New novel speaks of identity, otherness

"I guess if you put a gun to my head, I'd say he writes about The Problem With Being Sort of Himself," Chang-rae Lee recited, "namely, the terribly conflicted and complicated state of being Asian and American and thoughtful and male."

This is the voice of the protagonist Jerry — describing the literary voice of his daughter's Korean fiancé — in Lee's newest novel "Aloft," from which he read on Monday.

So much of Lee's writing seems self-referential that it is hard not to wince at the fiancé as one very plausible take on Lee himself. The writer and first-generation Korean American immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of three.

For Lee, who grew up in Westchester County, N.Y., the "classic postwar suburban setting" of the novel is intimately familiar. Along with the themes of "other" ethnic identity, detachment and self-discovery, Lee seems to explore some of the same ideas that appear in his other two award-winning novels, "A Gesture Life" and "The Native Speaker."

But it can hardly be said that "Aloft" is a regurgitation of his earlier work, or merely a reflection of his own experiences.

Lee's main character, after all, is Caucasian and verging on elderly, while Lee is conspicuously Korean and verging on celebrity. The New Yorker named him as one of its 20 writers for the 21st century.

Before coming to the University as a creative writing professor, Lee headed the creative writing department at Hunter College.

Writing "Aloft" felt markedly different than writing the first two novels, said Lee, adding that he experienced a brand new freedom of thought and language.

"I was really trying to come up with something, to say something," Lee said about the more forced creative processes that characterized the conception of his debut and subsequent follow-up on the literary scene.

But Lee is never entirely aware of where his writing is headed. Armed with a clear but unarticulated idea of the main character and his family and with some sense of the trouble that awaited the protagonist, Lee embarked upon an uncertain literary journey. In the novel itself, Jerry also embarks upon what Joyce Carol Oates called a "personal odyssey" in her introduction to Lee's reading.

"All I needed to have was [Jerry] up in the plane to start the book," Lee said, describing the opening scene of "Aloft," in which Jerry takes his small plane for a ride. "I became enamored with his language and his tone," said Lee of the main character. "He has a real yearning for the sublime."

Lee, too, said he is drawn to what is both relevant and mysterious when he determines the storyline and chooses the fate of his characters.

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"It really comes with experience and maturity," said Lee, "knowing what the story can do."

It is all too evident that personal growth and maturity went into the writing of the book.

"Sometimes I feel more like 63 than 38," Lee said, relating to his main character.

And as for the patent influence of his own experience on his novels, that too is easily discernible from the writing in "Aloft." Experience as a writer, and perhaps more importantly, experience as an outsider, a family member, an adult male and more broadly as a human being, all contribute to the themes of his literary works.