Alexander Chee (CRF 2011)’s “How to Write an Autobiographical Novel” is, according to the Times, “a disarming title for an essay collection by Alexander Chee, given that he’s fresh from the success of a novel that on the face of it was anything but autobiographical.” However, for Chee, the writer’s life always lurks just beyond the page.
The Times book review compares Chee’s detailed description in his essay “Girl” of his first time in drag, to Chee’s life and this book. That experience for Chee “allowed him to collapse his identities as a gay man, a Korean-American and a New England transplant into a pleasing totality,” which then propelled his work.
The Times states that “If writing, too, is a form of drag for Chee, it is also an act of mystic invocation and transference.” Chee’s essays [are] generous; these pieces are personal, never pedagogical. They bespeak an unguarded sincerity and curiosity.”
“We are not what we think we are,” [Chee] writes. “The stories we tell of ourselves are like thin trails across something that is more like the ocean. A mask afloat on the open sea.”