Overview

"Named a Best Book of 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, NPR, and Time, among many others, this essay collection from the author of The Queen of the Night explores how we form identities in life and in art. As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as ""masterful"" by Roxane Gay, ""incendiary"" by the New York Times, and ""brilliant"" by the Washington Post. With his first collection of nonfiction, he's sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well. 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. By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack. Named a Best Book by: Time, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, New York Public Library, Boston Globe, Paris Review, Mother Jones, The A.V. Club, Out Magazine, Book Riot, Electric Literature, PopSugar, The Rumpus, My Republica, Paste, Bitch, Library Journal, Flavorwire, Bustle, Christian Science Monitor, Shelf Awareness, Tor.com, Entertainment Cheat Sheet, Roads and Kingdoms, Chicago Public Library, Hyphen Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, The Coil, iBooks, and Washington Independent Review of Books Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction * Recipient of the Lambda Literary Trustees' Award * Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay * Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography"

Full Product Details

9781328764522

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for How to Write an Autobiographical Novel Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by Book Riotand PopSugar Named a Top 10 Essay Collection of Spring 2018 by Publishers Weekly These essays feel like a life's wisdom--its hurts, joys and redemptions--salvaged from a great fire. After reading these myriad-minded and compassion-filled essays from Alexander Chee, I feel in possession of a map of secrets and second chances; I feel I am holding an inheritance whose gifts have only been partially revealed to me, inexhuastible as they are. But these essays are more than maps; for me, as a younger writer, they are the very ground. They are the earth made solid enough so that I might stand here, made rich enough so that I might plant here, and, like Chee's devastating rose garden in Rosary, thrive here. This book makes me feel possible. --Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds I'm astonished by the wisdom of these essays, and how beautiful they are. A riveting account of activism and artistry, as well as a profound exploration of the intersections of identities and experiences that build up this novelist's composite eye. Alexander Chee is brilliant and brave in equal measure, and has written an essential book about how to survive as an artist in America today. --Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is a rare hybrid of a book: an act of poetry, a gift of entertainment, and a primer for life. Alexander Chee is one of our most important writers and we should listen to every damn thing he has to say. --Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins and All Grown Up In Chee's hands, varied subjects, however disparate they may seem, coalesce...A duller, less evocative title along the lines of How I Became a Writer might have been more accurate, but that would have failed to convey Chee's marvelously oblique style as an essayist--his capacity to inform and educate readers while they're too enraptured to notice. --Publishers Weekly, starred review If nothing else about the coming year excites you, at least be happy we have a new Alexander Chee book! And it's nonfiction! I love his novels, but he is also wicked smart, and has many insightful, thoughtful things to say about the world. --Liberty Hardy, Book RiotSelect Praise for Alexander Chee and The Queen of the Night: National BestsellerNew York Times Editor's Choice A Best Book of the Year from NPR, Boston Globe, Buzzfeed, Esquire, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out, Self, Jezebel, The Portland Mercury, Electric Literature, and Entropy Magazine An Indie Next Pick Sprawling, soaring, bawdy and plotted like a fine embroidery. --Scott Simon, NPR The novel is infused with an operatic sensibility...The Queen of the Night is a celebration of these women of creativity, ingenuity, endurance, mastery and grace--a gala in their honor. --Kelly Gardiner, New York Times Epic...Brilliantly extravagant in its twists and turns and its wide-ranging cast of character. --Julia Felsenthal, Vogue [An] extravagant five-act grand opera of a novel...Chee's writing is cultured and confident, and the elite society he depicts is dazzling...Readers willing to submit to the spell of this glittering, luxuriantly paced novel will find that it rewards their attention, from its opening mysteries to its satisfying full-circle finale. --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal A sweeping, richly detailed historical novel about a young woman's tumultuous trajectory from circus rider to renowned soprano at the Paris Opera. --Kim Hubbard, People An opera of the page, complete with seduction, hidden identity, betrayal and plenty of costume changes...It's the ball gowns and roses, magic tricks and ruses, hubris and punishment that will keep the reader absorbed until the final aria. --Sarah Begley, Time Gorgeous prose...Extraordinarily beautiful and dramatic, a brilliant performance. --Wendy Smith, Washington Post [A] postmodern bodice ripper...It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera...It offers a rare, intriguing psychology: the heart as a buried place, where someone is hiding, singing--words you can't quite hear. --Joan Acocella, The New Yorker If Lilliet Berne were a man, she might have been what 19th-century novels would call a swashbuckler: the kind of destiny-courting, death-defying character who finds intrigue and peril (and somehow, always, a fantastic pair of pantaloons) around every corner...The richness of [Chee's] research is evident on every page. Paris' glittering swirl of artists, artistocrats, and underworld habitues lives vividly in his descriptions. --Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly Despite the nineteenth-century setting, the story couldn't be more appropriate for the Age of Kardashian--a masterful look at transformation and its unforeseen aftershocks. --Nathan Smith, Wired The Queen of the Night tackles the fate of history, women's sexuality, and the inner lives of forgotten courtesans who wielded power at a time when women were often powerless. The intricate ways Chee renders this past reveals so much about our present day. --Tanwi Nandini Islam, Elle Vivid, glittering...A spellbinding story of intrigue and self-reinvention. --Jarry Lee, Buzzfeed

Praise for How to Write an Autobiographical Novel Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by Esquire, Book Riot, PopSugar, The Rumpus, and My Republica Named a Most Anticipated Nonfiction Title of 2018 by Bitch Named a Top 10 Essay Collection of Spring 2018 by Publishers Weekly Alexander Chee has been a beloved writing teacher and generous supporter of fellow authors for quite a while. His first collection of nonfiction is a lovely reminder that there is indeed an art to the personal essay, and he is a master artist. --Maris Kreizman, Esquire In his first collection of nonfiction essays, novelist Alexander Chee immortalizes himself through his art and literature...Enlightening, revealing the true impact of the arts. --Bitch Alex Chee explores the realm of the real with extraordinarily beautiful essays. Being real here is an ambition, a haunting, an impossibility, and an illusion. What passes for real, his essays suggest, becomes real, just as life becomes art and art, pursued this fully, becomes a life. --Eula Biss, author of Notes from No Man's Land and On Immunity These essays feel like a life's wisdom--its hurts, joys and redemptions--salvaged from a great fire. After reading these myriad-minded and compassion-filled essays from Alexander Chee, I feel in possession of a map of secrets and second chances; I feel I am holding an inheritance whose gifts have only been partially revealed to me, inexhuastible as they are. But these essays are more than maps; for me, as a younger writer, they are the very ground. They are the earth made solid enough so that I might stand here, made rich enough so that I might plant here, and, like Chee's devastating rose garden in Rosary, thrive here. This book makes me feel possible. --Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds I'm astonished by the wisdom of these essays, and how beautiful they are. A riveting account of activism and artistry, as well as a profound exploration of the intersections of identities and experiences that build up this novelist's composite eye. Alexander Chee is brilliant and brave in equal measure, and has written an essential book about how to survive as an artist in America today. --Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is a rare hybrid of a book: an act of poetry, a gift of entertainment, and a primer for life. Alexander Chee is one of our most important writers and we should listen to every damn thing he has to say. --Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins and All Grown Up Alexander Chee asks one of the great coming of age questions here: Isn't beauty strong? His welter of answers yields a really moving (and sometimes devastating) writing memoir of being young, of being someone and not entirely knowing it yet--all the while being so poetically receptive to the fragrant and devastating strains of beauty and beauty's harsh wisdom that wind up moving and shaping a life. It's a strangely romantic and practical book. It holds a skull lightly. --Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls and Afterglow: A Dog Memoir In Chee's hands, varied subjects, however disparate they may seem, coalesce...A duller, less evocative title along the lines of How I Became a Writer might have been more accurate, but that would have failed to convey Chee's marvelously oblique style as an essayist--his capacity to inform and educate readers while they're too enraptured to notice. --Publishers Weekly, starred review If nothing else about the coming year excites you, at least be happy we have a new Alexander Chee book! And it's nonfiction! I love his novels, but he is also wicked smart, and has many insightful, thoughtful things to say about the world. --Liberty Hardy, Book RiotSelect Praise for Alexander Chee and The Queen of the Night: National BestsellerNew York Times Editor's Choice A Best Book of the Year from NPR, Boston Globe, Buzzfeed, Esquire, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out, Self, Jezebel, The Portland Mercury, Electric Literature, and Entropy Magazine An Indie Next Pick Sprawling, soaring, bawdy and plotted like a fine embroidery. --Scott Simon, NPR The novel is infused with an operatic sensibility...The Queen of the Night is a celebration of these women of creativity, ingenuity, endurance, mastery and grace--a gala in their honor. --Kelly Gardiner, New York Times Epic...Brilliantly extravagant in its twists and turns and its wide-ranging cast of character. --Julia Felsenthal, Vogue [An] extravagant five-act grand opera of a novel...Chee's writing is cultured and confident, and the elite society he depicts is dazzling...Readers willing to submit to the spell of this glittering, luxuriantly paced novel will find that it rewards their attention, from its opening mysteries to its satisfying full-circle finale. --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal A sweeping, richly detailed historical novel about a young woman's tumultuous trajectory from circus rider to renowned soprano at the Paris Opera. --Kim Hubbard, People An opera of the page, complete with seduction, hidden identity, betrayal and plenty of costume changes...It's the ball gowns and roses, magic tricks and ruses, hubris and punishment that will keep the reader absorbed until the final aria. --Sarah Begley, Time Gorgeous prose...Extraordinarily beautiful and dramatic, a brilliant performance. --Wendy Smith, Washington Post [A] postmodern bodice ripper...It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera...It offers a rare, intriguing psychology: the heart as a buried place, where someone is hiding, singing--words you can't quite hear. --Joan Acocella, The New Yorker If Lilliet Berne were a man, she might have been what 19th-century novels would call a swashbuckler: the kind of destiny-courting, death-defying character who finds intrigue and peril (and somehow, always, a fantastic pair of pantaloons) around every corner...The richness of [Chee's] research is evident on every page. Paris' glittering swirl of artists, artistocrats, and underworld habitues lives vividly in his descriptions. --Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly Despite the nineteenth-century setting, the story couldn't be more appropriate for the Age of Kardashian--a masterful look at transformation and its unforeseen aftershocks. --Nathan Smith, Wired The Queen of the Night tackles the fate of history, women's sexuality, and the inner lives of forgotten courtesans who wielded power at a time when women were often powerless. The intricate ways Chee renders this past reveals so much about our present day. --Tanwi Nandini Islam, Elle Vivid, glittering...A spellbinding story of intrigue and self-reinvention. --Jarry Lee, Buzzfeed

Praise for How to Write an Autobiographical Novel Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by Esquire, Book Riot, PopSugar, The Rumpus, My Republica, and Buzzfeed Named a Most Anticipated Nonfiction Title of 2018 by Bitch Named a Top 10 Essay Collection of Spring 2018 by Publishers Weekly Alexander Chee has been a beloved writing teacher and generous supporter of fellow authors for quite a while. His first collection of nonfiction is a lovely reminder that there is indeed an art to the personal essay, and he is a master artist. --Maris Kreizman, Esquire As profound as they are beautiful, Chee's essays impart wisdom from a life fully lived, and speak to what it means to be a writer and reader in contemporary times. --Jarry Lee, Buzzfeed In his first collection of nonfiction essays, novelist Alexander Chee immortalizes himself through his art and literature...Enlightening, revealing the true impact of the arts. --Bitch Alex Chee explores the realm of the real with extraordinarily beautiful essays. Being real here is an ambition, a haunting, an impossibility, and an illusion. What passes for real, his essays suggest, becomes real, just as life becomes art and art, pursued this fully, becomes a life. --Eula Biss, author of Notes from No Man's Land and On Immunity These essays feel like a life's wisdom--its hurts, joys and redemptions--salvaged from a great fire. After reading these myriad-minded and compassion-filled essays from Alexander Chee, I feel in possession of a map of secrets and second chances; I feel I am holding an inheritance whose gifts have only been partially revealed to me, inexhuastible as they are. But these essays are more than maps; for me, as a younger writer, they are the very ground. They are the earth made solid enough so that I might stand here, made rich enough so that I might plant here, and, like Chee's devastating rose garden in Rosary, thrive here. This book makes me feel possible. --Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds I'm astonished by the wisdom of these essays, and how beautiful they are. A riveting account of activism and artistry, as well as a profound exploration of the intersections of identities and experiences that build up this novelist's composite eye. Alexander Chee is brilliant and brave in equal measure, and has written an essential book about how to survive as an artist in America today. --Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is a rare hybrid of a book: an act of poetry, a gift of entertainment, and a primer for life. Alexander Chee is one of our most important writers and we should listen to every damn thing he has to say. --Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins and All Grown Up Alexander Chee asks one of the great coming of age questions here: Isn't beauty strong? His welter of answers yields a really moving (and sometimes devastating) writing memoir of being young, of being someone and not entirely knowing it yet--all the while being so poetically receptive to the fragrant and devastating strains of beauty and beauty's harsh wisdom that wind up moving and shaping a life. It's a strangely romantic and practical book. It holds a skull lightly. --Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls and Afterglow: A Dog Memoir Alexander Chee is the very best kind of essayist, a boon companion in good times and bad, whose confiding voice you'd follow anywhere, just for the wonderful feeling of being understood like never before. --Charles D'Ambrosio, author of Loitering In Chee's hands, varied subjects, however disparate they may seem, coalesce...A duller, less evocative title along the lines of How I Became a Writer might have been more accurate, but that would have failed to convey Chee's marvelously oblique style as an essayist--his capacity to inform and educate readers while they're too enraptured to notice. --Publishers Weekly, starred review If nothing else about the coming year excites you, at least be happy we have a new Alexander Chee book! And it's nonfiction! I love his novels, but he is also wicked smart, and has many insightful, thoughtful things to say about the world. --Liberty Hardy, Book RiotSelect Praise for Alexander Chee and The Queen of the Night: National BestsellerNew York Times Editor's Choice A Best Book of the Year from NPR, Boston Globe, Buzzfeed, Esquire, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out, Self, Jezebel, The Portland Mercury, Electric Literature, and Entropy Magazine An Indie Next Pick Sprawling, soaring, bawdy and plotted like a fine embroidery. --Scott Simon, NPR The novel is infused with an operatic sensibility...The Queen of the Night is a celebration of these women of creativity, ingenuity, endurance, mastery and grace--a gala in their honor. --Kelly Gardiner, New York Times Epic...Brilliantly extravagant in its twists and turns and its wide-ranging cast of character. --Julia Felsenthal, Vogue [An] extravagant five-act grand opera of a novel...Chee's writing is cultured and confident, and the elite society he depicts is dazzling...Readers willing to submit to the spell of this glittering, luxuriantly paced novel will find that it rewards their attention, from its opening mysteries to its satisfying full-circle finale. --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal A sweeping, richly detailed historical novel about a young woman's tumultuous trajectory from circus rider to renowned soprano at the Paris Opera. --Kim Hubbard, People An opera of the page, complete with seduction, hidden identity, betrayal and plenty of costume changes...It's the ball gowns and roses, magic tricks and ruses, hubris and punishment that will keep the reader absorbed until the final aria. --Sarah Begley, Time Gorgeous prose...Extraordinarily beautiful and dramatic, a brilliant performance. --Wendy Smith, Washington Post [A] postmodern bodice ripper...It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera...It offers a rare, intriguing psychology: the heart as a buried place, where someone is hiding, singing--words you can't quite hear. --Joan Acocella, The New Yorker If Lilliet Berne were a man, she might have been what 19th-century novels would call a swashbuckler: the kind of destiny-courting, death-defying character who finds intrigue and peril (and somehow, always, a fantastic pair of pantaloons) around every corner...The richness of [Chee's] research is evident on every page. Paris' glittering swirl of artists, artistocrats, and underworld habitues lives vividly in his descriptions. --Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly Despite the nineteenth-century setting, the story couldn't be more appropriate for the Age of Kardashian--a masterful look at transformation and its unforeseen aftershocks. --Nathan Smith, Wired The Queen of the Night tackles the fate of history, women's sexuality, and the inner lives of forgotten courtesans who wielded power at a time when women were often powerless. The intricate ways Chee renders this past reveals so much about our present day. --Tanwi Nandini Islam, Elle Vivid, glittering...A spellbinding story of intrigue and self-reinvention. --Jarry Lee, Buzzfeed

Praise for How to Write an Autobiographical Novel Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2018 by Esquire, Book Riot, PopSugar, The Rumpus, My Republica, Paste, Bustle, Christian Science Monitor, and Buzzfeed Named a Most Anticipated Nonfiction Title of 2018 by Bitch Named a Top 10 Essay Collection of Spring 2018 by Publishers Weekly Named a Most Anticipated April Book by EW, Book Riot, Bitch, and The Coil One of Min Jin Lee's Summer Reads in the Washington Post Alexander Chee is one of the best living writers of today. If he's not already a household name, he needs to be...powerful, powerful essays with powerful, powerful words... --Buzzfeed's Isaac Fitzgerald, on NBC's TODAY Two-thirds of the way through Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, I abandoned my sharpened reviewer's pencil in favor of luxuriating in the words. Chee's writing has a mesmerizing quality; his sentences are rife with profound truths without lapsing into the didactic...Chee is a very special artist; his writing is lyrical and accessible, whimsical and sad, often all at the same time. No doubt he is an inspiring writing teacher as well. His views on writing reflect his own, thoughtfully examined life. --NPR As Chee's gaze turns inward, he beckons readers to experience his private moments with such clarity and honesty that we're immediately brought into his consciousness. At the same time, he asks us to contemplate the largest questions about identity, sexuality, family, art and war...[A] trailblazing collection...By the end of this moving collection, we learn through Chee's experiences that to be a writer is to continuously reconsider the self, to find what drives you even in moments of despair. --Washington Post The latest brilliant fiction writer to publish a new essay collection this year...Alexander Chee proves why he's a master of the form. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel meditates on how art shapes who we are, unpacking its author's own coming-of-age as a gay Korean man to craft persuasive, engrossing arguments. --Entertainment Weekly As profound as they are beautiful, Chee's essays impart wisdom from a life fully lived, and speak to what it means to be a writer and reader in contemporary times. --Buzzfeed Alexander Chee published Edinburgh, a singularly beautiful and psychologically harrowing first book that still stands as one of the best American novels of this century. Now, he's published How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, a first book of essays that is just as good, and almost as singular, as his novelistic debut...How good is How to Write an Autobiographical Novel? It's so good that I could fill my word count just with quotations...one of its beauties is how simultaneously shaped and flexible it is, both thematically coherent and varied in subject matter...Chee's particular style of mind and habits of moral engagement hold the collection together; every essay, no matter the subject, exhibits warmth, rigor, tact...The mask conceals and it reveals; writing transfigures and it uncovers. That's the gift that writing has given Chee, and it's the gift that his wonderful new collection gives its readers. --The Boston Globe A searing examination of the costs of writing...achingly vulnerable. --Vox A knowing and luminous self-portrait. --O, the Oprah Magazine Alexander Chee has been a beloved writing teacher and generous supporter of fellow authors for quite a while. His first collection of nonfiction is a lovely reminder that there is indeed an art to the personal essay, and he is a master artist. --Maris Kreizman, Esquire Unique and powerful, insistently itself. --R.O. Kwon, Electric Literature Chee proves masterful when he turns to descriptions of real life...Rarely does a book of essays come along so affecting, so brave and bluntly honest, and so raw and poetic. I quit underlining my favorite aphoristic lines by the time I reached that third essay: it was useless to try to pick individual diamonds from a whole pile of them. --Interview Magazine If you're the kind of writer who will never get an MFA but wants to know more about how writers are trained and how they think, there's so much to consider and it's provided in the kind of prose that will thrill you and make you deeply jealous. --Book Riot In his first collection of nonfiction essays, novelist Alexander Chee immortalizes himself through his art and literature...Enlightening, revealing the true impact of the arts. --Bitch Engrossing, smart, insightful, intimate, moving, responsibly adventurous, somewhat meditative, even occasionally luscious. --The Stranger A master class in memoir, writing, and life. --Shondaland The central essay The Autobiography of My Novel is almost a pure lesson in craft, and a deliciously generous one...offer[s] the reader the unique gift of being both affirming of the writing life, no matter how winding or torturous or incomprehensible it might be, and affirming of the simple fact that we are alive in the world at all. --Literary Hub Bears all the hallmarks of the writer's intelligence, curiosity and precision with language...entertaining and illuminating...Alexander Chee demonstrates how to transform life into art in this sharp and thoughtful collection of essays. --Shelf Awareness Poetic and utterly moving, this stunning book attempts to get at the heart of how we not only create but defend out identities, to ourselves and to the world. --Bustle Compelling...Gorgeous, dense, provocative...Chee delivers 16 essays of varying weights and lengths, mostly in the first person and largely in chronological order. The effect is both profound and incremental, of stories that stand alone and work together to unveil a life...Chee's variegated memoir alternates between coming-of-age stories and self-scrutiny, a writer's lessons and appraisal of his own work, each mapping parts of a larger identity. The book is operatic in its range, reflecting the author's life as an outsider not only to the culture, but at times, to his family and himself. The resulting narrative makes for some powerful, lyrical prose. --Portland Press Herald Readers will delight in this memoir-in-essays...In these pieces, he evolves from a plucky 15-year-old beguiling the locals of Mexico into believing he's one of them after his swift acquisition of Spanish, to one of America's premiere literary voices fighting against politics that threaten his deepest convictions...This manifesto's universal truths will speak to readers from all walks of life. --Brooklyn Eagle Alexander Chee is a writer whose work you should know, and you're lucky because his new book is the perfect introduction...Simply gorgeous...There are few writers whose collections of nonfiction can induce the kind of collective awe and excitement that Chee seems to cause...Chee isn't just brilliant, he's an original...To a generation of queer writers, Chee is a beacon, measuring stick, and fairy godmother. It would be simplistic to say that Chee's work provided me with a working model of how one could go about life as a queer artist of color, but it would also be the truth, or part of the truth...In his excellent first essay collection seems to have all the answers I've been craving. --Brandon Taylor, them. The language is beautiful, the subject matter variegated and the insight profound... This is how you write an autobiographical novel. --The Dartmouth How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is a formative collection, sure to cement Chee as not only a preeminent novelist but a powerful essayist as well. In his work, Chee makes the writing life look both envious and easy. For anyone who's ever tried it, that's no small task. --Brooklyn Rail I could read [Alex's] sentences about almost anything. --Stephanie Danler, Subway Book Review Alex Chee explores the realm of the real with extraordinarily beautiful essays. Being real here is an ambition, a haunting, an impossibility, and an illusion. What passes for real, his essays suggest, becomes real, just as life becomes art and art, pursued this fully, becomes a life. --Eula Biss, author of Notes from No Man's Land and On Immunity These essays feel like a life's wisdom--its hurts, joys and redemptions--salvaged from a great fire. After reading these myriad-minded and compassion-filled essays from Alexander Chee, I feel in possession of a map of secrets and second chances; I feel I am holding an inheritance whose gifts have only been partially revealed to me, inexhuastible as they are. But these essays are more than maps; for me, as a younger writer, they are the very ground. They are the earth made solid enough so that I might stand here, made rich enough so that I might plant here, and, like Chee's devastating rose garden in Rosary, thrive here. This book makes me feel possible. --Ocean Vuong, author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds I'm astonished by the wisdom of these essays, and how beautiful they are. A riveting account of activism and artistry, as well as a profound exploration of the intersections of identities and experiences that build up this novelist's composite eye. Alexander Chee is brilliant and brave in equal measure, and has written an essential book about how to survive as an artist in America today. --Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is a rare hybrid of a book: an act of poetry, a gift of entertainment, and a primer for life. Alexander Chee is one of our most important writers and we should listen to every damn thing he has to say. --Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins and All Grown Up Alexander Chee asks one of the great coming of age questions here: Isn't beauty strong? His welter of answers yields a really moving (and sometimes devastating) writing memoir of being young, of being someone and not entirely knowing it yet--all the while being so poetically receptive to the fragrant and devastating strains of beauty and beauty's harsh wisdom that wind up moving and shaping a life. It's a strangely romantic and practical book. It holds a skull lightly. --Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls and Afterglow: A Dog Memoir Alexander Chee is the very best kind of essayist, a boon companion in good times and bad, whose confiding voice you'd follow anywhere, just for the wonderful feeling of being understood like never before. --Charles D'Ambrosio, author of Loitering Chee's advice for the writer spans the pragmatic and the lyrical...I might have been a better fiction writer had I read Chee's essays. I might have gained a more sophisticated understanding of how writing fiction emerges from the self yet, of necessity-and if it is to interest anyone beside yourself-take you outside yourself as well. --Lambda Literary A collection of 16 arresting essays that address the manifold ways in which this smart-funny, gay Korean American novelist and cultural commentator has come to understand the extent to which his life, art and culture intersect. --Toronto Star Quotable, pristine essays...Hand to readers searching for something to follow 2017's incredible parade of writers' memoirs, including Roxane Gay's Hunger and Amy Tan's Where the Past Begins. -- Booklist, STARRED review In Chee's hands, varied subjects, however disparate they may seem, coalesce...A duller, less evocative title along the lines of How I Became a Writer might have been more accurate, but that would have failed to convey Chee's marvelously oblique style as an essayist--his capacity to inform and educate readers while they're too enraptured to notice. --Publishers Weekly, starred review Precise and candid...What truly unifies these pieces, though, is the author's consistent care with words and open-hearted tone; having been through emotional and artistic wars, he's produced a guidebook to help others survive them too. Deserving of a place among other modern classic writers' memoirs like Stephen King's On Writing and Chee's mentor Annie Dillard's The Writing Life. --Kirkus, starred review If nothing else about the coming year excites you, at least be happy we have a new Alexander Chee book! And it's nonfiction! I love his novels, but he is also wicked smart, and has many insightful, thoughtful things to say about the world. --Liberty Hardy, Book Riot Select Praise for Alexander Chee and The Queen of the Night: National Bestseller New York Times Editor's Choice A Best Book of the Year from NPR, Boston Globe, Buzzfeed, Esquire, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out, Self, Jezebel, The Portland Mercury, Electric Literature, and Entropy Magazine An Indie Next Pick Sprawling, soaring, bawdy and plotted like a fine embroidery. --Scott Simon, NPR The novel is infused with an operatic sensibility...The Queen of the Night is a celebration of these women of creativity, ingenuity, endurance, mastery and grace--a gala in their honor. --Kelly Gardiner, New York Times Epic...Brilliantly extravagant in its twists and turns and its wide-ranging cast of character. --Julia Felsenthal, Vogue [An] extravagant five-act grand opera of a novel...Chee's writing is cultured and confident, and the elite society he depicts is dazzling...Readers willing to submit to the spell of this glittering, luxuriantly paced novel will find that it rewards their attention, from its opening mysteries to its satisfying full-circle finale. --Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal A sweeping, richly detailed historical novel about a young woman's tumultuous trajectory from circus rider to renowned soprano at the Paris Opera. --Kim Hubbard, People An opera of the page, complete with seduction, hidden identity, betrayal and plenty of costume changes...It's the ball gowns and roses, magic tricks and ruses, hubris and punishment that will keep the reader absorbed until the final aria. --Sarah Begley, Time Gorgeous prose...Extraordinarily beautiful and dramatic, a brilliant performance. --Wendy Smith, Washington Post [A] postmodern bodice ripper...It just sounds terrific. It sounds like opera...It offers a rare, intriguing psychology: the heart as a buried place, where someone is hiding, singing--words you can't quite hear. --Joan Acocella, The New Yorker If Lilliet Berne were a man, she might have been what 19th-century novels would call a swashbuckler: the kind of destiny-courting, death-defying character who finds intrigue and peril (and somehow, always, a fantastic pair of pantaloons) around every corner...The richness of [Chee's] research is evident on every page. Paris' glittering swirl of artists, artistocrats, and underworld habitu�s lives vividly in his descriptions. --Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly Despite the nineteenth-century setting, the story couldn't be more appropriate for the Age of Kardashian--a masterful look at transformation and its unforeseen aftershocks. --Nathan Smith, Wired The Queen of the Night tackles the fate of history, women's sexuality, and the inner lives of forgotten courtesans who wielded power at a time when women were often powerless. The intricate ways Chee renders this past reveals so much about our present day. --Tanwi Nandini Islam, Elle Vivid, glittering...A spellbinding story of intrigue and self-reinvention. --Jarry Lee, Buzzfeed

Author Information

ALEXANDER CHEE is a novelist and essayist and an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, an editor at large at The Virginia Quarterly Review, and a critic at large at The Los Angeles Times.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available