"I read your book." | Sung J. Woo

A book of stories that runs less than 200 pages shouldn’t take two months to read, but that’s what happened with J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories.  I wish I could lay blame on Salinger’s prose, and maybe I could — certainly the first page of “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” qualifies as dense — but that argument wouldn’t stand a chance against “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut,” which is like 80% dialogue.  Actually, “Pretty Mouth,” outside of that first paragraph, is just as dialogue-driven as “Uncle Wiggily.”

I’d think it’s pretty much impossible to discuss Salinger without mentioning his talent for dialogue.  Here’s just a tidbit from “Uncle Wiggily”:

“Oh, I’m dying to see her,” Mary Jane said.  “Oh, God! Look what I did.  I’m terribly sorry, El.”

“Leave it.  Leave it,” said Eloise.  “I hate this damn rug anyway.  I’ll get you another.”

Salinger doesn’t mention the spill at all.  He doesn’t have to.  The use of italics, the repetition — there’s a hyperreality to the conversation that takes this story into a realm above and beyond fiction.  It’s more like you’re eavesdropping into this story than reading it. It is very impressive — Richard Yates was also a fan of Salinger, and especially this story in particular, and now I can see why.

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In the May 2009 issue of School Library Journal, the following review will appear:

With a mix of humor and drama, Everything Asian makes a fine addition to recreational reading lists and a good companion to Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese.

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Yang is currently doing the Funny Pages for the Times Magazine.  He’s one of many great Asian-American graphic novelists out there — Yang, Adrian Tomine, Shaun Tan (though I suppose he’s Asian-Australian?), just to name a few.  If you haven’t read American Born Chinese, Shortcomings, or The Arrival, you’re missing out.

So with this latest review, the quartet of prepub journals are done: Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, and (School) Library Journal.  So far, so good.

There’s actually a page on the Internet now that features the legendary novelist Toni Morrison, the talented Mr. J. Robert Lennon (if you haven’t read The Funnies, you really should), and me.  As you may have guessed from the graphic on the left, the page is from  Cornell Alumni Magazine.  Morrison received her M.A. back in 1955, Lennon currently teaches there, and I received my B.A. in 1994.  Let’s just say I’m grateful  to be occupying the same literary space as these fine folks (and Professor Ken McClane, too, a phenomenal poet, who signed off on me taking a class at Wells College during my junior year, but that’s a whole another story).

The good folks at Backstory have posted my, you guessed it, back story.  How did Everything Asian become a book?  Like this.

Back in 1981, when I was ten years old, my life had become a foreign-language film without subtitles. Everywhere I went, people spoke English, which was a problem because all I knew was Korean. My mother, my two sisters, and I had made the trek from Seoul, South Korea to reunite with my father in New Jersey, and once we got our bearings, it was time to get to work.

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