I live in a country where you can be straight and get married at the end of a game show after having met just a few weeks before, and be gay and know each other for 20 years and not be able to be married.
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Me on James Salter at The Paris Review Daily. Me on studying with Annie Dillard, learning to use an e-reader, and the racial unconscious of the United States as seen in our superhero comics.
A a copy of my first novel at your favorite retailer of choice.
Edinburgh is in print from the good people at Picador. Here are some reactions to it:
…Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh, fucking incredible son of a bitch...
— Junot Diaz, over at Austinist
Alexander Chee is the best new novelist I’ve seen in some time. Edinburgh is moody, dramatic—and pure.
— Edmund White
Edinburgh has the force of a dream and the heft of a life. And Alexander Chee is a brilliant new writer.
— Annie Dillard
Haunting… complex… sophisticated. [Chee] says volumes with just a few incendiary words.
— The New York Times Book Review
A coming-of-age novel in the grand Romantic tradition, where passions run high, Cupid stalks Psyche, and love shares the dance floor with death . . . A lovely, nuanced, never predictable portrait of a creative soul in the throes of becoming.
— The Washington Post Book World
Chee is a gifted, poetic writer who takes big risks…This novel marks the debut of a major talent whose career will bear watching.
— Publishers Weekly
A striking debut…A complex story told with skill and intensity, but also filled with moments when agony and extraordinary beauty somehow coexist.
— Kirkus Reviews
A complex, sophisticated, elegant investigation of trauma and desire - like a white hot flame.— Joyce Hackett, in the Guardian UK
A second novel will be out soon, but not really soon, as it is still being edited. When it appears, it will be called "The Queen of the Night" and say "Houghton Mifflin Harcourt" on the spine, plus my name. Details will appear here and also on alexanderchee.net.
Granted, this post is directed at Americans.
I know Canadians visit us less because it freaks them out, to have our Passport control invalidate their marriage. If you didn’t know that, now you know.
I was definitely not pleased with the passage of Prop 8 out here on the Left Coast, less so because it amends the state constitution (although that ambition may be its undoing — refer to how Jerry Brown has crafted his opposition by noting it contradicts earlier rights granted in the constitution). And as far as the argument the YesOn8 folks used to push support over the top — that teachers would be forced to teach gay marriage in schools — when did it become such a terrible thing to teach acceptance and tolerance?
Not true for me in Holland. But still, yikes.
I’m afraid it’s even worse than that. In most states, minors can get married with parental consent — in some states consent can be given to children as young as 14. Pretty much anywhere, straight couples can divorce and remarry as many times as they want to. I’m not quite sure what it is that people claim they’re trying to protect…