|
|
| photo: Peter Yoon | |
Paul Yoon is the author of Once the Shore: Stories, which was a New York Times Notable Book; Snow Hunters, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, which was an NPR Best Book of the Year; and Run Me to Earth, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. He is a recipient of a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation and lives in New York's Hudson Valley. His story collection The Hive and the Honey (Marysue Rucci Books/S&S) delves into questions of belonging--to places, to people--and explores the complicated nature of inheritance and identity across the Korean diaspora.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Hi there, this is a book full of searchers scattered across the world, trying to find a sense of home.
On your nightstand now:
Ralph Sneeden's The Legible Element for its sense of place; Janika Oza's A History of Burning for its vast canvas; Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World for its infinitely layered richness.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I loved mysteries, especially the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series.
Your top five authors:
Michael Ondaatje
Kazuo Ishiguro
Alice Munro
Nadeem Aslam
John Berger
Book you've faked reading:
Anything by Proust.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Here are three: Often, I'm tempted to buy hundreds of copies of Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage, Hernan Diaz's In the Distance, and Roberto Bolaño's 2666, and hand them out to people.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I actually bought Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage at the Harvard Book Store (I think in the fall of 2016) solely because of its cover, knowing absolutely nothing about it. One of the luckiest days of my life.
Book you hid from your parents:
None. I'm not entirely sure they were aware of or noticed what exactly I was reading.
Book that changed your life:
Too many to name here, but I think it's probably one of the books in John Berger's Into Their Labours Trilogy or perhaps his novel To the Wedding. His work taught me grace, humility, experimentation, and to always try to capture the world honorably and respectfully.
Favorite line from a book:
The opening line of Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion which captures so much mystery and longing and place and youth and possibility in one line.
Five books you'll never part with:
So as not to repeat myself here with the authors I love and admire, I can say I have five really beat-up NYRB Classics that have traveled with me for over a decade, from one place to another, from day job to day job, and I'll never part with them because they keep me sane and they always make me want to be a better writer: Andrey Platonov's Soul; Richard Hughes's A High Wind in Jamaica; Maria Dermout's The Ten Thousand Things; Tove Jansson's The Summer Book; and Victor Serge's Unforgiving Years.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I heard a rumor that the world will be graced soon (or soonish) with more fiction from Daniyal Mueenuddin. If this is true, we are lucky indeed--and it makes me want to read In Other Rooms, Other Wonders to experience the rawness and buoyancy and fireworks of that spectacular work of fiction as if for the first time.