Saturday, April 30, 2005
'Aloft': Italian American Suburban Novel written by Korean American !!

The ANNOTICO Report

Lee Chang-rae is an award winning novelist with his previous "A Gesture
Life" and "Native Speaker", named by The New Yorker as one of its 20
writers for the 21st Century, who has confirmed his place in that company
with "Aloft", a masterful treatment of a man coming to terms with his own
disaffection.

"In `Aloft,` Jerry Battle, the protagonist is an Italian-American, who has
no questions about his belonging in society but
has a sense of alienation through his family, that like so many people
today that enjoy the technical abilities that make it easier to stay in
touch, have lost the ability to speak to each other and communicate in the
old fashioned way, in a "face-forward" approach.

It is about a family having problems that families all over the world are
having with miscommunication. "It is about what happens to families in
modern life."

"Aloft" is set in a classical American suburb, which, according to Lee, has
its positives and negatives. While it is prosperous and safe, the people in
the suburbs suffer from "isolation, apathy and disengagement," Lee pointed
out. "This book is a treatise on what it means to live in a place that is
so comfortable and prosperous. How it affects one`s spirit," he said. One
price of prosperity is that it prevents us from interaction and
communication.

It is interesting to see how Lee who grew up in towns with many
Italian-Americans, and whose wife is an Italian-American, deals with the
SUBURBAN Italian American family, versus the usual URBAN setting. The
Italian "effect" is diluted almost to the point of being unidentifiable,
which perhaps causes part of the protagonist's identity crisis.

FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Lee's third novel approaches the problems of race and belonging in America
from a new angle—the perspective of Jerry Battle, the semiretired patriarch
of a well-off (and mostly Italian American) Long Island family. Sensitive
but emotionally detached, Jerry escapes by flying solo in his small plane
even as he ponders his responsibilities to his loved ones: his irascible
father, Hank, stewing in a retirement home; his son, Jack, rashly expanding
the family landscaping business; Jerry's graduate student daughter,
Theresa, engaged to Asian-American writer Paul and pregnant but ominously
secretive; and Jerry's long-time Puerto Rican girlfriend, Rita, who has
grown tired of two decades of aloofness and left him for a wealthy lawyer.

Jack and Theresa's mother was Jerry's Korean-American wife, Daisy, who
drowned in the swimming pool after a struggle with mental illness when Jack
and Theresa were children, and Theresa's angry postcolonial take on
ethnicity and exploitation is met by Jerry's slightly bewildered efforts to
understand his place in a new America.

Jerry's efforts to win back Rita, Theresa's failing health and Hank's
rebellion against his confinement push the meandering narrative along, but
the novel's real substance comes from the rich, circuitous paths of Jerry's
thoughts—about family history and contemporary culture—as his family draws
closer in a period of escalating crisis. Lee's poetic prose sits well in
the mouth of this aging Italian-American whose sentences turn unexpected
corners. Though it sometimes seems that Lee may be trying to embody too
many aspects of 21st-century American life in these individuals, Jerry's
humble and skeptical voice and Lee's genuine compassion for his compromised
characters makes for a truly moving story about a modern family.
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KOREAN-AMERICAN AUTHOR WEAVES FAMILY, SUBURBIA, ALIENATION

Korea Herald News
By Kim Hoo-ran
April 29, 2005

...While Lee Chang-rae is pleased with the recognition he has been
receiving, - an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and a Gustavus Myers Outstanding
Book Award for "A Gesture Life"; the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for
first fiction and Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for
"Native Speaker" - the award-winning novelist is particularly pleased with
the publication of "Aloft" in 2004.

"For the first time, I got the sense that I wasn`t just an interesting
Korean-American writer. People have a sense that I am an American writer
first, that I can offer something about a lot of different things,"...

"Maybe my works will last a little bit and writers write because people
enjoy it but can`t forget about it,"...

Lee`s most recent book, "Aloft," has just been published in Korean. The
title of the Korean-language translation is "Gajok," meaning family. While
the title of the original book, "Aloft" has nothing to do with family, Lee
was pleased when the suggestion for the Korean title was made. "It made me
think that perhaps I had made a mistake with the title," he said.

While the title "Aloft" does describe the book, the sensibilities of the
protagonist and his detachment from all things, particularly his family,
his love for them are not expressed in the word "aloft," according to the
author. The book is a look at an American family, but Lee feels that it is
about a family having problems that families all over the world are having
with miscommunication. "It is about what happens to families in modern
life."

Although people today enjoy the technical abilities that make it easier to
stay in touch, they have lost the ability to speak to each other and
communicate in the old fashioned way, in a "face-forward" approach, Lee
observed.

"Aloft" shares similar themes - of alienation and attempts to fit in - with
his earlier novels, "Native Speaker" (1995) and "A Gesture Life" (1999)

"In `Aloft,` Jerry Battle has no questions about his belonging in society
but even that character has a sense of alienation through his family, the
trauma he suffers," said Lee.

In fact, some regard the books as a trilogy, according to Lee...

Lee said it doesn`t surprise him that his works have been about the nature
of identity. "I have always been questioning myself about my place in
society and culture," said Lee whose family moved to the United States when
he was 3 years old.

Unlike the protagonists in his two earlier novels who are Korean, Jerry
Battle is an Italian-American. It is, nevertheless, a culture that is
familiar to him. His wife is an Italian-American and he grew up in towns
with many Italian-Americans.

Despite the ethnic background of the main character, Lee described "Aloft"
as being more autobiographical than his other works. "Jerry Battle`s
rhythms of life are very much like my own," he said.

"I see myself in Jerry Battle. The characters in the book are who I would
be if I were their age, gender, situation," he said. The angry father in a
nursing home, the misunderstood intellectual daughter, the ineffectual son
burdened by family and the spendthrift daughter-in-law are all parts of his
personality, he explained. "A novel is a great way to write about myself
but also hide," he said with a chuckle.

Of his own family, he said growing up, he was keenly conscious of how his
family was isolated as an immigrant family. "I was conscious of how much I
depended on it, how much it limited me," he said. "I can`t understand how
you can separate family from an individual."...

"Suburbs are a wonderful setting for the story because it has the quiet and
prosperity to allow one to look back on life," he said. Reflecting on life
is an important element of Lee`s novels and the reason why two of his
novels feature elderly men doing just that. "It is much richer to have an
older character than a younger character," he said. While a younger
character is about exuberance, exhilaration and wonder at the world, he is
more attracted by "stories of regret, guilt, remorse."...

Lee, who has been teaching creative writing at Princeton University since
2002, observed that while love of literature has diminished somewhat,
interest in studying to become a writer has increased "exponentially."

He teaches two days a week and the remaining days are split between his own
writing and family. His writing starts after seeing his daughter off to
school and continues until lunchtime. "With family, I found that you just
don`t have the time to wait for inspiration to come to you," he said.

(khooran@heraldm.com)

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/
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