This blog was made in order to capture the moments that I sometimes look back upon and regret that I didn't put down on paper. Though my attempts to capture emotions may amount to only a pile of blurry snapshots, I feel like when those snapshots are put together there might be something else there.
The writing on the website is entirely my own, and the collection (beginning with the first steps that I took in sixth grade) will hopefully show increasing maturity in my writing over the ages. The more recent pieces are displayed towards the top, and all pieces are dated only by year. The sub-category "My Memoir" includes some of my most important recollections that I hope will someday grow to be reflections worth learning from, a series of memories that will show my development as a person as well as a writer.
The writing on the website is entirely my own, and the collection (beginning with the first steps that I took in sixth grade) will hopefully show increasing maturity in my writing over the ages. The more recent pieces are displayed towards the top, and all pieces are dated only by year. The sub-category "My Memoir" includes some of my most important recollections that I hope will someday grow to be reflections worth learning from, a series of memories that will show my development as a person as well as a writer.
Paul Auster
6.13.13
This man looks like a brooding stage actor in the picture I've posted to the left- a far cry, for sure, from the grandfatherly look of Wolff.
But looks aside, Auster is simply a very good writer. His novels have that unsettling capacity to draw you in, spin you around more times than you can count, and spit you back out. They leave you with only a vague sense of the narrative, but also with a strong resolve that there was magic in those words.
Auster's books have a tinge of insanity to them, and even the experienced reader who claims he's already 'seen it all' cannot resist becoming personally invested in his characters.
Auster is capable also of doing crafty tricks with his narrative that leave you fascinated. City of Glass centers on a writer of mystery novels, who, after receiving a phone call meant for Paul Auster himself, decides to act as Auster and attempt to unravel the psyche of a religious zealot (and a potential killer). The storyline was riveting, like a great number of books in existence, but what stayed with me was the layers of reality that Auster managed to create, using nothing other than his own self. The reader is quite aware that Paul Auster is the author, but realizes that the narrator is an entity different from Auster the author, and then there is "Paul Auster" the impostor, who is really Daniel Quinn, the protagonist, and lastly there is the "real" Paul Auster of the story, whose phone lines get crossed with Daniel's, and who is writing an article exploring the possible identities of the narrator of Don Quixote (whose initials Daniel shares). It's a tad dizzying after a while, but this is what renders this first book in Auster's New York Trilogy mesmerizing- and most certainly not a simple detective novel.
The plots of Auster's novels sound very dramatic- and they most oftentimes are- but I believe Auster's greatest talent is the way in which he focuses in on the mind. For him, the "mind" is a physical space, as capable of being explored and probed as if it were tangible. It is there that our perceptions of reality unfold, and after every one of his novels Auster successfully leaves his reader questioning whether "Reality" is truly inside or outside of his own mind.
This man looks like a brooding stage actor in the picture I've posted to the left- a far cry, for sure, from the grandfatherly look of Wolff.
But looks aside, Auster is simply a very good writer. His novels have that unsettling capacity to draw you in, spin you around more times than you can count, and spit you back out. They leave you with only a vague sense of the narrative, but also with a strong resolve that there was magic in those words.
Auster's books have a tinge of insanity to them, and even the experienced reader who claims he's already 'seen it all' cannot resist becoming personally invested in his characters.
Auster is capable also of doing crafty tricks with his narrative that leave you fascinated. City of Glass centers on a writer of mystery novels, who, after receiving a phone call meant for Paul Auster himself, decides to act as Auster and attempt to unravel the psyche of a religious zealot (and a potential killer). The storyline was riveting, like a great number of books in existence, but what stayed with me was the layers of reality that Auster managed to create, using nothing other than his own self. The reader is quite aware that Paul Auster is the author, but realizes that the narrator is an entity different from Auster the author, and then there is "Paul Auster" the impostor, who is really Daniel Quinn, the protagonist, and lastly there is the "real" Paul Auster of the story, whose phone lines get crossed with Daniel's, and who is writing an article exploring the possible identities of the narrator of Don Quixote (whose initials Daniel shares). It's a tad dizzying after a while, but this is what renders this first book in Auster's New York Trilogy mesmerizing- and most certainly not a simple detective novel.
The plots of Auster's novels sound very dramatic- and they most oftentimes are- but I believe Auster's greatest talent is the way in which he focuses in on the mind. For him, the "mind" is a physical space, as capable of being explored and probed as if it were tangible. It is there that our perceptions of reality unfold, and after every one of his novels Auster successfully leaves his reader questioning whether "Reality" is truly inside or outside of his own mind.
Tobias Wolff
7.26.12
At the risk of sounding pretentious, which is a sin of which I've been guilty more than once, I say this: I've always been too voluminous of a reader to have a "favorite author" for long.
But for his timeless novel Old School, I will say this: Tobias Wolff constructs a praise-worthily 3-dimensional character and a heck of a narrative.
Admittedly, if I had picked up the Catcher in the Rye beforehand, Wolff's book may not have struck me as genius in the way it did. But chance would have it that on a trip into the calendar section at a now nonexistent BORDERS store (the relatively recent, rapid disappearance of bookstores is a mystery to be deplored/explored at another time and on another page) where I noticed an abandoned copy of Wolff's Old School amongst a messy array of puppy picture calendars. I felt I just had to sit down on the rough carpet right then and there to pull the stiff new covers open. And that was where I stayed for the next two and a half hours, nothing moving except for my eyes, which darted from left to right, hungrily consuming every word on every page (except those of the Introduction. don't enjoy those).
Old School was an inspiringly closely crafted narrative, but it wasn't enough- I followed up quickly with This Boy's Life, the Dead Poets Society, and finally, The Catcher in the Rye. It didn't matter to me that these boys were of a different class, a different time, of a different heritage- even of a different gender from me. This small, Korean seventh grader's conclusion, which was made when she closed The Catcher in the Rye, was that she deserved, whether the people there knew it yet or not, to be part of this big, romantic tradition called east coast boarding schools. And so the search began.
At the risk of sounding pretentious, which is a sin of which I've been guilty more than once, I say this: I've always been too voluminous of a reader to have a "favorite author" for long.
But for his timeless novel Old School, I will say this: Tobias Wolff constructs a praise-worthily 3-dimensional character and a heck of a narrative.
Admittedly, if I had picked up the Catcher in the Rye beforehand, Wolff's book may not have struck me as genius in the way it did. But chance would have it that on a trip into the calendar section at a now nonexistent BORDERS store (the relatively recent, rapid disappearance of bookstores is a mystery to be deplored/explored at another time and on another page) where I noticed an abandoned copy of Wolff's Old School amongst a messy array of puppy picture calendars. I felt I just had to sit down on the rough carpet right then and there to pull the stiff new covers open. And that was where I stayed for the next two and a half hours, nothing moving except for my eyes, which darted from left to right, hungrily consuming every word on every page (except those of the Introduction. don't enjoy those).
Old School was an inspiringly closely crafted narrative, but it wasn't enough- I followed up quickly with This Boy's Life, the Dead Poets Society, and finally, The Catcher in the Rye. It didn't matter to me that these boys were of a different class, a different time, of a different heritage- even of a different gender from me. This small, Korean seventh grader's conclusion, which was made when she closed The Catcher in the Rye, was that she deserved, whether the people there knew it yet or not, to be part of this big, romantic tradition called east coast boarding schools. And so the search began.