A novel, even a social realist one, can't simply be a comprehensive rendering of what is. A novel requires a special angle or approach, whether in structure or language or theme, to justify itself.

Chang-Rae Lee

Categorized in : Special Language Structure Theme

For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love... by Chang-Rae Lee

For sometimes you can't help but crave some ruin in what you love.

ruins helping sometimes

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

reading teaching challenges

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether... by Chang-Rae Lee

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

differences should believe

Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.

historical-novels writing thinking

Obviously loss of family is huge and critical, but I think really it's more about losing a sense of family. The horror of that kind of incompleteness. Writing this book, I tried not to think about my father, which does no one any good fictionally. I did try to imagine not just the horror of that moment, but the horror of having witnessed it, and the lifelong void. And I think that's what's so frightening.

writing father book

So my first book I had no experience having written a book, but each book is a little snapshot of who you are at that moment, accrued all through time, so I accept that.

snapshots book firsts

And it occurred to me that in this new millennial life of instant and ubiquitous connection, you don't in fact communicate so much as leave messages for one another, these odd improvisational performances, often sorry bits and samplings of ourselves that can't help but seem out of context. And then when you do finally reach someone, everyone's so out of practice or too hopeful or else embittered that you wonder if it would be better not to attempt contact at all.

hopeful practice sorry

I try to be aware of what I'm concerned about, aware of how I feel about myself in the world, aware of how I feel about the issues of the day, but I guess I don't want to write essays in my head about my craft and maybe it's because I teach and talk about craft of other writers as a reader. I feel the moment I start doing that is when it's going to kill me.

issues writing trying

The truth, finally, is who can tell it. by Chang-Rae Lee

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

In this difficult era the most valuable commodity is the unfailing turn of the hours and how they retrieve for us the known harbor of yesterday.

commodity eras yesterday

We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears.

maps roots littles

I'd always wanted to write something about the Korean War because of my heritage. My father lost his brother during the war, and I fictionalized that episode, which was told to me very briefly without much detail.

brother war father

What hasty preparations we make for our future. Think of it: it seems almost tragic, the things we're sure we ought to bring along. We pack too heavy with what we hope we'll use, and too light of what we must. We thus go forth misladen, ill equipped for the dawn.

preparation light thinking

For no matter the shadows of an age, the picture of a young couple in love, we are told, speaks most luminously of the future, as the span of that passion makes us believe we can overleap any walls, obliterate whatever obstacles.

wall couple believe

What if loving something means you should mostly feel frustrated and thwarted? And then a little ruined, too, by the pursuit? But you keep coming back for more?

what-if frustrated mean

I had a visceral connection to the period [of Korean War]. By visceral I suppose I mean emotional. But every fiction requires so much that is not that so I did a lot of other research and a lot of thinking, a lot of struggling there.

struggle war mean

Part of writing a novel is being willing to leap into the blackness. You have very little idea, really, of what's going to happen. You have a broad sense, maybe, but it's this rash leap. It's like spelunking. You kind of create the right path for yourself. But, boy, are there so many points at which you think, absolutely, I'm going down the wrong hole here. And I can't get back to the right hole. I'm not going to be able to get this section back to the right hole - so I'm just going to have to cut it.

cutting writing boys

For if there is ever a moment when we are most vulnerable, it’s when we’re closest to the idea of the attained desire, and thus farthest from ourselves, which is when we’ll tread through any flame.

flames desire ideas

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the un... by Chang-Rae Lee

Imagination might not be limitless. It's still tethered to the universe of what we know.

limitless imagination might

I did a lot of reading of first person accounts from Koreans and combatants and aid workers. And I spoke to relatives. A lot of wonderful photographs were made available to me from that period - 1950-1956 - and those were given to me by a Korean newspaper in Seoul. Ruined villages, refugees streaming through a river valley, GI's and orphans and orphanages, those tiny details that you can only see in a picture.

village reading rivers