff out of Poland Spring bottles and blasting Weezer and Lil Wayne until they look down one night to find a baby in their arms and realize they're thirtysomething…
— Jun 01, 2025 01:21PM
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Feb 20, 2026 12:22PM
She walked up and was about to tap him on the shoulder, but then stopped and regarded her boy, who was finally doing a normal-boy thing watching a war movie with such devotion, it was the closest he came to peace.”
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And although it was the general who was featured in the tour, his face repeating throughout the halls, it was the unseen presence that was most felt. Inside each room, from the fancy set table to the kitchen counter, the knife left on the cutting board beside a sprig of green onion, through the spotless banisters and dressers, the commodes that must be emptied, underwear washed and dried, and then, outside, among the verdant vegetable and flower beds around the property, the carriage that must be driven and tended to, its wheels oiled, horses fed, was the unmarked presence of Jackson's six slaves, who Hai later learned were Albert, Amy, Emma, and Hetty, along with her two sons, Cyrus and George. Like the fake Vietnamese in “The Green Berets,” they were everywhere yet nowhere to be found.
