#alexander chee

[sonatine]

Writing advice from Alexander Chee

[days-of-reading]

Alexander Chee, “Annie Dillard and the Writing Life,” in Mentors, Muses & Monsters (ed. Elizabeth Benedict, 2009)

[postpar]

[seekingstars]

Alexander Chee on learning writing in Annie Dillard’s class, from “How To Write an Autobiographical Novel”

[elwenyere]

“Sometimes the writer writes one novel, then another, then another, and the first one he sells is the first one the public sees, but usually, the debut novel is not the first novel the writer wrote. There’s a private idea of the writer, known to the writer and whoever rejected him previously, and a public one, visible only in publication. Each book is something of a mask of the troubles that went into it, no matter how autobiographical it is, and so is the writer’s visible career.”

-- Alexander Chee, from "The Autobiography of My Novel"

[marnz]

And here the sun catches on him, coming through the trees. Gilt. Guilt. Gild. In my medieval lit books, it says that gilt first meant, blooded. And here in the sunset, he looks red, almost bloody. Not blood spilled, but the essence of blood, the red heat, the transaction of all life. A gas passing from one color to the next, blue to red, even the act of breathing a certain alchemy, sure of itself and its result.

Edinburgh by Alexander Chee

[tragedies-and-dreams]

i'm not feeling good at all :

part I

“As for you, you are alive. But it's not the same as living.”

Last Night I Sang to the Monster, Benjamin Alire Sáenz / / / These Violent Delights, Micah Nemerever / / / A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara / / / The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson / / / The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy / / / The Absolutist, John Boyne / / / Are You Happy Now, Hanna Jameson / / / The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield / / / Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, T Kira Madden / / / Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen / / / Edinburgh, Alexander Chee / / / Revolution, Jennifer Donnelly / / /

[ceeturnalia]

[whilereadingandwalking]

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee is an engrossing, vivid novel about a Parisian opera star with a hidden past. When a novelist tells her that a new opera is being written, she recognizes the plot—and begins to wonder which of the only three people who know her secret will have exposed her. We dive back into her past to tell the story of all the times she has died and be reborn, of the masks she's worn, of the roles she's played. She wants love, she loves admiration, but more than any of it she wants freedom, economic and total, free of strings. But is there any life free of strings, or does Fate itself hold hers?

There are definitely flaws to the novel. Chee falls into a classic pitfall of historical fiction, which is a perhaps over-enthusiasm for some of the details that I'm sure are fun, but that the reader doesn't actually need—like the list of the Empress's furs, or the full description of a playful late-night rendition of Hamlet. As I feel about most books over 400 pages, I feel that this one didn't have to be 553 pages, and could have been just as decadent and fun in closer to 450.

Her life is unbelievable in an entertaining sort of way. She had a miraculous kind of luck to accompany her intense, ruthless ambitious, and she knows from the start that it might mean Fate is setting her up for a large downfall, or correction. I will say that occasionally her emotions can feel almost shallowly one-dimensional. Once she's gotten it in her head that she doesn't like a situation, she tends to leave all her hard-earned money behind, and more importantly, her hopes for the opera, and flee without any thought of consequences. This could be frustrating on the 3rd or 4th go-around when it was obvious it wouldn't be that easy. Also, any health issues seem to heal miraculously perfectly to the point of never coming up again.

I really enjoyed the era and its lushness, learning about these great figures of history who I didn't know well, the descriptions of the music and its impact on her, from the lewd, exciting can-can at the Bar Mabille to the tightly wound courts of the Empress. It was a good enough novel that I wanted to see the mystery unravel (though I had my suspicions about who betrayed her from early on). My final complaint is that he says later that he had an ending in mind and wrote the novel to get there, and that felt clear—the ending felt like it didn't quite fit the story we had read.

Content warnings for sexual assault, domestic abuse, sex work, use of the g-slur, violence.

[whattheysaid]

Why does the talented student of writing stop? It is usually the imagination, turned to creating a story in which you are a failure, and all you have done has failed, and you are made out of to be the fraud you've feared you are. You can imagine the story you might tell, or you can imagine this other story--both will be extraordinarily detailed, but only one will be something you can publish. The other will freeze you in place, in a private theater of pain that seats one.

Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

[maggotanatomy]

edinburgh by alexander chee

[alexanderchee]

I really enjoyed my conversation with Tejas Srinivasan for his podcast Cultural Mixtapes. We spoke of my editing process for Best American Essays 2022, my writing process now, abandoned spaceships, and my lifelong habit of compulsively buying every book my writing heroes mention.

[spindleprick]

All thirsts are without explanation, as are all loves.

Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night

[giritina]

Alexander Chee writing about his grandfather who was raised in occupied Korea having to think in Japanese first and translate every thought to Korean manually, and comparing it to the way being groomed completely alters your brain... The fact that in both cases your enemy has so deeply invaded you that you can't even have your own thoughts. literally like one of the most impactful pieces of writing ever to me

[livinglifedeliberately]

I had endured, I told myself. I was so strong. But this is not strength. It is only endurance. A kind of emotional or therapeutic anorexia. I was not strong. Or if I was, it was the adrenaline of the wounded. I was really only broken, moving through the landscape as if I were not, and taking all my pride in believing I was passing as whole.

Alexander Chee, The Guardians, from How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

[postpar]