When I ran into Adam Johnson at the Winter Institute book conference last week, I told him that I loved The Orphan Master’s Son so much that I was willing to write – to the point of embarrassment – one blog after another. He said he could help me out by writing a guest blog. The piece that follows is a true story of Adam’s trip to North Korea. -Lisa

“We are all Korean”

Upon arriving in Pyongyang, one of our first stops was the National Museum of Korean History. It was a large museum with no one in it. To save electricity, which was quite scarce, the museum used motion sensors that turned out the lights when you left a room and flashed them on when you entered the next, so the cavernous journey was taken one flashing glimpse at a time. The first exhibit they showed me was what they claimed was an old skull fragment. It was displayed in a Plexiglas box atop a white pedestal. They informed me that the skull was 4.5 million years old and that it had been found on the shores of the Taedong River in Pyongyang. I was new to such tours, so my brain was filled with dissonance. I asked the museum docent, a middle-aged woman wearing a beautiful choson-ot, if humanity didn’t originate in Africa. “Pyongyang,” she said. I’d taken a course on human origins when I was an undergraduate, and a hazy memory came to me. I said, “So is this a skull fragment from an australopithecine?” She said, “No, Korean.” And I understood that she was a person trained to give a tour and recite prescribed information, not a scholar or curator. In North Korea, whenever evidence is lacking for something, they use a big painting or an elaborate diorama as proof. They had both on hand to explain via arrows and diagrams, how humanity had originated in Pyongyang, with the following Diaspora moving north into Asia and west into the Middle East and Europe. Finally, according to the diorama, humans populated Africa and North America. We had several minders with us, all watching my response to this new information. Finally, our tour guide concluded her lecture by informing me that the World was Korean (by which she meant North Korean) and by informing me that I was actually Korean. A friend of mine, a fellow professor on the tour with me, turned to me and said, “Did you hear, Professor Johnson? You are Korean. Do you feel suddenly Korean?”

I pat my arms and sides. “Yes,” I said, “I feel a little more Korean.”

He said, “You look a little more Korean.”

I rubbed my cheek and chin. “Yes,” I said, “I believe I’m a little more Korean.”

Our tour guide and minders all nodded, with some gravity, at my dawning realization.

So the lesson I learned in the National Museum of Korean History was that there was no irony in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

*      *     *

Adam Johnson is Associate Professor of English with emphasis in creative writing at Stanford University. A Whiting Writers’ Award winner, his fiction has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, Paris Review, Tin House and Best American Short Stories. He is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us, which won a California Book Award. 

Join us Friday at 5:00 for a signing with a reading to follow at 5:30.

Click here for more details about The Orphan Master’s Son.

I reckon the idea of a rapture-like event has existed for a while.  I’m not an expert on The Rapture, or even Christianity for that matter, but I have always been aware of the possibility of waking up to find the world picked of its morally elite.  The circumstances of such an event have always been mysterious to me, even pondering the idea of a sky engulfed in flame and menacing creatures torturing the remaining.  What seems unanswered is the question as to how long it will take for the world to end after millions of people suddenly disappear. Having never read any Tom Perrotta, I was very welcoming to the idea of starting with his post-rapture story laced with suburban trends. 

I found exactly what I was looking for with The Leftovers.  Beginning three years after the Sudden Departure, Perrotta follows a family who have fallen apart due to differing personal beliefs concerning the missing.  The son joins a cult, the mother joins a creepier cult, the daughter shaves her head, and the father becomes mayor.  The problems of a normal family are magnified by the lack of knowledge concerning why people of all nationalities, religions, and beliefs suddenly disappear.  After three years, some people in the town are beginning to build a life that they once knew, equipped with softball leagues and white collar jobs.  But as Stephen King wrote in his review for the New York Times, “The Leftovers is, simply put, the best Twilight Zone episode you never saw.”  While some are searching once again for suburban happiness, there is a group known as the Guilty Remnant who stalk the town’s most morally questionable while wearing all white and maintaining a vow of silence.  And just like the Twilight Zone, Perotta juxtaposes the wrecked with the rebuilt so beautifully, you can’t help but shut the book and giggle.

As if a fun, different read weren’t enough, Perrotta mapped out just how people would react to such a change.  While reading it, I felt if there were such an event like the Sudden Departure, everything that happened in the novel probably wouldn’t be that far off.  It just wasn’t that far-fetched, which really is quite terrifying.  I’m relieved to know Harold Camping was wrong.  Let’s see how wrong the Mayans are, huh?

You can read Stephen King’s review here.  Below is a song by a duo from San Francisco called Two Gallants that deals with a rapturous breakup.

Concerning the two main characters, one is a writer, hence the title: Mr. Fox, and the other, well, the other, is not real, but the reader comes to know her “as real”. Her name is Mary Fox, but she is of no relation to Mr. Fox. So, who is she? Well, to be precise, she is Mr. Fox’s muse, but not in your ordinary way, because, you see, Mary appears in the writer Mr. Fox’s short stories which are in essence what make up this book.This may sound confusing, and at the beginning of the book, things are rather confusing, even though the reader already knows the premise of the book. But, as the book flows along, one learns the power of the imagination which can summon or coax or even fear the muse. A third character, Daphne Fox, who is Mr. Fox’s wife, appears from time to time in the book. She is super jealous of Mary, even though Mr. Fox tells her that Mary is “not real”. Yet, Mary seems very real to Daphne who often loses her sanity due to her husband writer’s attention to Mary.

Once Mr. Fox tries to explain to his wife Daphne about Mary, “Daphne. There is no girl on the side….She’s  in my head…I know this sounds unlikely, but you’ve got to believe me. If you don’t, I’ve got nothing else to tell you. ….Not a lot to tell. Her name’s Mary. You’d like her, I think. She’s kind of direct. No-nonsense. I made her up during the war. She started off as nothing but a stern British accent saying things like, ‘Chin up, Fox,’ and ‘Where’s your pluck?’ Just a precaution for the times I came dangerously close to feeling sorry for myself. Don’t look like that D., I don’t need a doctor. Anyhow–you see now, don’t you, that she couldn’t possibly call the house? That’s just people getting wrong numbers, or one of your brothers phoning you up to ask for money and then losing his nerve. ”

The author of this clever little novel, Helen Oyeyemi, also wrote The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, and White Is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award.

Earlier in the week, I posted a blog about The Orphan Master’s Son:

Today is the official release to of what I believe to be one of the best books of the year, The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson.  (Yes, I know it is January 10th!) To add to the excitement, Adam Johnson will be at Lemuria for a signing and reading on Friday, January 27th. The Orphan Master’s Son is also our January First Editions Club pick.

Click here to read more.

Liz Sullivan, one of our Random House reps, posted her own blog the other day about The Orphan. Here’s what she says:

I’m calling it now–The Orphan Master’s Son is the best book of 2012.  Sure, we’re only nine days into the new year, but you’re going to have to take my word on this declaration.  I haven’t loved a book this much in about five years, and Adam Johnson’s new novel now ranks among my favorite books ever. It really is that spectacular.

The DMZ (above ground) Photo Credit: Adam Johnson

The Orphan Master’s Son is set in North Korea, a location that is so foreign that it itself becomes the dominant player in this story of resilience and adversity.  I happened to be finishing OMS on the night that the news announced Kim Jong Il’s death, and the experience of watching the North Korean people mourn their Dear Leader with this book fresh in my mind was a bit uncanny.  The book makes clear how the North Korean people are trained from infancy to value the state over self, and the Dear Leader is the state.  The wailing mourners make sense in this context; their entire world was unhinged with Kim Jong Il’s death.  It’s a fascinating subject and location.

What’s the story, though?  Jun Do is, as the title suggests, the son of the orphan master.  His mother, vanished, was a singer.  Because he grows up among the orphans, though, everyone assumes that he too is an orphan.  He is put to work doing the jobs that orphans are given, the lowliest tasks in the country.  Eventually Jun Do is trained as a soldier and sent to patrol the pitch black tunnels running under the DMZ and over to South Korea. He learns to fight without seeing.  From there, Jun Do is recruited to become a professional kidnapper, stealing unlucky citizens from Japan.  He accomplishes his missions, but he also glimpses the world outside of North Korea, where the electricity doesn’t shut off in the evenings, where people are free to talk and play and go where they please.  Jun Do, though, returns to his homeland.

North Koreans mourning Kim Jong Il's death

He works as an intelligence officer on a fishing vessel.  He travels to Texas as part of a delegation meeting with a Senator.  He suffers in a forced labor camp.  And Jun Do, the ultimate John Doe character, transforms himself into a completely different person and finds his way into Kim Jong Il’s inner circle.

Adam Johnson

The Orphan Master’s Son is a thriller, an epic adventure story, a cultural critique, a love story, a story of hope and transformation.  It is remarkable for its vibrant characters and plot, but it’s also a literary book.  This is a book into which you can happily lose yourself for a week, and about which you’ll think for weeks afterward.  Adam Johnson has written something brilliant.  The Orphan Master’s Son is one of those books where readers band together to share their love.  I can’t wait for everyone to read this book . . . -Liz Sullivan

This post originally appeared in Liz & Gianna’s Adventures in Book Land. Go there if you love books. You’ll find reviews on the latest books, their favorite books plus anecdotes from bookstores across the South, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado.

To close this post, see the photos that Adam Johnson took on his trip to North Korea. Note that he has explanations with each photo and that if you choose the slideshow option you will not be able to see them. See the full set of photos here. -Lisa

A Young Calligrapher-Photo Credit: Adam Johnson

The Orphan Master’s Son takes place in one of the most isolated countries on Earth, North Korea. Adam Johnson began studying North Korea during the George W. Bush Iraq War era when he became interested in the art of political propaganda. The national narrative constructed by Kim Jong Il and his administration led to many questions for Johnson which he detailed in an interview with Richard Powers: “What did it mean when people became characters in the story of a corrupt state? What happened to their own identities and motivations? Under what circumstances would a person risk sharing a personal thought?”

When asked about what North Koreans think about all of the propaganda, Adam Johnson could only comment on his suspicion as he was not allowed to actually speak to any of the North Korean citizens: “My suspicion is that people in North Korea know that everything is a lie, but that they have no idea what the truth is.” (see full interview with Electric Literature)

All of these questions and research led to a published short story but with Johnson understanding the need to travel to North Korea if he were going to expand his story. The opportunity came and Johnson describes the situation:

“I toured four cities on my visit and was monitored by three minders, one of whom video-taped much of what was said, for the purposes of a ‘tourist DVD.’ There was also a director who appeared on occasion to mind the minders . . . Upon arriving I was struck by the quiet of Pyongyang–there were no planes in the sky, no cars on the road, no cell phone conversations, almost no conversations at all, just thousands of people, all dressed similarly, walking briskly from one task to another. I saw no advertisements, no graffiti, no litter, no bicycles, no stoplights, no hint of leisure. This was a land without fashion, irony, magazines, music, pets, art, or spontaneity of any kind. The streets were empty, the buildings dark, the escalators eerily still.” (Interview with Richard Powers)

On top of a real world that we will find unbelievable, Johnson tells us the fictional story of Pak Jun Do, the son of an orphan master in Pyongyang. Since his mother, a beauty of voice and appearance, was stolen to Pyongyang, his father felt that being an orphan master would allow him to hold tight to his son. Jun Do finds himself to be just another orphan among orphans, often blamed when anything goes wrong. Finally, as the famine comes and progresses to an unimaginable point, Jun Do’s father stops a “crow”, a Soviet military truck, to take the remaining twelve boys from the orphanage.

At the age of fourteen Jun Do leaves his father to be trained as a tunnel soldier in the art of zero-light combat. Because of his skills for working in complete darkness, he is eventually recruited to pluck Japanese right off their coastline at night. As the reader learns more and more about Pak Jun Do, it is clear that he can do whatever he sets his mind to, even in the awful circumstances of North Korea. At what seems opportunity and necessity, Jun Do finds a way to assume the military and personal life of Commander Ga, a top general to Kim Jong Il. From here, the cast of characters expands and deepens from American diplomats to the recently departed Kim Jong Il.

Open up The Orphan Master’s Son and read. The loudspeakers are calling!

“Citizens! The time to be excited about Adam Johnson’s forthcoming novel is approaching. Remember to keep the beautiful spirit of unity in your heart and steel yourself for this day! Remember to remind your neighbor! Say to your neighbor, what are you supposed to remember to remind me about today? He should say to you: THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON!” (The Outlet, The Blog of Electric Literature)

Read more about The Orphan Master’s Son:

24 Million Secondary Characters: A Q&A with Adam Johnson by Publisher’s Weekly

‘Orphan’: A New Novel Imagines Life in North Korea by NPR

An Interview with Adam Johnson by The Outlet, The Blog of Electric Literature, September 2010

The Orphan Master’s Son an audacious, believable tale by The Washington Post

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson is published by Random House with a first printing of 40,000 copies.

It took me nearly two months to finish The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst.  Although I read several books while “reading” The Stranger’s Child, and was a little tied down with work (Christmas season in the retail business? Sheesh!), it was the tediousness of the book that kept pushing me away.  When asked to describe it, my most frequently used words were “dry”, “British”, and “incredibly dry and British.”  Frankly, my words could have been harsher.  After Christmas ended, I decided it was time to finish this jerk-of-a-book so I could finally return to reading the books that had been stacking up without the guilt of denying an ending to the one I had started.  Then something astonishing happened.  

It is extremely rare for me to leave a book unfinished once I have started it.  Occasionally this is something I find rueful (i.e. Infinite Jest), but for the most part I would rather have an ending that I hate than hating a book that I haven’t finished.  The Stranger’s Child was not a book that I hated, but I might had I not finished it.  It is not as if the ending is necessarily even the payoff, but it helps the reader understand that the book is not as much based around the importance of a plot as it is around a group of ideas: sexuality, aging, memory, and fact.  When the stage was finally set, and the point was made, the book was done and I was happy.

With that said, I had less difficulty dealing with the book as an American than I did as a heterosexual.  In her review for The Guardian, Emma Brockes wrote, “in different hands [The Stranger's Child] might be called ‘Gay Men and the Women Who Marry Them’.”  I like to think of myself as an understanding person, and it is not something that really even necessarily bothers me, but it simply creates a plot that is less relatable to me.  I suppose it wasn’t the plot that I focused on in the end anyway.

Here’s a video for the British band Yuck.  They are signed to the slightly local Fat Possum Records.  Much like The Stranger’s Child, Yuck’s self titled album has landed on many best-of 2011 lists.

It is that good.

Cora Cash is a New York Debutante and probably the richest heiress in the country.  Cora has been groomed for this moment since she was a young girl and her mother has very big plans for her.  The morning after Cora’s ‘coming out’ the Cash’s yacht will be steaming through across the Atlantic to introduce Miss Cora Cash to the society of England and hopefully be married within the year.  Mrs. Cash realizes that being wealthy is fine but as an American a “title” is out of the question but her daughter could marry into one.  Cora though wants to marry for love and has plans of her own.  Cora meets a Duke and they quickly fall in love and are married but she soon learns that these old world aristocrats are a tight circle and she has much to learn if she wants to be accepted and survive in their world.

If you are a fan of Edith Wharton and Jane Austen novels or Downton Abbey on Masterpiece Theater then you will certainly enjoy The American Heiress.

I read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout several years ago and loved it. My love was confirmed when it was awarded the Pultizer Prize in 2009. It is referred to as “a novel in stories.” Each chapter is a different story but there is a common denominator between all the characters in the book. Olive Kitteridge plays a part in each of the chapters and in each of the character’s lives. Though it is much like a book of short stories, it is not. Olive Kitteridge is the bond.

I stated my love for “a novel in stories” recently and Anna quickly put one in my hands. She recommenced A Short History of Women  by Kate Walbert.

Each chapter is written by a different women. Each of these women cover several generations in the Townsend family. The storyline is spread over several time periods and is very interesting to see what an entire family may face over time.

Just recently, Anna wrote a blog about Blueprints for Building Better Girls. See her post here.

I did a little research for some more titles that fall in this category. Here are just a few others  you might enjoy.

1. The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

2. Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood

3. Edible Stories by Mark Kurlansky

4. I Hotel by Karen Yamashita (National Book Award Finalist 2010)

Anyone have a title to add to this list? Please share!

Elissa Schappell is one such author. I’ve recently been reading Schappell’s Blueprints  for Building Better Girls and am thoroughly enjoying her stories of women who exhibit both vulnerability and strength – sometimes all in the same story – as they weather the experience known as womanhood.

Even though the book is comprised of short stories, they are mostly linked in subtle ways and possess a fluidity that makes me want to read the book from beginning to end like I would a novel. Normally, I enjoy skipping around a book of short stories, picking and choosing which ones to nibble on a little bit at a time. In fact, that is one of the main reasons why I enjoy a good book of short stories. In this day of constant distraction, sometimes I just need to read a story from a book of short stories and know that I can come back several months later without having to reacquaint myself with the plot or characters.

That being said, I am plowing straight through Blueprints for Building Better Girls without even a thought of  jumping from one story to the next, and I am finding myself not wanting to read anything else at the moment.

Check out this  interview with Elissa Schappell on therumpus.net!