Min Jin Lee Still Believes in Truth
"I think my career is this series of humiliations where I feel so stupid all the time."
●
●
●
Dentistry and Doubt: On Writing About Teeth
I await the the first great contribution to dental literature.
●
●
●
Art Makes Us Better: The Millions Interviews Percival Everett
"I'm a product of reading Mark Twain."
●
●
●
A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian
Representation in today’s media is questionable in many ways. But Othello does provide us with a rule of thumb: we have to speak of others as they are.
●
●
●
The Hunger Artist: Thoreau and the Irony of Performance Art
But he offers an interesting lens through which to view both the hunger artist and Thoreau: while they offer their lives as tragic, the audience always receives them as comic.
●
●
●
What Is Wrong with Natasha?: On the Female “Type” in Tolstoian Tales
This is what happens to Tolstoy’s female types. His bias of women wears the garment of universal truth: either they are attractive, childless, and morally suspicious charmers, or plain, dumb, dedicated mothers.
●
●
●
A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian
My spiritual crisis this year was not triggered by the pandemic but by the trees in St. Louis.
●
●
●
The Narrative Drama Triangle: On Sayed Kashua’s ‘Track Changes’
That is the complicated relation of truth to fiction: although the story is a lie, the emotions couldn’t be more real.
●
●
●
The Mystery of the Other and Preoccupation with the Self: On Meng Jin’s ‘Little Gods’
When one says, “Oh, they are just different,” what he is really doing is reconciling ignorance and indifference.
●
●
●
Giving Voice to Shame and Fear: The Millions Interviews Jonathan Franzen
When I hear politicians and activists and online screamers acting as if things were simple, leaving out important facts, it makes me really angry.
●
●
●
A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian
I spent a lot of time rereading the same books I used to sneak into my desk back in old days. We don’t need to feel apologetic about loving these books.
●
●
●
Unsettling the American Dream: The Millions Interviews Viet Thanh Nguyen
I couldn't pay attention to that, not to write the novel I wanted to write. We can't let our work be driven by the anxieties around narrative scarcity.
●
●
●
Translation as a Condition of Life: The Millions Interviews Aron Aji
One’s proficiency in a language has little to do with one’s birthplace. Proficiency requires training, study, and practice.
●
●
●
Mirror, Mirror: On the Nature of Literature
For all my writing, I am performing painful self-reflection and I would be grateful if my readers would do the same after reading my work.
●
●
●
A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian
My 2018 experience, perhaps like everyone else, is much swamped with all sorts of political news that keeps me in dread and panic.
●
●
●
Light in the West and Shadows in the East
Beauty is not what we see in the light, but how we imagine what we cannot see.
●
●
●
Apply Aesthetic Pressure to the Language: An Interview with Paul Harding
I certainly worried, wondering whether I could pull it off. But I either had to write a second book or disappear. Much better, I thought, to get on with it.
●
●
●
The Moon Is Beautiful Tonight: On East Asian Narratives
The term Kishōtenketsu is often used to describe the development of a classic East Asian narrative. It includes four different acts: introduction (ki), development (shō), twist (ten), and conclusion (ketsu).
●
●
●