Welcome to the official blog site of Sonya Chung, author of the forthcoming novel Long for This World. Now available for pre-order at Amazon.
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“An intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new, Long for This World marks a powerful debut from a young writer of great talent and promise.”
–Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and
author of A Short History of Women
8 February 2010
How do I love thee, my President; let me count the ways…
5 February 2010
Thank goodness for Max Magee who’s always so good at making sense of book business developments for us lay folk. Here’s his take on the Amazon vs Macmillan e-book pricing wars.
I don’t know, folks — I’m a little disappointed in e-readers who are bristling about the possibility of e-book prices going up to $12.99-ish. If you love to read and you care about literature, is 13 bucks instead of 10 bucks really going to make a significant dent in your life? Is a book not worth 13 bucks, when many of us pay 3 bucks for a cup of coffee, 12 bucks for a movie? And if buying new books is a true financial hardship, I’m a big fan of the public library; if you keep up on what’s coming out in the near future you can usually get in line on the hold list and not have to wait too long. E-books are now downloadable (for a specified period of time) through libraries, and sometimes they are “always available” with no wait (although I suspect there will be resistance to this from publishers, understandably, with new books). I myself often read library books and then buy the book later, once I’ve decided it’s definitely a book I want to own.
Of course, as an author, I find it disturbing to see the prices for new books being driven down. In case it’s not already obvious to readers, it’s very difficult to make a living as a writer; and even more difficult to devote your time and energy to writing if you are having to worry more and more about how to make a living alternatively. I am also now an up-close witness to all the work that goes into writing, editing, designing, producing, and promoting a book. Truly, a labor of love.
Sometimes, the Tyranny of Convenience needs to be checked, I think.
40 Years of Film
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4 February 2010
Congratulations to Karen Cooper on 38 years of building NYC’s venerable art house cinema, Film Forum! The Museum of Modern Art is honoring Karen/Film Forum with a special exhibition of documentary films that have premiered at FF, curated by Karen. The program opened last night and goes through Feb 20.
(FF is celebrating 40 years; Karen took over in its third year, in 1972. I worked with Karen for about four years doing fundraising for FF.)
If you’re not a NYC-dweller, you must certainly make time for a matinee or opening night at FF next time you’re in town. Both the new films and repertory programs are invariably fantastic. Where else can you see an unforgettable film about an old Korean man and his ox?
3 February 2010
Sometimes, yes, Things Fall Apart; but today, they come together…
27 days to release of Long for This World. This first shipment of hard covers are in, and tomorrow I’ll actually see it/hold it in my hand.
Press release, book group guide, events, hope for reviews, a book trailer (!) — things are happenin’. How about that.
A gratifying convergence: my mentor from graduate school David Shields has a new book coming out in February, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. Look out next week for a meaty two-part interview-conversation we put together for The Millions. It’s fun (for me) to see us criss-crossing on book tour, like here, at Brookline Booksmith (scroll down) and here at McNally Jackson.
Another piece of “coming together” good news is forthcoming; I could tell you right now, but then, well, I’d have to kill you. And that would be terrible.
2 February 2010
In case it wasn’t clear watching the Grammys the other night: hip hop/rap is at the dead center of the music industry. It’s still so bizarre to me watching kids in street gear riff and spit and spar on a gigantic, pyrotechnic, Hollywood stage in front of super-rich people in gala-wear. (I know the kids are rich too, now; but still…)
Even more bizarre… but in a totally different way… NPRs Planet Money covered a story about a TV producer and an economist getting together to make economics accessible and engaging. The result: a pretty-good rap song about Keynes and that other guy. Shmilarious. And impressively educational. Ya gotta see this.
24 January 2010
A backlash against Emerson? Say it isn’t so. I reserve a great fondness for Ralph Waldo, great bard of Self-Trust. I’ve always found his philosophy of how to read — widely, freely, somewhat predatorily, taking what you can, discarding the rest, not getting bogged down by reverence for a static canon but approaching the canon with an “active soul” — particularly helpful and relevant in this Age of Information.
Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul…
Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
-from “The American Scholar”
20 January 2010
And then, apropos of my last post, I read this article about a hip young liberal Manhattanite coming out of the Christian closet. Actually, I first heard it on NPR’s “Tell Me More,” which is even more interesting, i.e. that this topic got national radio play in addition to the piece at Salon.
Hmm….
I’m not sure how I feel about the author’s inclination toward the notion that it’s better just not to talk about religion:
Not long ago, I told a priest at my church that my friends equated religion with horrible things. I expected her to tell me I had some obligation to stop hiding my faith, but she said, pulling a scarf around her neck to hide her priest’s collar, “Those preachers on the subways make me cringe.” She said she prefers Saint Francis: “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”[...]
But faith and religion are hard to talk about; maybe they’re not necessary to talk about.
Well, thank God for fiction as a way to “talk.”
18 January 2010
Is it just me, or is Christianity making a comeback as an au courant cultural topic?
At Bookforum’s “Omnivore,” a sampling of reviews and articles about Christianity. All of them nonfiction-related. I’ve been beginning to think about my next project, and a collection of linked stories, in and around Christianity, is what seems to be rising to the surface. Hmm…
Which is a backhand way of also saying that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on Sebastian & Frederick (current word count ~84,000, projected word count ~100,000).
14 January 2010
A new(ish) documentary on legendary soul singer Bill Withers, called “Still Bill,” is terrific. I saw it at the Harlem Stage Theater — a gorgeous venue on the campus of City College — with a great crowd.
Special guests for Q&A were percussionist and Harlem native Ralph MacDonald (who also co-wrote “Just the Two of Us”) and filmmaker/producer Warrington Hudlin (HOUSE PARTY).
Mr. Withers is an engaging, complicated, and touching character, as documentary subjects go, and the filmmakers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack capture this well. Performance and interview footage of Withers from the ’70’s and ’80’s is well-chosen. Here’s a lil o’ Bill, performing his hit, “Ain’t No Sunshine.”
13 January 2010
Check out my essay at The Millions, “Sex, Seriously: James Salter Trumps the Great Male Novelists.“
I suspect it’s not the most comfortable topic for most people; maybe even less so for “the younger generation” that Katie Roiphe refers to in “The Naked and the Conflicted”, the article to which the essay responds.
According to the blog stats, the essay (posted yesterday) was widely read (or at least clicked); and yet little commented on. Hmm… I suppose this makes sense, i.e. in the essay I write that talking or writing “about” sex is like “dancing about architecture” (Elvis Costello said this, maybe). Still, I’m curious how readers feel/think about this topic. I did receive a few comments via personal email.
Thanks to Maud Newton for linking to the piece.
Update 1/18/10: comments rolled in, with some great reading suggestions.
