Tammy Nguyen | O

Tammy Nguyen

O

New York City, USA: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2022

143 pp., 4.75 x 9", softcover

Edition of 750

Released last week, O is a poetic story of the artist and writer returning to Vietnam, to visit the Phong Nha Karst cave, in the Quảng Bình province. The 7,729 metres long cave contains 14 grottoes, and a 13,969 metre underground river. 

A wind that carved mountains whistles through a young girl’s teeth in San Francisco. Nguyen has written an "anti-allegory" of the cave, using the titular O as a thread that runs through the text - as a vocal refrain, a bowl, an echo, the mouth of a cave, and a story without a centre. 

Available for $27.00 US, from the publisher, here. 

"Tammy Nguyen’s O should be filed under “Unclassifiable.” It is a memoir about her uncle, a pilot in the South Vietnamese Air Force who chose David as his American name because he defeated Goliath: a recounting of all the procedures the author went through because she was born with a genetic disorder that caused her to be missing two front teeth; an introduction to Vietnam’s manmade and natural landmarks, including the Ho Chi Minh Trail and a series of caves at least 400 million years old; a guide to real estate investment opportunities on a manmade island near Singapore, where the real estate agent claims there is “no climate change”: a compressed history and status accounting of wealthy Vietnamese families who lived in San Francisco; a report on the author’s visit to a small factory in New York that makes dentures and implants; an updated disquisition on Plato’s Cave; a primer on porcelain; a dream in which all the previous narratives meet. O is a major addition to diasporic literature. Already an accomplished artist, who has exhibited internationally, Nguyen proves herself to be an equally powerful and engaging writer. O belongs on a shelf with Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée and Sophia Al-Maria’s The Girl Who Fell to Earth: A Memoir."

- John Yau

Holiday Recommendation Guest Post: James Hoff

The Blind Man

Ugly Duckling Presse rings in the 100-year anniversary of The Blind Man (the first DADA magazine published in the United States) with a new facsimile of the magazine, which was published in 1917 by Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, and Beatrice Wood. While the issues are slim, they pack a sly punch with their gauntlet throwing and trademark DADA wit.

Issue one was published on the opening date of the Society of Independent Artist’s “First Annual Exhibition” and the magazine takes up the “no jury, no prizes” spirit of the exhibition with an editorial policy modelled on the referendum. That said the first issue contained just a few contributors, with writings by Roché and Wood and also Mina Loy.

As we all know, this exhibition is where R. Mutt made his debut and the second issue takes up R. Mutt’s (non)position in the exhibition, defending his work with an editorial and the first publication of Alfred Stiegelitz’s famed photo of “The Fountain” with the caption “The Exhibit Refused by the Independents.” The issues also contains a good deal more, with contributions of prose, poetry and essays by Walter Arensberg, Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, Robert Carlton Brown, Frank Crowninshield, Charles Demuth, Marcel Duchamp, Mina Loy, Louise Norton, Francis Picabia, Joseph Stella, Frances Simpson Stevens, and Clara Tice.

The magazine folded after the second issue, a result supposedly determined by a chess match between Roché and Picabia, who had a magazine of his own named 391. As the story goes whoever won the match, got to keep their magazine and, well, Roché lost in 34 moves. The game is detailed in the pages of Duchamp’s one-off RongWrong, which is also included in the UDP box. Other inclusions include Man Ray’s Ridgefield Gazook, Wood’s poster for the Blind Man’s Ball, an introduction by the edition editor Sophie Seita and English translations of the French texts by Elizabeth Zuba.

The Blind Man is printed in an edition of 1,000 and retails for $70 (on sale right now for $60) via Ugly Duckling Presse.


James Hoff is an artist living in New York City. He is the co-founder of Primary Information, a non-profit organization devoted to publishing artists's books.