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How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump.
277 pages, Paperback
First published April 17, 2018
About the author
Alexander Chee
29 books1,801 followers"Alexander Chee is the best new novelist I've seen in some time. Edinburgh is moody, dramatic - and pure."--Edmund White
“A complex, sophisticated, elegant investigation of trauma and desire - like a white hot flame.”--Joyce Hackett, in The Guardian
“A coming-of-age novel in the grand Romantic tradition, where passions run high, Cupid stalks Psyche, and love shares the dance floor with death . . . A lovely, nuanced, never predictable portrait of a creative soul in the throes of becoming.”--Washington Post Book World
Alexander Chee was born in South Kingston, RI, and raised in South Korea, Guam, Truk and Maine. He attended Wesleyan University and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA Fellowship in Fiction, fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and was the Visiting Writer at Amherst College from 2006-2010.
His first novel, Edinburgh, won the Michener, the AAWW Lit Award, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize and was named a Booksense 76 Pick and a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year. His second novel, The Queen of the Night, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. He lives in New York City.
“A complex, sophisticated, elegant investigation of trauma and desire - like a white hot flame.”--Joyce Hackett, in The Guardian
“A coming-of-age novel in the grand Romantic tradition, where passions run high, Cupid stalks Psyche, and love shares the dance floor with death . . . A lovely, nuanced, never predictable portrait of a creative soul in the throes of becoming.”--Washington Post Book World
Alexander Chee was born in South Kingston, RI, and raised in South Korea, Guam, Truk and Maine. He attended Wesleyan University and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA Fellowship in Fiction, fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and was the Visiting Writer at Amherst College from 2006-2010.
His first novel, Edinburgh, won the Michener, the AAWW Lit Award, the Lambda Editor's Choice Prize and was named a Booksense 76 Pick and a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year. His second novel, The Queen of the Night, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2011. He lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,655 reviews
April 27, 2023
I cried reading this book. I laughed. I closed my eyes in pain. There are essays in this collection I couldn’t read without coming undone at every line. Others that filled me with awe and a particular kind of heartache that I’ve only ever felt in the presence of poetry. And there are essays I could only read with a flustered kind of admiration, with the sudden incapacitating desire to put my whole self into them, to get my mouth around each word, and my mind, and make them into food and eat them, inhale their wisdom.
I don’t know how else to say that I love this collection and felt both rescued and rearranged by it in deeply inarticulate ways, but I sort of just wish I could face each one of you personally and hand you this book with earnest, reverent hands that impress upon you just how beautiful and annihilating these essays are and charge you (and myself) to cherish and remember them always.
This is, in short, the kind of essay collection that makes you grateful for reading it: grateful for Chee’s heart-stopping honesty, for the clear-eyed and unforgettable quality of his writing, for the accuracy of his observations, which are tuned to the most unfathomable, least expected details of being someone, of being young and haunted, of being thunderously alive while the world is thunderously erupting around you all the time. Grateful in the sense of: everything is terrible, but at least—at least we have language.
I don’t know how else to say that I love this collection and felt both rescued and rearranged by it in deeply inarticulate ways, but I sort of just wish I could face each one of you personally and hand you this book with earnest, reverent hands that impress upon you just how beautiful and annihilating these essays are and charge you (and myself) to cherish and remember them always.
This is, in short, the kind of essay collection that makes you grateful for reading it: grateful for Chee’s heart-stopping honesty, for the clear-eyed and unforgettable quality of his writing, for the accuracy of his observations, which are tuned to the most unfathomable, least expected details of being someone, of being young and haunted, of being thunderously alive while the world is thunderously erupting around you all the time. Grateful in the sense of: everything is terrible, but at least—at least we have language.
January 1, 2019
Nuanced, sophisticated, intelligent, intimate, sincere essays about writing, identity, and being alive.
June 27, 2019
Lest there be any confusion, this is not a book on how to write an autobiographical novel. It is, however, an excellent example of how to write a collection of essays. The book's title comes from a very short essay (5 pages or so) where Chee recounts the challenges of writing a novel that drew heavily from painful experiences. Otherwise, this is a delightfully rendered collage of key moments and reflections from Chee's life. For writer nerds, there are wonderful segments where he describes his time learning from the great Annie Dillard, goes through the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop, and struggles to get his work published.
A major highlight for me were the essays on his activism in San Francisco during the peak of the AIDS crisis. Refreshingly, Chee goes deep into the emotional wells of his life and describe these events with unfiltered honesty.
Like I've seen with other Iowa alumni, there's a good long chunk in here that is a marvel of subject-verb agreement and active voice, but unbearably boring to read. Fortunately this filler moment doesn't go on forever, and we're soon back into the evocative and captivating.
Overall, very impressed. It's not easy to pull off personal essays in a way that reads as profound as they are in your memories. Chee does a great justice to his life by pouring it all out. Even though it's not a How To guide on writing autobiographical fiction, it is a top-shelf reference for writing autobiographical non-fiction.
A major highlight for me were the essays on his activism in San Francisco during the peak of the AIDS crisis. Refreshingly, Chee goes deep into the emotional wells of his life and describe these events with unfiltered honesty.
Like I've seen with other Iowa alumni, there's a good long chunk in here that is a marvel of subject-verb agreement and active voice, but unbearably boring to read. Fortunately this filler moment doesn't go on forever, and we're soon back into the evocative and captivating.
Overall, very impressed. It's not easy to pull off personal essays in a way that reads as profound as they are in your memories. Chee does a great justice to his life by pouring it all out. Even though it's not a How To guide on writing autobiographical fiction, it is a top-shelf reference for writing autobiographical non-fiction.
June 23, 2018
A vulnerable and moving essay collection that kept me up well past midnight thinking about writing, writing, writing. A successful novelist, Alexander Chee shares his personal life in these essays about growing up as both Korean and white, about his work as an activist in the queer community, about his relationship with writing, and more. As a gay Asian American, I related to quite a bit in How to Write an Autobiographical Novel; my own stomach coiled when Chee wrote about one of his first lusts for another boy, and I felt a sense of shared annoyance when he described how his first book faced pressure to be categorized as either a gay book or an Asian American book, as if both identities cannot both exist at once. Chee's writing contains a quiet assuredness with language and self-exploration that I found both comforting and compelling.
I want to dedicate an individual paragraph to the essay "The Guardians," which literally took my breath away. With great courage, compassion, and intelligence, Chee examines his own experience of childhood sexual abuse and his journey to hide from it and confront it. This essay felt like such a masterful and real rendition of how trauma emerges from nowhere and everywhere, how our past affects our relationships with others and our relationship with art and writing, and the time and the bravery it can take to heal. My heart hurt for and felt hopeful for Chee when I read this, as well as for myself and others who have experienced abuse. I wish I could give this essay 10 stars.
A solid collection I would recommend to anyone interested in writing, race, and/or queerness. While at times I wanted a more cohesive theme across essays or sharper insights in a few individual essays, there is no denying Chee's immense talent and effort with writing. He's definitely inspired me - and I am sure many others, especially those with Asian and queer identities - to persevere with writing, for which I am so grateful.
I want to dedicate an individual paragraph to the essay "The Guardians," which literally took my breath away. With great courage, compassion, and intelligence, Chee examines his own experience of childhood sexual abuse and his journey to hide from it and confront it. This essay felt like such a masterful and real rendition of how trauma emerges from nowhere and everywhere, how our past affects our relationships with others and our relationship with art and writing, and the time and the bravery it can take to heal. My heart hurt for and felt hopeful for Chee when I read this, as well as for myself and others who have experienced abuse. I wish I could give this essay 10 stars.
A solid collection I would recommend to anyone interested in writing, race, and/or queerness. While at times I wanted a more cohesive theme across essays or sharper insights in a few individual essays, there is no denying Chee's immense talent and effort with writing. He's definitely inspired me - and I am sure many others, especially those with Asian and queer identities - to persevere with writing, for which I am so grateful.
April 20, 2020
Conversational, but thoughtful, Alexander Chee earnestly engages with the world in How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, his memoir about coming of age and becoming a writer. Chee moves at a measured pace in these essays, steadily drifting from subject to subject, scene to scene, memory to memory. He seems less interested in establishing definitive centers for his essays than in exploring a wide range of topics, making his work read as expansive and open minded; a concept groups together each essay’s diverse contents, but in the loosest way possible. The pieces also recall each other, lending the collection a cumulative force. An idea raised in one will be expanded upon in another, a memory referenced early on later fleshed out. Chee’s at his best when he allows himself enough space to delve into the nuances of his material, be it family history or the development of his first novel. Favorite essays included “The Curse,” “Inheritance,” “The Autobiography of My Novel,” and “The Guardians.”
January 27, 2022
This is a nice collection of essays from Alexander Chee. Most of the entries are personal essays, providing a glimpse of the author at different points in his life. The prose sparkles and Chee’s life has certainly been interesting - from his involvement in ACT UP and Queer Nation during the AIDS crisis in San Francisco to Iowa City and New York and beyond.
November 18, 2019
Things started off really well between Alexander Chee and me. I loved reading about his childhood and family issues, how he decided to go into writing, his early class with Annie Dillard, his experiences with an AIDS activist group after college. The writing was spectacular, intelligent and engaging. But then things got a little iffy: I thought some of his observations about class and about the power of [extremely conventional] female beauty were too simplistic, and I, a long-lapsed Catholic, was not feeling the fascination that Chee, a non-Catholic, had with the Church. But really the problem was me: I should know by now that I can't read an essay collection straight through; eventually all the stopping and starting annoys me, and I take it out on the author. I wisely put the book aside for a while, and when I picked it back up I was once again in Chee's thrall—I truly loved all the pieces on writing and publishing his first novel. The last essay, on whether making art matters when the world is a complete shitstorm, had me in tears by the final page. I was more than moved: I felt unspeakably lucky, to be alive, and to be alive in a world where this book exists. Every author wants to have that effect. Add Alexander Chee to the short list of authors who can achieve it.
May 2, 2018
I don’t think I’ll read a more passionate defense (and excoriation) of the practice of writing. Wrestling with what it means to write and to be a writer, Chee has gifted us with a collection of essays sure to be read and re-read for years to come. As practical advice it delivers. As memoir it dazzles. As both at the same time it astounds.
January 25, 2018
I do not read many books of essays even though I read a lot of essays online. There's a big difference between reading one personal essay and reading over a dozen by the same person, there are not many writers I trust that much. But I do trust Alexander Chee that much and my trust yielded significant dividends with this beautiful, complex, and moving collection.
With an entire book of mostly quite personal essays you may wonder how a person may have this much to say and not just write a memoir. I understand the impulse, but I don't think these stories would be as successful as they are in that format. The essay, like the short story, can zero in on one thing and explore it in relation to many other things. Here, the kinds of things that may get lost in a memoir that is more about things happening get to be examined in great detail. One person, one event, one idea is so much more than a step along the way in a person's life and Chee opens up so many of them here that I feel I've never before encountered so much of one person's self in any one book before. And I've read a lot of memoirs. We are so much more than what happens to us.
I should also add that I am currently writing a semi-autobiographical novel and there are several essays here on writing and specifically on writing something about your own experiences (which Chee did in his first novel, EDINBURGH). While I loved everything in this book, those were the essays that hit me in the gut. There was much highlighting. Not every writer is good at talking about writing, the writing process, and what it feels like. Maybe it's just because of where I am right now and my own investment in my own book, but wow did I finish this book feeling like I had my own mini-MFA on how to move forward with my own terrifying project.
If you have read Chee before, you will encounter the same intelligence, the same deliberate and fascinating prose you have come to expect, and above all the same deep empathy and emotion.
With an entire book of mostly quite personal essays you may wonder how a person may have this much to say and not just write a memoir. I understand the impulse, but I don't think these stories would be as successful as they are in that format. The essay, like the short story, can zero in on one thing and explore it in relation to many other things. Here, the kinds of things that may get lost in a memoir that is more about things happening get to be examined in great detail. One person, one event, one idea is so much more than a step along the way in a person's life and Chee opens up so many of them here that I feel I've never before encountered so much of one person's self in any one book before. And I've read a lot of memoirs. We are so much more than what happens to us.
I should also add that I am currently writing a semi-autobiographical novel and there are several essays here on writing and specifically on writing something about your own experiences (which Chee did in his first novel, EDINBURGH). While I loved everything in this book, those were the essays that hit me in the gut. There was much highlighting. Not every writer is good at talking about writing, the writing process, and what it feels like. Maybe it's just because of where I am right now and my own investment in my own book, but wow did I finish this book feeling like I had my own mini-MFA on how to move forward with my own terrifying project.
If you have read Chee before, you will encounter the same intelligence, the same deliberate and fascinating prose you have come to expect, and above all the same deep empathy and emotion.
July 25, 2019
This is an amazing, diverse collection of personal essays. Topics range from a teenage summer spent in Mexico, to getting really into tarot, becoming a writer, the HIV / AIDS epidemic, identities of being Korean American and gay, being a student and a teacher, childhood sexual abuse, and lots more. I loved his voice and how he got to the heart of big issues while sometimes writing ostensibly about smaller, everyday things. Excellently read with precision and feeling as an audiobook.
Some favourite passages:
I was someone who didn't know how to find the path he was on. The one under his feet. This, it seems to me, is why we have teachers.
Why am I telling this story? I am, as I've said, a minor character. Out of place in this narrative. But the major characters from the first ten years of the [HIV / AIDS] epidemic have left. The men I wanted to follow into the future are dead. Finding them had made me want to live. And I did. I do. I feel I owe them my survival. The world is not fixed and the healing is still just past my imagining, though perhaps it is closer than it was. For now, the minor characters are left to introduce themselves and take the story forward.
Your imagination needs to be broken in, I think, to become anywhere near as weird as the world.
It's a strange time to teach someone to write stories. But I think it always is. This is just our strange time.
Some favourite passages:
I was someone who didn't know how to find the path he was on. The one under his feet. This, it seems to me, is why we have teachers.
Why am I telling this story? I am, as I've said, a minor character. Out of place in this narrative. But the major characters from the first ten years of the [HIV / AIDS] epidemic have left. The men I wanted to follow into the future are dead. Finding them had made me want to live. And I did. I do. I feel I owe them my survival. The world is not fixed and the healing is still just past my imagining, though perhaps it is closer than it was. For now, the minor characters are left to introduce themselves and take the story forward.
Your imagination needs to be broken in, I think, to become anywhere near as weird as the world.
It's a strange time to teach someone to write stories. But I think it always is. This is just our strange time.
March 20, 2019
Alexander Chee has totally changed my feeling about essays with this collection. I've not had the best luck connecting with an essay collection from start to finish (besides those of the incredible Thomas Glave and Zadie Smith), but the depth of emotion imbued in Chee's writing sets him a world apart from many other writers who tend to be stronger in one form than in others. No matter the medium or form, Chee is an author who aspires to beauty at all costs, which is quite brave in a world which sentimentalizes beauty as something archaic and passe.
In these rich essays, beauty is at the forefront, but is balanced by a fixation upon the universal human experience of confronting the ugly memories and traumas that consume each one of us. Having read his debut novel, Edinburgh, it was wonderful to read about his process of writing that book, through various essays that stereoscopically explore the journey of its publication. He is a mastermind of pathos and nuance, and can unearth the deepest insights about human nature with just two or three words. There is a calmness on the surface of his gorgeous sentences, but a feverishness flutters, just beyond reach, which compelled me to sink beneath and between the words on the page. I left this collection with a sense that it gave me something I didn't have when I began. Something intangible but recognizable as a thing I didn't realize I needed until I finished reading.
In these rich essays, beauty is at the forefront, but is balanced by a fixation upon the universal human experience of confronting the ugly memories and traumas that consume each one of us. Having read his debut novel, Edinburgh, it was wonderful to read about his process of writing that book, through various essays that stereoscopically explore the journey of its publication. He is a mastermind of pathos and nuance, and can unearth the deepest insights about human nature with just two or three words. There is a calmness on the surface of his gorgeous sentences, but a feverishness flutters, just beyond reach, which compelled me to sink beneath and between the words on the page. I left this collection with a sense that it gave me something I didn't have when I began. Something intangible but recognizable as a thing I didn't realize I needed until I finished reading.
November 10, 2018
A little backstory here so it's (hopefully) clear I wasn't predisposed to dislike this book: I knew nothing about the author except that his novels had been well-received and sounded interesting. I picked up "How to Write..." based on the strength of the first few pages. After finishing, I still believe the first essay is the strongest of the book. In it, Chee describes the summer he spent in Mexico as part of an exchange program with other high school students from Maine. The writing in this particular essay is precise and evocative. I was instantly drawn in by the author's descriptions of the house where he's living and the family he's staying with. The locker room scene he depicts is particularly vivid. Unfortunately the essay seemed to lose steam toward the end, but I couldn't quite figure out why. I liked the theme Chee wove through the book of his struggle to become someone else. In that first essay, he eventually tries (and succeeds) at passing as a native Mexican. In another essay he describes the thrill of dressing in drag and assuming a different identity, and a third essay describes what it's like to sublet a chic NYC apartment and pretend at great wealth. Identity is key here. Chee is gay and half-Korean, so he's dealt with racism and bigotry in a very real way. I'm straight, but very liberal, so I was fine with the author's politics and orientation. In fact, he's captivating when he talks about the anti-AIDS protests he participated in and the friends he lost to the disease. That's something I know little about, so I was eager to learn more. What ultimately irked me about the book? It started in that first essay with the author's wager he could fool some of his host family's friends into thinking he was Mexican. He won the bet, couching this first essay in the victory of a new identity, yet beneath that is his need to point out he was the only one of his classmates to become fluent in Spanish over the course of the summer. A small thing at first, not even noticeable until I started seeing other little boasts threaded throughout. This isn't really "How to Write an Autobiographical Novel" but rather "How to Convince Everyone of Your Bona Fides as a Writer." The book is one long CV, one long humblebrag. I was great at learning Spanish. I got my MFA at Iowa even though a lot of other people didn't. I sold my first book when I was really young. I drove a cool sports car. I attended a hip liberal arts school. I won writing fellowships. I studied with famous writers. I spoke at Yale. There was so much of this that it became a distraction for me and ultimately made me dismissive of what was intended as a heartfelt book. Chee says something true, if a bit obvious, when he points out that money for a writer equals time, so I can't really fault him for profiting from the individual essays and then publishing them in book form to make more money from them. The problem is that some of the essays overlap, leading to repetition, while others just seem extraneous. This is especially true of the essay in the middle of the book about rose gardening. Chee strained to make his descriptions of the roses lyrical, but it didn't really save the piece. To his credit, Chee knows how to structure a book, placing his strongest essay upfront and burying his weakest essays in the center. Another essay in this section seems like an elaborate way for Chee to disclose he lived for awhile in the same building as Chloe Sevigny. And we care why? At the same time he's bragging about not saying hi to Sevigny in the elevator or helping some kids in a coffee shop after the towers fell to play up his NYC cred (I know, way cynical of me), he's dropping tantalizing hints about what the book could've been. His dad was a military lifer of Korean descent who died prematurely. Chee's mom was from Maine. The family lived on Guam at one point. Yet none of this is brought to the fore. Instead we get these odd pieces about hearty rose varieties and a defense of the writing program at Iowa and the aforementioned Sevigny encounters. And then the book kind of crumbles into writerly aphorisms, things that sound great but ultimately don't really mean much. I kept thinking of that other Maine writer, Stephen King, whose book on writing was so strikingly clear. I wish there would've been less obfuscation here, less self-praise, and more memoir.
March 30, 2019
"The writing felt both like an autonomic process, as compulsory as breathing or the beat of the heart, and at the same time as if an invisible creature had moved into a corner of my mind and begun building itself, making visible parts out of things dismantled from my memory, summoned from my imagination. I was spelling out a message that would allow me to talk to myself and to others."
This book of essays, which now includes pink and yellow highlights for easy referencing, has left quite a few indelible impressions:
1. I've made a note to look more closely at stereoscopic narratives... (you'll have to read to understand)
2. After I turned the last page, I ordered Cat's Eye and Edinburgh.
3. I reworked my crumpled plan for that little idea of a small community collective for readers and writers (I created and ran a similar one for entrepreneurs for 7 years).
4. I now understand how memory, as relates to post-trauma, can be explained effectively.
5. I felt encouraged to shut myself in my hotel room after a few days of incessant work travel, ignored the taxing post-reception dinners where I just feel out of place, and simply scribbled away.
6. I went to bed with a smile frozen on my face the next morning.
7. I now see how ethnic and cultural identity crisis, although different, can cause similar pain and that such pain has similar consequences and that worldwide such suffering happens in silence until occasionally, well, occasionally books like these come about and a reader understands that she is not alone.
8. I have now seen Annie Dillard from a unique angle and will smile when I remember "too many gerunds together on the page makes for tinnitus."
9. I love that June Jordan and Joan Didion are also two of Alexander Chee's favorite essayists.
10. I know this with certainty: Activism can be strangely beautiful artistry.
This book of essays, which now includes pink and yellow highlights for easy referencing, has left quite a few indelible impressions:
1. I've made a note to look more closely at stereoscopic narratives... (you'll have to read to understand)
2. After I turned the last page, I ordered Cat's Eye and Edinburgh.
3. I reworked my crumpled plan for that little idea of a small community collective for readers and writers (I created and ran a similar one for entrepreneurs for 7 years).
4. I now understand how memory, as relates to post-trauma, can be explained effectively.
5. I felt encouraged to shut myself in my hotel room after a few days of incessant work travel, ignored the taxing post-reception dinners where I just feel out of place, and simply scribbled away.
6. I went to bed with a smile frozen on my face the next morning.
7. I now see how ethnic and cultural identity crisis, although different, can cause similar pain and that such pain has similar consequences and that worldwide such suffering happens in silence until occasionally, well, occasionally books like these come about and a reader understands that she is not alone.
8. I have now seen Annie Dillard from a unique angle and will smile when I remember "too many gerunds together on the page makes for tinnitus."
9. I love that June Jordan and Joan Didion are also two of Alexander Chee's favorite essayists.
10. I know this with certainty: Activism can be strangely beautiful artistry.
May 16, 2021
I for some reason was expecting a bit more of a writing craft book, but the essays here are fantastic and touching. The collection taken together is a bracing look at the writing life and what it looks like trying to make a career out of writing these days, examined through personal stories. Emotional, thoughtful, and one of those books I can imagine giving to a lot of people.
March 31, 2019
Well, shit.
Look, I put off reading this because there's something about the cover that really pisses me off. Maybe it's the red border. Maybe it's the black-and-white photobooth photo of the author as a young man, the cocky face and tilt of the head. But something about it rubs me the wrong way and I didn't want to admit it might be a good book, especially because I've heard nothing but good things about it.
Dammit, it's a really good book.
This is my first experience with Chee's writing but it won't be my last. Everything he wrote in these essays were things I could either relate to or understand in some way I didn't even expect to. What do I know about being a Korean-American gay man? NOTHING. And yet his writing was so clear and concise that I could understand everything Chee has been through as though I was there with him throughout all of it. That's some mad skill.
I've been talking a lot with my writer-friends about "The Writing Life." Actually, I've not so much been talking with them about it as I have been sending them links to the essay as it was published initially. I've sent it to my MFA mentor and told her she must share it next semester with his class, and I've shared it with the two other women in my class this semester, and two other people who are in the fiction concentration because we get together once or so a week to talk about how our semester is going. (Poorly, it seems, for all three of us.)
While I thoroughly loved all of his essays, this is the one that stands out the most to me. Maybe that has to do with his experience studying under Annie Dillard who is one of the essayists I read when I first moved to Pittsburgh that made me think, hey, I could maybe do that. And here I am. Doing it.
But it's also about what he wrote about writing that has helped me now more than ever. The reminder that what sets Dillard and Chee and others apart from so many is that they do write. It's not just a matter of talking about it - you have to actually do it.
As I work on my own manuscript of essays for this MFA, I have struggled with how to write about something in one essay that has been discussed in more detail in another essay. Obviously I don't want to repeat everything I have already said, but certain elements should be shared in case the reader hasn't read the other essay with the pertinent story. Right? So I think about that probably more than I should, like how does one do that seamlessly so it's understandable to a new reader while not becoming stale for a seasoned reader?
I'm not sure if I understand exactly how Chee has done it here, but he did the shit out of that. It was awe-inspiring.
If Chee ever sees this review, I want to adopt him to my new mentor, which isn't a thing that can be done but that's how important I feel his writing is. He showed me through his words what it can be like. I can only imagine what it might be like to have him as an actual teacher, a mentor. In the meantime, I will probably re-read a few of these and really dissect them. Somehow I'll learn his secrets. But until then I'll take his advice and keep writing. It's really the only way.
Look, I put off reading this because there's something about the cover that really pisses me off. Maybe it's the red border. Maybe it's the black-and-white photobooth photo of the author as a young man, the cocky face and tilt of the head. But something about it rubs me the wrong way and I didn't want to admit it might be a good book, especially because I've heard nothing but good things about it.
Dammit, it's a really good book.
This is my first experience with Chee's writing but it won't be my last. Everything he wrote in these essays were things I could either relate to or understand in some way I didn't even expect to. What do I know about being a Korean-American gay man? NOTHING. And yet his writing was so clear and concise that I could understand everything Chee has been through as though I was there with him throughout all of it. That's some mad skill.
I've been talking a lot with my writer-friends about "The Writing Life." Actually, I've not so much been talking with them about it as I have been sending them links to the essay as it was published initially. I've sent it to my MFA mentor and told her she must share it next semester with his class, and I've shared it with the two other women in my class this semester, and two other people who are in the fiction concentration because we get together once or so a week to talk about how our semester is going. (Poorly, it seems, for all three of us.)
While I thoroughly loved all of his essays, this is the one that stands out the most to me. Maybe that has to do with his experience studying under Annie Dillard who is one of the essayists I read when I first moved to Pittsburgh that made me think, hey, I could maybe do that. And here I am. Doing it.
But it's also about what he wrote about writing that has helped me now more than ever. The reminder that what sets Dillard and Chee and others apart from so many is that they do write. It's not just a matter of talking about it - you have to actually do it.
Talent might give you nothing. Without work, talent is only talent - promise, not product.Yeah, we all know this but do we really know this?
(p53)
As I work on my own manuscript of essays for this MFA, I have struggled with how to write about something in one essay that has been discussed in more detail in another essay. Obviously I don't want to repeat everything I have already said, but certain elements should be shared in case the reader hasn't read the other essay with the pertinent story. Right? So I think about that probably more than I should, like how does one do that seamlessly so it's understandable to a new reader while not becoming stale for a seasoned reader?
I'm not sure if I understand exactly how Chee has done it here, but he did the shit out of that. It was awe-inspiring.
If Chee ever sees this review, I want to adopt him to my new mentor, which isn't a thing that can be done but that's how important I feel his writing is. He showed me through his words what it can be like. I can only imagine what it might be like to have him as an actual teacher, a mentor. In the meantime, I will probably re-read a few of these and really dissect them. Somehow I'll learn his secrets. But until then I'll take his advice and keep writing. It's really the only way.
Dying, what stories would you tell?
(p264)
September 2, 2021
One man's collection of anecdotes is another one's escape into normalcy in these troubled times.
Hurrah for pre-pandemic essays. Cartwheels over the writing and the friendly tone in this specific case. Pretty spot on at the moment.
Hurrah for pre-pandemic essays. Cartwheels over the writing and the friendly tone in this specific case. Pretty spot on at the moment.
November 26, 2023
A brilliant collection of essays, some of them about writing, others about family, lost loves, rose gardens, secrets and the mysterious power we have to protect and project our hidden selves.
Many of the essays are easily 5 stars. However there is a degree of repetition in the collection, and a couple I basically skipped, so have rounded down to 4 stars.
Sometimes I wished Chee was a little less coy, and little more indiscreet! For example, a “Beat Poet” used to come into A Different Light bookstore in San Francisco and move his books from the poetry section to out front with the new releases. I guessed this was Harold Norse, but it was already decades ago so why Chee couldn't just name him?
Note to writers and aspiring writers: this book is both inspirational and discouraging. Writers seeking fame and fortune are likely to be disappointed. Writers seeking to simply learn more about themselves might be nourished and supported.
Chee says "Only in America do we ask our writers to believe they don't matter as a condition of writing." Why claim American exceptionalism in this regard? Should more accurately say: "In America we ask our writers to believe . . ."
To recapitulate, a brilliant collection.
Many of the essays are easily 5 stars. However there is a degree of repetition in the collection, and a couple I basically skipped, so have rounded down to 4 stars.
Sometimes I wished Chee was a little less coy, and little more indiscreet! For example, a “Beat Poet” used to come into A Different Light bookstore in San Francisco and move his books from the poetry section to out front with the new releases. I guessed this was Harold Norse, but it was already decades ago so why Chee couldn't just name him?
Note to writers and aspiring writers: this book is both inspirational and discouraging. Writers seeking fame and fortune are likely to be disappointed. Writers seeking to simply learn more about themselves might be nourished and supported.
Chee says "Only in America do we ask our writers to believe they don't matter as a condition of writing." Why claim American exceptionalism in this regard? Should more accurately say: "In America we ask our writers to believe . . ."
To recapitulate, a brilliant collection.
September 22, 2019
Chee delineates the arc of his life through these essays, affecting and honest and open, with an overall effect that’s hard to achieve. I was most moved by the third-to-last and the final essays, especially their approach to trauma (his own), and how memory and identity and one’s permanent sense of self are affected by childhood abuse.
June 3, 2019
A strong collection of autobiographical essays. These essays fit together so well - Chee writes about his life and about the writing life. Each essay reveals something new. I really enjoyed Chee's style- he writes as if talking to a friend.
May 14, 2019
I loved most of these essays, I felt like they were written by someone close to me. I had never read anything by alexander Chee, and I love that he mentions Annie Dillard, since she is a writer I have enjoyed reading very much. His attitude is that of a teacher, and I loved that. I will have to read his novels too. He speaks about his life as a Korean-american, as a gay writer, an activist for AIDS victims, his different jobs, his passion for writing. Truly a great read.
December 5, 2023
‘Imagine yourself as a pool of light and sound altering as all your days run through you, and they pass again and again. From moment to moment, you are every age you have ever been, but in no particular order. Time courses through you, the time you lived, a flume of your days.’
One way or another, and by some too briefly a read of a line/blurb or another, I was misled to think that this was actually a how-to book. But I was pleasantly surprised that it isn’t one? In any case, despite the long ‘delay’, I thought that even though I read it late, I read it at the right/perfect time. Probably won’t be reviewing this as it’s a bit of a memoir? Personal writing and all that. Immensely lovely stuff though. Beautifully composed. It’s one of those books that makes a reader want to thank the writer for writing/sharing his writing. (Listened to the audiobook too; and would definitely recommend that as well.)
‘After I read Eduardo Galeano’s stories in Memory of Fire, I mostly remember the mulatto ex-slaves in Haiti, obliterated when the French recaptured the island, the mestiza Argentinean courtesans—hated both by the white women for daring to put on wigs as fine as theirs, and by the Chilote slaves, who think the courtesans put on airs when they do so. Galeano’s trilogy is supposed to be a lyric history of the Americas, but it reads more like a history of racial mixing.
I found in it a pattern for the history of half-breeds hidden in every culture: historically, we are allowed neither the privileges of the ruling class nor the community of those who are ruled. To each side that disowns us, we represent everything the other does not have. We survive only if we are valued, and we are valued only for strength, or beauty, sometimes for intelligence or cunning. As I read those stories of who survives and who does not, I know that I have survived in all of these ways and that these are the only ways I have survived so far.’
‘To write is to sell a ticket to escape, not from the truth, but into it. My job is to make something happen in a space barely larger than the span of your hand, behind your eyes, distilled out of all that I have carried—Something new is made from my memories and yours as you read this. It is not my memory, not yours, and it is born and walks the bridges and roads of your mind, as long as it can. After it has left mine. All my life I’ve been told this isn’t important, that it doesn’t matter, that it could never matter. And yet I think it does. I think it is the real reason the people who would take everything from us say this. I think it’s the same reason that when fascists come to power, writers are among the first to go to jail. And that is the point of writing.’
‘I am sometimes unduly terrified by my shortcomings, and I do not trust God. But at my worst, for now, I remember that one thing I still control is whether or not I give in. And then I go on.’
May 21, 2018
This book spoke to me on so many levels. It is impossible to overstate just how much I loved these essays!
I have waited so long for a book like this—something that could speak to my heart, mind, and soul. If only this were around when I was in high school...
I have a feeling that this will be one of the books that I re-read every year or two.
I have waited so long for a book like this—something that could speak to my heart, mind, and soul. If only this were around when I was in high school...
I have a feeling that this will be one of the books that I re-read every year or two.
November 23, 2019
Wanted to like this more than I did. My attention often wandered while I was listening to it, and I'm not really sure why. Wish I had more to say, but I don't so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(PS: my 100th book of the year!!!!!!!!!)
(PS: my 100th book of the year!!!!!!!!!)
November 14, 2018
Having read The Queen of the Night, I was enticed to read Chee's latest collection of essays, but not really knowing what I was getting myself into. I am not sure if I as a non writer is the intended audience for a book largely looking at the events, choices and processes that turned Chee into who he is today as an author. That said, the collection of essays was eye openinng, offering insight into both the mundane thoughts writers work through as they construct their work, but also into the painful events that shape who they are but also who they seek to be on the page. With each new essay, I found myself initially disinterested or moderately so (who cares about planting roses in your garden, really) and by the end, after Chee has carefully taken us into the depths of his mind, I found myself catching my breath, and in awe at how easily he brought me in. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for passionate readers Chee offers something really special and I look forward to not only his future work, but also going back and reading the novel that is a the centre of this collection, Edinburgh.
January 15, 2020
Alexander Chee opens himself up to the reader offering a look into his writing world as well as his personal life. He is quite open about his sexuality and his activism in the queer community, he openly talks about the loss of close friends during the Aids epidemic during the height of the Aids crisis while living in San Francisco and the deep impact those loses made on him. Some past trauma, a major family tragedy and his personal troubles with depression all shape him to be the vulnerable and thoughtful writer that he is.
An insightful view into the many reflective and solitary moments that are required to be a good author, as one of his writing course teaches tells him early on, it takes more than sheer talent to be a good author you need to WORK, practice good work habits and keep writing, writing, writing. The lessons learned not just from his teachers but from real life makes him all the wiser and I think what a gift this book truly is.
An insightful view into the many reflective and solitary moments that are required to be a good author, as one of his writing course teaches tells him early on, it takes more than sheer talent to be a good author you need to WORK, practice good work habits and keep writing, writing, writing. The lessons learned not just from his teachers but from real life makes him all the wiser and I think what a gift this book truly is.
April 26, 2018
"I wanted to write a novel that would take a reader by the collar and run. And yet I was drawn to writing stories in which nothing happened."
lol same bro
lol same bro
April 9, 2021
An absolutely stunning collection of memoir essays. Gem after gem after gem. I was very engaged with all of the different ways Chee wrote about writing itself. In one of my favorite essays, "The Writing Life", Chee talks about taking a class from Annie Dillard at Wesleyan in 1989. I loved the specific pieces of advice and exercises he recounted- "never quote dialogue you can summarize" stuck out to me particularly strongly as a very good reminder for prose, but literally the opposite of what I feel makes a good comic script. He also describes an exercise of taking a pair of scissors to an essay, cutting out and saving only the best lines, watching the others fall to the floor. I think about this all the time- paring down my drafts to the bare minimum. I also loved all of the essays that centered around Chee's time living in San Francisco, during which he was a member of ACT UP. Further pieces include mediations on family and inheritance, gender, queerness, rose gardens, tarot cards, sexual assault and memory. I'm very curious now to go back and read some of his fiction work. I may also buy a copy of this book at some point so I can underline in it. Highly recommend.
May 16, 2019
3.5 stars.
I absolutely loved some of the essays in this collection, and could have done without others. Most of the essays are long and meandering; however, they typically come to an enlightening and moving conclusion. I also found myself inspired to write by some of the author's essays.
Worth reading if you can add one more book to your teetering TBR pile.
I absolutely loved some of the essays in this collection, and could have done without others. Most of the essays are long and meandering; however, they typically come to an enlightening and moving conclusion. I also found myself inspired to write by some of the author's essays.
Worth reading if you can add one more book to your teetering TBR pile.
February 18, 2022
Cringeworthy. He's in love with rich white people and seems unable to cope with the fact that he isn't one (though one could argue he's as close as you can get). At one point, he literally complains about being white-passing. Lots of references to how he "had to wait tables" and the "struggles of being middle class" when he had a trust fund that lasted 9 years and paid for him to go to Wesleyan. Chee has obviously had his own deep trauma and incredibly difficult struggles, but these essays testify to a total lack of self-awareness about his position in the world and an obsession with whiteness. This makes me despair for the state of Asian American racial politics–my only hope is books like these DO NOT age well.
May 2, 2018
More so than any recent book I can remember, Alexander Chee's How To Write An Autobiographical Novel has changed the way I read, the way I think, and hopefully, the way I write. This is a must-read for anyone attempting to find and articulate truth on the page. But it's also a must-read for anyone attempting to make their way through a world that tells them, something is wrong with you, something is strange about you, something, anything about you. This book is a gift, and I will continue to treasure it through the next read through and beyond.
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