![]() ![]() I can't think of a specific moment, but there's this book, What Is History?, that I sort of inherited, and for a while I would just treat it as this talismanic object. And so, that's probably part of the reason I wouldn't talk to people about it, because I had talked incessantly about it in 1998 to 1999.Īs you were going through and excavating this stuff, was there an object in particular that you came across that activated something-an idea, a memory-in your mind that you didn’t recognize before? And so, I think I felt very self-conscious about that. And I was also very much someone who allowed myself to be stuck in the past. it's not like we talk about what happened. So I think over time, everyone just moved forward in their ways, and I remain very close with, I don't know, maybe three-quarters of the people in the book. But that wasn't really part of how culture worked back then. I teach college now, and something could happen anywhere in the world and we would get an email encouraging us to check on our students. I think I was struck by the opposite-how stationary I was. No, no, I did not think I was going places. Yeah, I had the iPod into the tape deck into the Chevy S10. TRUE IT EASY WRITER DOWNLOADIt’s about controlling the situation, too, right? Like, I had one of the early iPods and I would download the top three songs from some band I liked and try to gauge if my passengers were feeling it. When you're older, you realize it was just as fun driving somewhere as it was actually getting there or being there. ![]() We never stole a car and then crashed it. I was joking with someone about how there's no real adventure in the book. ![]() Because you're like, "All right, we can drink beer for three quarters, but we're just going to be sitting here for exactly this amount of time." Whereas when you're younger, you don't know where time is going to take you. Now that I have a kid, the easiest way to hang out with someone is to go to a Nets game-at least before tickets were expensive. You're also creating these boundaries, like how long it takes to get somewhere. You're providing a service, but you're also performing this generosity. Were you always intent on writing those scenes?ĭriving is very practical. It dawned on me that driving is where male friendships form in a richer and perhaps deeper way. You guys are listening to music, having conversations. In your book, I felt like the car rides were where your writing really came alive. While I was doing it, I never really talked to my friends about it. And so I was like, well, in order to reckon with this, I have to just deal with the realm of memory. So much of the book is about being perplexed by your own memories. They watched movies, wrote a screenplay, and messed with strangers in AOL chat rooms. “All the previous times I had met poised, content people like Ken, they were white.” But the two quickly became inseparable, sharing cigarettes and occupying the hours of one another’s lives. “My wariness about Ken was compounded by the fact that he was Asian American, like me,” writes Hsu. Even if his tastes veered mainstream, Ken was curious and self-assured, with an easy confidence that allowed him to move through the world freely. Ken, on the other hand, was a “flagrantly handsome” Japanese American kid from San Diego who wore Polo and loved Pearl Jam and Dave Matthews Band (“music I found appalling,” writes Hsu). His meticulous sense of cool is highly edited, defined not just by what he enjoys but also by what he detests: a quasi-contrarian outlook borne out of a place of teenage insecurity. He makes radical zines, wears thrifted mohair cardigans, and despises Pearl Jam. The young Hua we encounter in the book is a second-generation Taiwanese American who grew up in pre-Apple Cupertino. Stay True is an intimate collection of these small gifts, exchanged between two friends who, on paper at least, could not present as more different. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |