Native Speaker (1995) by Chang rae Lee

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Native Speaker (1995)

by Chang-Rae Lee

Manhattan: 29/33

New York 78/105

    Chang-Rae Lee is yet another author who I would have missed but for the 1,001 Novels project- shame on me- Lee is a Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University and he's written several interesting novels, including a dystopian-climate change type book that I immediately checked out after listening to the Audiobook of Native Speaker, his novel about a Korean-American corporate spy struggling with his current assignment, rooting out the secrets of a Korean-American New York City councilman from Queens while balancing the difficulties of his marriage in the aftermath of the death of his son during a freak birthday party accident.  

   Whenever a novel features a child recently deceased, I am reminded of the advice Checkov frequently dispensed to young playwrights, ""If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."   The corollary of a world where every writer of fiction, plays or otherwise,  knows that proverb is that when a plot element is introduced, you know it is important.  No one throws a dead child into the mix of a novel and then doesn't make it a central issue  in whatever text follows.  Contrast the treatment of dead children to that of parents, who are frequently and flagrantly killed off in the distant past without so much as a full paragraph of explanation and no further role to play in the plot. 

  And I am certainly not singling out Native Speaker as a particularly egregious example.  His dead kid baggage colors the plot with his semi-estranged wife, but it's just one of a number of events (including recently dead parents as well) that emphasize the overall theme of the alienation of modern life as experienced by a non-traditional professional Korean-American.  In fact, the most notable element of an otherwise familiar immigrant/family novel is his work, as a corporate spy for a shadowy (is there any other kind) outfit that specializes in non-white operatives. 

 His target is New York City councilman Henry Park, an implausibly popular Korean-American representing Queens.  The plot reminded me of something Paul Auster would write, although in between Lee is heavy with the very culturally specific context of growing up as the son of a Korean immigrant made good father.  Native Speaker is ultimately a book about the relationship between a man and his dead Dad, and coming to terms with that relationship, and the rest seemed like window dressing to get people interested in picking it up.