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The Collective
A sparkling bildungsroman about friendship and betrayal, art and race.
In 1988, Eric Cho, an aspiring writer, arrives at Macalester College. On his first day he meets a beautiful fledgling painter, Jessica Tsai, and another would-be novelist, the larger-than-life Joshua Yoon. Brilliant, bawdy, generous, and manipulative, Joshua alters the course of their lives, rallying them together when they face an adolescent act of racism. As adults in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the three friends reunite as the 3AC, the Asian American Artists Collective—together negotiating the demands of art, love, commerce, and idealism until another racially tinged controversy hits the headlines, this time with far greater consequences. Long after the 3AC has disbanded, Eric reflects on these events as he tries to make sense of Joshua’s recent suicide.
With wit, humor, and compassion, The Collective explores the dream of becoming an artist, and questions whether the reality is worth the sacrifice.
In 1988, Eric Cho, an aspiring writer, arrives at Macalester College. On his first day he meets a beautiful fledgling painter, Jessica Tsai, and another would-be novelist, the larger-than-life Joshua Yoon. Brilliant, bawdy, generous, and manipulative, Joshua alters the course of their lives, rallying them together when they face an adolescent act of racism. As adults in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the three friends reunite as the 3AC, the Asian American Artists Collective—together negotiating the demands of art, love, commerce, and idealism until another racially tinged controversy hits the headlines, this time with far greater consequences. Long after the 3AC has disbanded, Eric reflects on these events as he tries to make sense of Joshua’s recent suicide.
With wit, humor, and compassion, The Collective explores the dream of becoming an artist, and questions whether the reality is worth the sacrifice.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 9, 2012
60 people are currently reading
1805 people want to read
About the author
Don Lee
17 books83 followersDon Lee is the author most recently of the novel Lonesome Lies Before Us. He is also the author of the novel The Collective, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature from the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association; the novel Wrack and Ruin, which was a finalist for the Thurber Prize; the novel Country of Origin, which won an American Book Award, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and a Mixed Media Watch Image Award for Outstanding Fiction; and the story collection Yellow, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Members Choice Award from the Asian American Writers' Workshop. All of his books have been published by W. W. Norton.
He has received an O. Henry Award and a Pushcart Prize, and his stories have been published in The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, GQ, The North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, Manoa, American Short Fiction, Glimmer Train, Charlie Chan Is Dead 2, Screaming Monkeys, Narrative, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and residencies from Yaddo and the Lannan Foundation. In 2007, he received the inaugural Fred R. Brown Literary Award for emerging novelists from the University of Pittsburgh's creative writing program.
From 1988 to 2007, he was the principal editor of the literary journal Ploughshares. He is currently a professor in Temple University's M.F.A. program in creative writing in Philadelphia. He is a third-generation Korean American.
He has received an O. Henry Award and a Pushcart Prize, and his stories have been published in The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, GQ, The North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, Manoa, American Short Fiction, Glimmer Train, Charlie Chan Is Dead 2, Screaming Monkeys, Narrative, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and residencies from Yaddo and the Lannan Foundation. In 2007, he received the inaugural Fred R. Brown Literary Award for emerging novelists from the University of Pittsburgh's creative writing program.
From 1988 to 2007, he was the principal editor of the literary journal Ploughshares. He is currently a professor in Temple University's M.F.A. program in creative writing in Philadelphia. He is a third-generation Korean American.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 198 reviews
April 1, 2024
I loved this book. It follows three friends from college into their 30's. It's a provocative look at the college-age antics and Gen Xers. He definitely has an agenda with regard to art and ethnicity, but it's not distracting....it's thought-provoking. Very well written. The main character, Eric, reminds me of Holden Caufield, only in college and beyond. A great book......
September 26, 2012
God, WHAT A RELIEF to read a book about Asian Americans that isn’t about the hardworking self-sacrificing first generation and their tensions with their renegade independent American children (complete with flashbacks of the home country in the 40s and 50s).
The more I think about this book the more I think I liked it. Maybe a lot. I can’t really tell. It was sadly hard to discern whether I found it a little slow in parts because it actually was uninteresting or because I’m not used to reading about people like me in novels (“Is this what white people feel like when they read ALL books?!”). In that vein, the ideas throughout about being Asian American and about what art is and how it intersects with race and ethnicity were a little old (to me), but I still enjoyed reading them and seeing them on paper and interacting with characters and scenes.
Overall the writing is good, sometimes really great; the characters, while not totally amazing or compelling, are well-sketched and the author really captures the small inexplicable moments between people well. The plot is fine but not remarkable, and, you know, stuff happens (unlike in some books). I did want more mining of the relationships between the three (or two) main characters.
Also I have to say that this is one of the two books that came out right after I made my pledge not to buy any more books for the rest of the year that I really, really, really wanted to buy, and I do wish I owned it. (The other is Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, which I have also ordered from the library and hope to read soon.)
I particularly recommend this book to soc and to j.ho.
Also this one (long) paragraph is hilarity, so much so that I’ve painstakingly (and perhaps illegally) copied it here for your and my reference:
“It was a school for the bookish and nerdy, for geeks and losers, for kids who liked to study, who actually wanted to learn. During our four years at Mac, we would read Foucault, Hegel, Derrida, Saussure, Gadamer, Lacan, Barthes, Deleuze and Guattari – never the full texts, mind you, just xeroxed scraps and smidgens that still we would not understand, but from which we could lap up the lingua franca of pseudo-intellectualism. We’d sling around words like synecdoche and hyperbole, ontology and eschatology, faute de mieux and fin de siècle. We’d describe things as heuristic, protean, numinous, and ineffable. We’d discuss Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Plato’s cave and Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Laffer’s curve and Schrodinger’s cat. We’d embrace poststructuralism and existentialism and epistemology, semiotics and hermeneutics. We’d see everything as an allegory or a metaphor for something else, and ultimately we’d deconstruct everything as divisive or patriarchal or sexist or homophobic or racist or neofascist – a product of hetero-normative exclusivity, a metanarrative propagated by the oligarchy. We’d answer almost every question by decrying it as a syllogism, or a trope, or tautological, or phallocentric, or reductive, or hegemonic (undoubtedly our favorite buzzword). We’d come to believe that any text – be it Shakespeare or a comic book or a supermarket circular – had the same intrinsic value, and we’d insist that all truth was relative, that there was no reality without signifiers, that there was no there there, that nothing, in fact, really existed. We’d argue and rant, we’d foment for empowerment and paradigm shifts and interstitial hybridity, we’d make grand, sweeping pronouncements about subjects of which we knew nothing. We would become articulate, well read, sensitive, open-minded, totally insufferable twits. We would graduate as nihilistic, atheistic, anarchistic, moralistic, tree-hugging, bohemian, Marxist snobs. We would love every minute of it.”
The more I think about this book the more I think I liked it. Maybe a lot. I can’t really tell. It was sadly hard to discern whether I found it a little slow in parts because it actually was uninteresting or because I’m not used to reading about people like me in novels (“Is this what white people feel like when they read ALL books?!”). In that vein, the ideas throughout about being Asian American and about what art is and how it intersects with race and ethnicity were a little old (to me), but I still enjoyed reading them and seeing them on paper and interacting with characters and scenes.
Overall the writing is good, sometimes really great; the characters, while not totally amazing or compelling, are well-sketched and the author really captures the small inexplicable moments between people well. The plot is fine but not remarkable, and, you know, stuff happens (unlike in some books). I did want more mining of the relationships between the three (or two) main characters.
Also I have to say that this is one of the two books that came out right after I made my pledge not to buy any more books for the rest of the year that I really, really, really wanted to buy, and I do wish I owned it. (The other is Megan Abbott’s Dare Me, which I have also ordered from the library and hope to read soon.)
I particularly recommend this book to soc and to j.ho.
Also this one (long) paragraph is hilarity, so much so that I’ve painstakingly (and perhaps illegally) copied it here for your and my reference:
“It was a school for the bookish and nerdy, for geeks and losers, for kids who liked to study, who actually wanted to learn. During our four years at Mac, we would read Foucault, Hegel, Derrida, Saussure, Gadamer, Lacan, Barthes, Deleuze and Guattari – never the full texts, mind you, just xeroxed scraps and smidgens that still we would not understand, but from which we could lap up the lingua franca of pseudo-intellectualism. We’d sling around words like synecdoche and hyperbole, ontology and eschatology, faute de mieux and fin de siècle. We’d describe things as heuristic, protean, numinous, and ineffable. We’d discuss Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Plato’s cave and Godel’s incompleteness theorem, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and Laffer’s curve and Schrodinger’s cat. We’d embrace poststructuralism and existentialism and epistemology, semiotics and hermeneutics. We’d see everything as an allegory or a metaphor for something else, and ultimately we’d deconstruct everything as divisive or patriarchal or sexist or homophobic or racist or neofascist – a product of hetero-normative exclusivity, a metanarrative propagated by the oligarchy. We’d answer almost every question by decrying it as a syllogism, or a trope, or tautological, or phallocentric, or reductive, or hegemonic (undoubtedly our favorite buzzword). We’d come to believe that any text – be it Shakespeare or a comic book or a supermarket circular – had the same intrinsic value, and we’d insist that all truth was relative, that there was no reality without signifiers, that there was no there there, that nothing, in fact, really existed. We’d argue and rant, we’d foment for empowerment and paradigm shifts and interstitial hybridity, we’d make grand, sweeping pronouncements about subjects of which we knew nothing. We would become articulate, well read, sensitive, open-minded, totally insufferable twits. We would graduate as nihilistic, atheistic, anarchistic, moralistic, tree-hugging, bohemian, Marxist snobs. We would love every minute of it.”
July 26, 2012
the achievement of great, bittersweet passages (the opening scene of suicide, the sadly believable PC inanity of the collective's manifesto discussion, a narrative gamble on genital art that i think pays off) gets marred by some badly contrived episodes (the speech at the AA meeting, the immolation). But. this traditionally structured and styled novel (cheever and scott fitzgerald are named-checked) also contains difficult truths about both the writing life and asian america -- especially the two in combination -- that are woefully un(der)represented in the contemporary letters of these our disunited states.
February 7, 2019
I was initially excited to read about Asian-American creatives but this book reeks of masculinity issues and an irresponsible portrayal of mental health. It is extremely dangerous to detail the plans for someone's suicide (although I know The Collective is not the first book to do this without a trigger warning) and further, express little to no remorse over said mentally ill person's suicide - with the narrator even commenting that he saw it coming but didn't do anything. I know the course of the novel grapples with the complexity of Joshua and Eric's relationship (which is very machismo), but wow. Wholly insensitive. Both Eric and Joshua are extremely misogynistic, and the only prominent female character, Jessica, is a stereotypical Asian woman fantasy, complete with her ambiguous sexual orientation that arouses Eric's one-sided fantasy even further. I am excited to have more books written by Asian-Americans with Asian-American perspectives but I hope for the future that there is more sensitivity towards mental illness and less misogyny.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 8, 2012
I really enjoyed this book because it grapples with important questions about identity and race within the context of a highly engaging plot that’s both tragic and funny. Eric Cho, a third generation Korean American from California, has never consciously experienced racism or ethnic stereotyping before attending Macalaster, a small Northeastern liberal arts college.
In his freshman year, he meets Joshua Yoon, an adopted Korean who was raised by Jewish professors in Cambridge and Jessica Tsai, a Chinese American from New York. All three have artistic aspirations. They form the 3AC, the Asian American Artists Collective. Joshua is the leader of the pack. His dogmatic treatises about the responsibility of Asian Americans to create art about Asian people and issues, and redefine their image in America are tested through a series of racially charged incidents throughout the novel. Eric is more moderate in his beliefs, and toes the line between his own instincts and desires and Joshua’s point of view.
The novel chronicles the arc of a twenty year friendship between the three characters, and the different ways that they struggle to harness their artistic inclinations in a meaningful way. This book is successful in presenting Asian American characters who are unique individuals and don’t fall victim to the stereotypes of the model minority. It avoids taking a polemic tone by presenting situations that drudge up questions but offering no definitive answers to the questions raised.
In his freshman year, he meets Joshua Yoon, an adopted Korean who was raised by Jewish professors in Cambridge and Jessica Tsai, a Chinese American from New York. All three have artistic aspirations. They form the 3AC, the Asian American Artists Collective. Joshua is the leader of the pack. His dogmatic treatises about the responsibility of Asian Americans to create art about Asian people and issues, and redefine their image in America are tested through a series of racially charged incidents throughout the novel. Eric is more moderate in his beliefs, and toes the line between his own instincts and desires and Joshua’s point of view.
The novel chronicles the arc of a twenty year friendship between the three characters, and the different ways that they struggle to harness their artistic inclinations in a meaningful way. This book is successful in presenting Asian American characters who are unique individuals and don’t fall victim to the stereotypes of the model minority. It avoids taking a polemic tone by presenting situations that drudge up questions but offering no definitive answers to the questions raised.
June 23, 2016
What does it mean to be an Asian American artist? Or a young Asian American artist? Is there a pan-American Asian identity? What constitutes Asian American art? Don Lee's novel attempts to answer these questions through a group of three students, who claim, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, this complex identity at the novel's core. The students, two boys and one girl--Korean American and Chinese American, respectively, form a loose "collective" during the freshman year they share at a mid-western, overwhelmingly white liberal arts college. The three throw themselves against these aforementioned questions, as well as against a backdrop of parental expectations and a bout of egregious racism. The questions and this friendship endure post-college as the trio splits and converges, and the collective grows, attracting attention, not all necessarily welcome. This heady novel risks some rambling in a fierce attempt to plumb all aspects of a complex, fascinating and underexamined issue in literary fiction.
October 16, 2013
i had started this during the summer. and then sort of just stopped reading for a couple months. when i picked this up again, i finished it in one sitting.
i liked it very much. and am so happy that i own it. thanks to a powells coupon. yay!
i agree with soc and c. reading it was very comfortable and familiar.
i want to read his other stuff now.
man alive. dear books, i've missed you.
i liked it very much. and am so happy that i own it. thanks to a powells coupon. yay!
i agree with soc and c. reading it was very comfortable and familiar.
i want to read his other stuff now.
man alive. dear books, i've missed you.
October 7, 2020
This book hit close to home as an artist questioning how long, how much to sacrifice for art...
September 29, 2024
I read “humor” in the synopsis of this book and it was the wrong attitude to go into it with. I should have paid more attention to the actual content. Really enjoyed it though, pretty raw and at times difficult to read, but that’s kinda what’s great about it.
December 16, 2018
As a recent college graduate from an "elite" institution, Don Lee's "The Collective" brilliantly speaks to words many of the experiences my peers and I have been processing throughout undergraduate and beyond. He very naturally deals with several difficult topics, ranging from instances of hate speech on campus, to attempting to find one's way following graduation, to trying (and oftentimes failing) to organize within the Asian American community (and all of the joys and difficulties that that may entail). Lee's work will definitely be one that I revisit periodically throughout my lifetime.
Lee's most outstanding feat, I would say, is his portrayal of the complicated relationship with a friend that is not only toxic in many aspects, but is also undergoing a lifelong struggle with mental health. Joshua's depression is never romanticized, and Eric is never portrayed as a hero.
"The Collective" is a story about two friends, and in its simplicity Lee tackles the true complexity of relationships throughout time.
Lee's most outstanding feat, I would say, is his portrayal of the complicated relationship with a friend that is not only toxic in many aspects, but is also undergoing a lifelong struggle with mental health. Joshua's depression is never romanticized, and Eric is never portrayed as a hero.
"The Collective" is a story about two friends, and in its simplicity Lee tackles the true complexity of relationships throughout time.
September 9, 2012
This is the story of Joshua and all the ways he was a jerk, as told by his best friend from college. I got about halfway through this and then put it down. Joshua's mean-ness got to me.
This was not a friendship but a cold, competitive, backstabbing professional association. There is a ruthless, tough side to writing and art--good for Don Lee for reminding us not to romanticize the creative life. But if I want to read about this kind of insecure manipulation, I'll turn to academic satire, which at least offers a laugh once in a while.
Plus, Joshua didn't seem to bring much to the discussion of racism in the U.S., and specifically the racism experienced by Asians and Asian-Americans, except a huge vocabulary of slurs and offensive terms. I understand the irritation of a third-generation Korean-American being asked, repeatedly, where he's from. I was interested in the narrator's conclusions about racism being different in different parts of the country (Boston being the worst). But I didn't want to know all the nasty names for whites who date Asian-Americans, or for Asian-Americans who don't act Asian enough (whatever that means to Joshua).
Joshua illustrates an attitude about race relations, and a way of being a writer/artist, that are extreme, isolating, troubling. Through Joshua's bullying, the author asks some great questions, such as who can write, or who must write, about particular topics. Must an Asian-American writer always have Asian-American characters in his stories? Can someone who has no Chinese heritage but has spent a lot of time in China write fiction set in China?
If you know Minneapolis-St. Paul area well, you'll like the details about where the characters spend their time there.
I loved Don Lee's short stories and will still try his other novels. I understand he wasn't trying to write a feel-good book. I didn't need cozy, but I did need just one speck of warmth to stay interested in the characters. Joshua was so obnoxious that I found myself not caring anymore about what happened to him in the first chapter, and that response bothered me enough to set the book aside.
My rating would have been two stars, but I added one because Don Lee did provoke a strong reaction in me, and that's what art is about, right?
This was not a friendship but a cold, competitive, backstabbing professional association. There is a ruthless, tough side to writing and art--good for Don Lee for reminding us not to romanticize the creative life. But if I want to read about this kind of insecure manipulation, I'll turn to academic satire, which at least offers a laugh once in a while.
Plus, Joshua didn't seem to bring much to the discussion of racism in the U.S., and specifically the racism experienced by Asians and Asian-Americans, except a huge vocabulary of slurs and offensive terms. I understand the irritation of a third-generation Korean-American being asked, repeatedly, where he's from. I was interested in the narrator's conclusions about racism being different in different parts of the country (Boston being the worst). But I didn't want to know all the nasty names for whites who date Asian-Americans, or for Asian-Americans who don't act Asian enough (whatever that means to Joshua).
Joshua illustrates an attitude about race relations, and a way of being a writer/artist, that are extreme, isolating, troubling. Through Joshua's bullying, the author asks some great questions, such as who can write, or who must write, about particular topics. Must an Asian-American writer always have Asian-American characters in his stories? Can someone who has no Chinese heritage but has spent a lot of time in China write fiction set in China?
If you know Minneapolis-St. Paul area well, you'll like the details about where the characters spend their time there.
I loved Don Lee's short stories and will still try his other novels. I understand he wasn't trying to write a feel-good book. I didn't need cozy, but I did need just one speck of warmth to stay interested in the characters. Joshua was so obnoxious that I found myself not caring anymore about what happened to him in the first chapter, and that response bothered me enough to set the book aside.
My rating would have been two stars, but I added one because Don Lee did provoke a strong reaction in me, and that's what art is about, right?
August 23, 2016
* DISCLAIMER: I’m just beige, not Asian American, so WTF do I know.
We need more books like this. And this is me, saying so—I who am perfectly content to read old white guys, who will defend C.S. Lewis, Kipling, Conrad, Forster, Hemingway, Faulkner, Twain, the whole SJW shit-list, without ambivalence. I can do all that and still say, damn, we need more books like this.
It’s a fun read, first and foremost—I inhaled it in two commutes and one late night. But more valuable and more rare, it’s race in contemporary American fiction as it is in contemporary American life: essential to who its characters are and how their stories unfold, whether they know it or not, without being the whole thing, the only thing, or even the thing the reader will care about most. Lee can’t entirely avoid tropes, but for the most part these people feel complete and complex, neither homogenized nor formed merely in opposition to expectations. I suspect it’s nearly impossible to pull this off, much less while remaining engaging to white readers, too. I am grateful and impressed.
I see the critiques of Lee’s prose but literally did not notice any actual writing, I was so charmed by the novelty of of encountering Asian American characters I could recognize. As for reviewers complaining said characters were unlikeable: no shit; they’re artists and academics. How is character likability your standard for fiction, anyway? What the hell do you people five-star, Winnie the Pooh?
(Nothing against Winnie the Pooh.)
We need more books like this. And this is me, saying so—I who am perfectly content to read old white guys, who will defend C.S. Lewis, Kipling, Conrad, Forster, Hemingway, Faulkner, Twain, the whole SJW shit-list, without ambivalence. I can do all that and still say, damn, we need more books like this.
It’s a fun read, first and foremost—I inhaled it in two commutes and one late night. But more valuable and more rare, it’s race in contemporary American fiction as it is in contemporary American life: essential to who its characters are and how their stories unfold, whether they know it or not, without being the whole thing, the only thing, or even the thing the reader will care about most. Lee can’t entirely avoid tropes, but for the most part these people feel complete and complex, neither homogenized nor formed merely in opposition to expectations. I suspect it’s nearly impossible to pull this off, much less while remaining engaging to white readers, too. I am grateful and impressed.
I see the critiques of Lee’s prose but literally did not notice any actual writing, I was so charmed by the novelty of of encountering Asian American characters I could recognize. As for reviewers complaining said characters were unlikeable: no shit; they’re artists and academics. How is character likability your standard for fiction, anyway? What the hell do you people five-star, Winnie the Pooh?
(Nothing against Winnie the Pooh.)
March 20, 2013
This is one of the most personally relevant books to me. As I was reading it, I immediately recalled the song, "Killing Me Softly." The story of three Asian American college students who wrestle with racial identity, with their "place" in US society, and with young adulthood and then adulthood reveals some of our deepest issues and processes. The writing is straightforward and Lee maintains a level of humor to balance some of the most poignant and vulnerable individual struggles. I felt as if Lee had spied on my college friends and me and then exposed our various conversations and arguments in this book. Topics included how to save ourselves, make an impact, and fight the many oppressing forces in life. After I recommended this book to one friend, he immediately described it as a sort of "Big Chill," the movie. I am grateful to Don Lee and his writing prowess. Each of his books has held up a mirror and cast light on different facets of being an Asian American in the U.S. The Collective is the boldest reflection yet.
July 4, 2019
Unfortunately I can’t keep reading this book. I made it halfway thru, when I realized the rest of the narration was going to be a play-by-play account of the most common Asian American gripes (fetishizing women, effeminate men, ching chang slurs) and all thru the viewpoint of an English major who wants to be a writer (extra cringe). This book IS relatable but it’s just not enough. I was really hooked by the opening pages, that it set me up with expectations that we will think back and forth cyclically trying to uncover answers about Joshua but instead we get Asian DUDES acting like literary bros. Jessica Tsai is still a prop character as far into it as chapter 9. I can’t read or watch another work from POV of a writer, I don’t think, at least not like this. . .
January 29, 2013
Agree with C that the ideas about race and ethnicity in this book are not new to me. They are tiresomely old, in fact, but they haven't stopped being true, and that is what makes them so tiresome. I realized they might still be new to other people and so I am really happy that this book exists. Despite various shortcomings in character development, and some very sensationalist plot points, reading this felt deeply familiar and really drove home for me how little Asian American literature and media exists that in any way resembles my own experiences. I especially enjoyed the way college is portrayed in the first section of the book, which felt the strongest to me.
July 27, 2012
I finished Don Lee's THE COLLECTIVE in two spellbound days. Beautifully managed first person narrator in Eric Cho; great dialogue throughout ; intellectual breadth, wit, and complexity in treating the themes of art and racism; great plot complication and satisfying closure. Lee’s richest and best. Of the many episodes, Ch. 12, the breakup with Mirielle on a visit to BVI, and in Ch. 15, the conflict over Jessica's sculpture with the Cambridge City Councilman, Vivaldo Barboza, were standouts.
September 28, 2016
wow, I have never read anything that speaks so intimately to my experience - I kept thinking, how does he know? then, of course he knows. neither Eric nor Josh are particularly likeable, but I kept seeing myself woven in with strands of their character, for better or for worse. (is this how white people feel when they read Gatsby? I want all my AsAm friends to read this.)
May 12, 2018
i went into this thinking this was like an asian-american great gatsby but instead it was more of an asian-american secret history which i realize is the point but we all know how i feel about that narrative... thanks i hate it!
anyway i think maybe the reason why i don't read as much asian-american lit as i want to is because all of it is so fucking depressing... i'm exhausted
anyway i think maybe the reason why i don't read as much asian-american lit as i want to is because all of it is so fucking depressing... i'm exhausted
April 12, 2019
Refreshing to read abt Asian American artists! Interesting how the discussions around racial identity and whether one's art needed to address that was the force that ultimately destroyed the group. The story reads a bit like great Gatsby
September 23, 2015
lacking a wow factor in the writing for 5, but whoooosh! how does Don Lee know so intimately of my life, of my interiority?
I am an Asian American failure.
I am an Asian American failure.
August 17, 2021
Hit uncomfortably close to home. Formative to my Asian American experience.
December 6, 2017
Onvan : The Collective - Nevisande : Don Lee - ISBN : 393083217 - ISBN13 : 9780393083217 - Dar 310 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2012
July 2, 2018
Intelligent and affecting, Don Lee's The Collective both challenged and moved me. I was surprised by how much emotion I felt at the end of the story, with Joshua's suicide (not a spoiler as it's also the opening sequence of the novel), and with the revelations that come with his death, especially for our narrator, Eric Cho.
Much of this book reads like a Socratic session at a small, liberal arts college - which is essentially the first half of this book. How do Asian Americans represent themselves in their own storytelling and artistic crafts? And do they have an obligation to reflect the Asian American reality? Does whitewashing their narrative earn them greater and wider popular acceptance, or does it ring the death toll of selling out? What does it mean to be Asian American? Can anything so broad, encompassing so many different people and nations and experiences, be generalized? Should it be defended by a group, or does that group - comprised exclusively of Asian Americans - exclude a greater audience which would benefit from the truths it has to tell and the message it wishes to disseminate? Don Lee delves so deeply into the specifics, getting down to the issue of hyphenating the term Asian(-)American (apparently a real debate), that it's easy to get lost in semantics.
But make not mistake: this is much more than a theoretical discussions held in Asian Studies 101; this is a book about the vast range of human experience captured under that umbrella "Asian American", and what it means (and what has little meaning), to each individual who populates this story. There is a very real beating heart here, pained by self-doubt, pride, abandonment, humiliation, stereotypes, and the trial of all people of the purest form of self expression. How do I communicate who I am and what I have experienced, in a way that will be accepted by people, while remaining true to myself? Don Lee's scene in which Joshua fudges his way through an AA monologue perfectly encapsulates this conundrum. How much of our own truth is based on our experiences, and how much is based on our interpretation of our experiences, and how we choose to incorporate whatever takeaways we foster into our personalities and our narratives, so that they shape and impact our lives and our futures?
As an Asian American, and someone who attended a small, liberal arts college, and was a part of ADVANCE (the college group promoting diversity), I related strongly to a lot of what Don Lee captured. Don Lee, it's important to note, is a professor at a similar such small, liberal arts college in the NE. He was also the editor of a literary journal, and has written several novels to bright reviews, but popular obscurity. Much of his personal experience appears to be an integral part of the trials of these main characters.
By the end I found myself becoming quite emotional. The bottom line is that we all have dreams; we all measure success differently; and we all grow up. Only some of us - like Joshua - choose not to. And is it a very Asian trait to hold oneself up to an impossible standard of being, whether self-imposed or dictated by our parents, until the breaking point: either a complete break from one's foundations and the mold to which one was instructed to aspire , or the coming to terms with middling dreams and self-acceptance , or the literal end, leaving failure or success a question of time rather than potential ?
This was certainly worth the read and wonderfully and affectingly explored.
Much of this book reads like a Socratic session at a small, liberal arts college - which is essentially the first half of this book. How do Asian Americans represent themselves in their own storytelling and artistic crafts? And do they have an obligation to reflect the Asian American reality? Does whitewashing their narrative earn them greater and wider popular acceptance, or does it ring the death toll of selling out? What does it mean to be Asian American? Can anything so broad, encompassing so many different people and nations and experiences, be generalized? Should it be defended by a group, or does that group - comprised exclusively of Asian Americans - exclude a greater audience which would benefit from the truths it has to tell and the message it wishes to disseminate? Don Lee delves so deeply into the specifics, getting down to the issue of hyphenating the term Asian(-)American (apparently a real debate), that it's easy to get lost in semantics.
But make not mistake: this is much more than a theoretical discussions held in Asian Studies 101; this is a book about the vast range of human experience captured under that umbrella "Asian American", and what it means (and what has little meaning), to each individual who populates this story. There is a very real beating heart here, pained by self-doubt, pride, abandonment, humiliation, stereotypes, and the trial of all people of the purest form of self expression. How do I communicate who I am and what I have experienced, in a way that will be accepted by people, while remaining true to myself? Don Lee's scene in which Joshua fudges his way through an AA monologue perfectly encapsulates this conundrum. How much of our own truth is based on our experiences, and how much is based on our interpretation of our experiences, and how we choose to incorporate whatever takeaways we foster into our personalities and our narratives, so that they shape and impact our lives and our futures?
As an Asian American, and someone who attended a small, liberal arts college, and was a part of ADVANCE (the college group promoting diversity), I related strongly to a lot of what Don Lee captured. Don Lee, it's important to note, is a professor at a similar such small, liberal arts college in the NE. He was also the editor of a literary journal, and has written several novels to bright reviews, but popular obscurity. Much of his personal experience appears to be an integral part of the trials of these main characters.
By the end I found myself becoming quite emotional. The bottom line is that we all have dreams; we all measure success differently; and we all grow up. Only some of us - like Joshua - choose not to. And is it a very Asian trait to hold oneself up to an impossible standard of being, whether self-imposed or dictated by our parents, until the breaking point: either a complete break from one's foundations and the mold to which one was instructed to aspire , or the coming to terms with middling dreams and self-acceptance , or the literal end, leaving failure or success a question of time rather than potential ?
This was certainly worth the read and wonderfully and affectingly explored.
June 24, 2020
I think this book lives and dies on its distance from the narrator. Eric is a total Nice Guy, and The Collective is worse when it feels like it's a book from him and better when it feels like it's a book about him. Halfway through the novel, nestled in his poor-little-me Gen Xer perspective, I hated it. As I finished reading, having seen him grow the fuck up a little and called out by Jessica, I thought to myself: maybe I actually liked reading this after all.
The prose is v. readable and good at capturing the little pinprick gradations of human discontent. The long scene where the 3AC try to come up with a mission statement is 100% true to life. Esther's success despite Eric's little bitch baby resentment of her was pretty delicious. There's a tenderness that Eric has for Josh, this difficult awful man, that almost makes me like their relationship, despite Joshua being an absolute trashbag of a human being. I very much liked how Eric is just, at his core, not a very good writer and uncomfortably aware of it.
OTOH, sometimes The Collective dips into typical male-protagonist self-inserty narcissism. Jessica Tsai is often the voice of reason and I liked that she ended up with another woman after all, but some of her scenes get way too indulgently Chasing Amy about her presumed sexual access for Eric. Nobody brings up intersectionality, which may have just been how it was in the 2000s (probably not? this is post-Margaret Cho!), but that definitely narrows the perspective of a novel whose main protagonist spends twenty years incredibly aggrieved about race. Noklek is a total nonentity & stereotype - makes me want to write something about how Asian-Americans Other Asians from Asia.
Also: despite the focus on race, somehow The Collective is not at all in conversation with Asian American culture at large. Eric's third-gen SoCal heritage is meant to make him a sort of blank slate who's never had to think about his culture in his life, but that's completely not accurate to the vibrant Asian-American identity in SoCal, and it just makes him a generic everydude. He and Joshua only vaguely interact with Asian-ness on the "complaining about stereotype" level. The sum total of literary references is a running joke about Murakami, even though they live in a time period that's post-Maxine Hong Kingston and contemporary to Amy Tan. I mean, that totally tracks with the portrayal of Eric and Joshua as pretentious dilettantes, but it still kind of pisses me off.
This book could have been so much more interesting with some distance. I wanted more than an one-off observation from Jessica to tease out the mutual expectations and toxicity and idealization between Joshua and Eric. I wanted a bit more of the other 3AC members, or an idea of how this collective fits into the larger Asian-American media landscape. I wanted Noklek to be treated like a fucking person instead of the underage Southeast Asian refugee/prostitute stereotype (fuck, that's noxious). I wanted a book that was really about a collective, not just its least interesting member.
The prose is v. readable and good at capturing the little pinprick gradations of human discontent. The long scene where the 3AC try to come up with a mission statement is 100% true to life. Esther's success despite Eric's little bitch baby resentment of her was pretty delicious. There's a tenderness that Eric has for Josh, this difficult awful man, that almost makes me like their relationship, despite Joshua being an absolute trashbag of a human being. I very much liked how Eric is just, at his core, not a very good writer and uncomfortably aware of it.
OTOH, sometimes The Collective dips into typical male-protagonist self-inserty narcissism. Jessica Tsai is often the voice of reason and I liked that she ended up with another woman after all, but some of her scenes get way too indulgently Chasing Amy about her presumed sexual access for Eric. Nobody brings up intersectionality, which may have just been how it was in the 2000s (probably not? this is post-Margaret Cho!), but that definitely narrows the perspective of a novel whose main protagonist spends twenty years incredibly aggrieved about race. Noklek is a total nonentity & stereotype - makes me want to write something about how Asian-Americans Other Asians from Asia.
Also: despite the focus on race, somehow The Collective is not at all in conversation with Asian American culture at large. Eric's third-gen SoCal heritage is meant to make him a sort of blank slate who's never had to think about his culture in his life, but that's completely not accurate to the vibrant Asian-American identity in SoCal, and it just makes him a generic everydude. He and Joshua only vaguely interact with Asian-ness on the "complaining about stereotype" level. The sum total of literary references is a running joke about Murakami, even though they live in a time period that's post-Maxine Hong Kingston and contemporary to Amy Tan. I mean, that totally tracks with the portrayal of Eric and Joshua as pretentious dilettantes, but it still kind of pisses me off.
This book could have been so much more interesting with some distance. I wanted more than an one-off observation from Jessica to tease out the mutual expectations and toxicity and idealization between Joshua and Eric. I wanted a bit more of the other 3AC members, or an idea of how this collective fits into the larger Asian-American media landscape. I wanted Noklek to be treated like a fucking person instead of the underage Southeast Asian refugee/prostitute stereotype (fuck, that's noxious). I wanted a book that was really about a collective, not just its least interesting member.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 30, 2021
This book was really interesting to me an Asian American. The struggle with (racial) identity and the politicization I experienced in college are mirrored here in a distorted fun-house way. The Collective reminds me of a darker, post-college version of Dear White People, from Asian perspectives.
Most characters here are simply props for expressing diverse Asian experiences and perspectives, esp as artists in a tight self-created collective environment. I’m ok with these static characters and side vignettes bc they serve a specific purpose in creating a myriad of different voices, rather than needing to be full-fledged characters.
Eric is consistently more unlikable as the narrative progresses, almost nearly as Joshua becomes more sympathetic towards the end (ofc since we know how that goes). The way they are created as foils for each other is just so....good? What I got out of their relationship was a commentary on the intimate and simultaneously toxic ways that (Asian) men go through with each other. Eric’s big lesson is how he must take responsibility for his fuck ups, rather than projecting everything on the only stable person in his whole adult life. Together, they are meant to be unlikable, bc they ultimately represent the complexity of (particularly racial) identify formation.
I personally really liked how this narrative was structured bc there are some slow parts, and what kept me going was the promise of the huge climax that I was just itching to unfold.
The Collective raises questions around how gender and race and sexuality intersect, what Asian American art even is, how to walk the line between “nativism” and assimilation, and how an identity-based community can grow and flourish and collapse together. I would highly recommend, although the voice may be cringe at times.
Most characters here are simply props for expressing diverse Asian experiences and perspectives, esp as artists in a tight self-created collective environment. I’m ok with these static characters and side vignettes bc they serve a specific purpose in creating a myriad of different voices, rather than needing to be full-fledged characters.
Eric is consistently more unlikable as the narrative progresses, almost nearly as Joshua becomes more sympathetic towards the end (ofc since we know how that goes). The way they are created as foils for each other is just so....good? What I got out of their relationship was a commentary on the intimate and simultaneously toxic ways that (Asian) men go through with each other. Eric’s big lesson is how he must take responsibility for his fuck ups, rather than projecting everything on the only stable person in his whole adult life. Together, they are meant to be unlikable, bc they ultimately represent the complexity of (particularly racial) identify formation.
I personally really liked how this narrative was structured bc there are some slow parts, and what kept me going was the promise of the huge climax that I was just itching to unfold.
The Collective raises questions around how gender and race and sexuality intersect, what Asian American art even is, how to walk the line between “nativism” and assimilation, and how an identity-based community can grow and flourish and collapse together. I would highly recommend, although the voice may be cringe at times.
December 25, 2017
I found this book to be a very worthwhile read (3.5 star). It does a great job of detailing the lives of contemporary artists in the US as they confront the real world, told by someone who's lived life. It shows the vanity, hard work, desperation, unfairness, and financial insecurity. There is a lot of self-awareness and (for the most part) truth-seeking in this book.
The opening prose about the suicide is one of the best examples of story telling I've come across. The passage later about developing the mission statement for 3AC was brilliant and very funny.
The book was a page turner for me because I'm personally interested in the issues.
Weaknesses (SPOILERS):
- For a novel about the artist, there is not a lot of art here. Although the organization is generally quite good, we don't see again the masterful writing of the opening pages. In general he writes only on the concrete level.
- The ending was missing a clear statement from Joshua on whether the artists' life was worth it. It remains ambiguous. We don't know whether Joshua killed himself because that was the perfect end for the artist or because he thought his life was a failure. Eric's take is likewise unclear.
- There are long stretches of commentary from the narrator that discuss important things, and I valued his insights, but should be shorter and more subtle.
FINAL
I would love to see Don Lee continue to write literary fiction, especially the kind of writing in the book's opening. Reading the book, I went from hating Joshua, to understanding the friendship between Eric and Joshua, and -- it appears I'm in the minority of reviewers here -- even caring about what happens to Joshua. I can see and hear Joshua. Shows Lee's skill.
The opening prose about the suicide is one of the best examples of story telling I've come across. The passage later about developing the mission statement for 3AC was brilliant and very funny.
The book was a page turner for me because I'm personally interested in the issues.
Weaknesses (SPOILERS):
- For a novel about the artist, there is not a lot of art here. Although the organization is generally quite good, we don't see again the masterful writing of the opening pages. In general he writes only on the concrete level.
- The ending was missing a clear statement from Joshua on whether the artists' life was worth it. It remains ambiguous. We don't know whether Joshua killed himself because that was the perfect end for the artist or because he thought his life was a failure. Eric's take is likewise unclear.
- There are long stretches of commentary from the narrator that discuss important things, and I valued his insights, but should be shorter and more subtle.
FINAL
I would love to see Don Lee continue to write literary fiction, especially the kind of writing in the book's opening. Reading the book, I went from hating Joshua, to understanding the friendship between Eric and Joshua, and -- it appears I'm in the minority of reviewers here -- even caring about what happens to Joshua. I can see and hear Joshua. Shows Lee's skill.
June 8, 2016
FAV QUOTES:
Yes, he was depressed–obviously. But this was not something new or atypical for him. Aristotle called it melancholia, the predisposition artists have for depression, prone as they are to being morose and antisocial and self-flagellating and megalomaniacal. Indeed, without that inclination, no one would probably become an artist in the first place.
How well do we really know anyone? We only know what people are willing to reveal.
It’s not that people change. People don’t change. They merely hide things from you, and lie.
Perhaps what he feared most was happening–his imagination had abandoned him, the well had gone dry.
And, of course, it might simply be that everyone’s become a little bored with one another, doing the same things over and over, hearing and telling the same stories.
Despite your best efforts and intentions, there’s a limited reservoir to fellowship before you begin to rely solely on the vapors of nostalgia.
I mean, what happened to developing the individual, to encouraging subversion and independence? I thought that’s what this place was all about. Instead, it’s, you know, just the old bourgeois concept of togetherness–i.e., conformity–under the guise of PC liberalism. It’s fucking oppressive, man. It’s downright totalitarian.
I knew it. You’re a romantic. God, I’m going to have to look after you, Eric, make a special project of you the next four years, because if you take that shit out into the world, that kind of fucking idealism, you’ll get slaughtered. You’ll get creamed. It’ll be the death of you.
I mean, nothing’s really changed, but we’ve changed.
You want too much. You wrecked it.
We’d insist that all truth was relative, that there was no reality without signifiers, that there was no there there, that nothing, in fact, really existed.
Sometimes the distinction between theft and homage is murky.
The hours, the dedication, the obsessiveness that must have been required to do this was breathtaking. Staggering. But you walked away not so much with admiration for the artist as concern for her mental health.
It’s easy being outrageous. Much harder to offer real meaning.
We were friends, we were the three amigos, yet occasionally I wondered if we even liked each other.
You do nothing, it becomes approval.
I no longer predicted a future with any of them, and it could have been, in fact, that I subconsciously chose women who were so fucked up, disaster was virtually assured, providing fodder for the stories I was now writing about Asian guys who dated fucked-up white girls.
But you, you’d never hire a hooker, would you? Because you believe the concept of love is real and attainable and not merely a myth perpetrated by religious demagogues and prohibitionists and fascist conglomerates.
They see an unremittingly sad film, and they think it’s depressing, whereas we’re fucking enthralled, because the catharsis for us is in witnessing great art, seeing the undiluted truth, in the shared recognition that life is pain.
To produce art, great art, you’ve got to be willing to alienate people and suffer the consequences.
There were no excuses. If you want to write, you write. You find the time. You make the time.
You idealize me. You don’t even know me. If you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me very much.
“There are no strings here, Charlie.”
“But don’t you see? I want there to be strings. I want this to mean something.”
It was one of those pointless arguments you enter without any strong formulations, but then, by dint of the opening parry, find yourself heatedly defending a position in which you don’t really believe, yet from which you can no longer withdraw.
You need to be willing to live on the street to be an artist. Getting sucked into a career is an invitation to bail. It makes it too easy to give up. It makes it almost inevitable that you will.
Call me cynical, but I have difficulty putting much stock in Christianity, when the entirety of the religion was built upon believing an unmarried fifteen-year-old girl’s explanation for how she got pregnant.
Conversation is not dialogue, it’s monologues. No one ever really listens in conversations. It’s civility that makes you wait and pretend you give a fuck what the other person is saying.
You’re not going to be able to save her, you know. If you keep trying, she’ll break your heart.
Art’s not about being didactic. There’s nothing more boring or tedious than that. Art should simply be about what makes us human. Its only obligation, if anything, is to try to break the frozen sea within us.
I’ll never fall in love, because I could never trust that I wouldn’t be abandoned.
We can’t sit around waiting for things to happen. We’ve got to make them happen. Nothing’s going to fall in our laps. That only happens to beautiful white people.
You think your comment was innocent, but these things are never innocent, it’s never just a joke, they’re never just words.
At what point is it acceptable to give up?
People might not change, but situations do.
If they haven’t compromised themselves already, in their hearts they want to, because being true to one’s art, keeping the dream alive, is utterly exhausting.
Just so you know, I am a hateful person.
This was your fatal flaw–you always had a backup plan. You were never willing to risk everything.
There was something exquisite and poetic about those fucking catastrophes.
How the hell did we get here?
We want to think that there’s an inviolable continuity among old friends, a bond that cannot be fissured despite years of lassitude and neglect. We want to believe that there’s truth and solace in our memories, that there’s meaning and purpose to the things that have happened to us.
Youth is about promise.
What drove him to kill himself, she says, was realizing that he would never have what I now possess–a life beyond the pursuit of art–because being an artist, a writer, means isolating yourself in a room for hours, days on end, going into the darkest parts of yourself, and really, what sane person would want to do that?
How can you explain that it’s just that he was sad, that he’d been sad all his life, and he knew he’d always be sad?
All this I am projecting, of course. I’ll never know for sure. We can’t fully understand what plagues each other’s hearts, much less our own at times. Ultimately even our best friends are unknowable to us.
Yes, he was depressed–obviously. But this was not something new or atypical for him. Aristotle called it melancholia, the predisposition artists have for depression, prone as they are to being morose and antisocial and self-flagellating and megalomaniacal. Indeed, without that inclination, no one would probably become an artist in the first place.
How well do we really know anyone? We only know what people are willing to reveal.
It’s not that people change. People don’t change. They merely hide things from you, and lie.
Perhaps what he feared most was happening–his imagination had abandoned him, the well had gone dry.
And, of course, it might simply be that everyone’s become a little bored with one another, doing the same things over and over, hearing and telling the same stories.
Despite your best efforts and intentions, there’s a limited reservoir to fellowship before you begin to rely solely on the vapors of nostalgia.
I mean, what happened to developing the individual, to encouraging subversion and independence? I thought that’s what this place was all about. Instead, it’s, you know, just the old bourgeois concept of togetherness–i.e., conformity–under the guise of PC liberalism. It’s fucking oppressive, man. It’s downright totalitarian.
I knew it. You’re a romantic. God, I’m going to have to look after you, Eric, make a special project of you the next four years, because if you take that shit out into the world, that kind of fucking idealism, you’ll get slaughtered. You’ll get creamed. It’ll be the death of you.
I mean, nothing’s really changed, but we’ve changed.
You want too much. You wrecked it.
We’d insist that all truth was relative, that there was no reality without signifiers, that there was no there there, that nothing, in fact, really existed.
Sometimes the distinction between theft and homage is murky.
The hours, the dedication, the obsessiveness that must have been required to do this was breathtaking. Staggering. But you walked away not so much with admiration for the artist as concern for her mental health.
It’s easy being outrageous. Much harder to offer real meaning.
We were friends, we were the three amigos, yet occasionally I wondered if we even liked each other.
You do nothing, it becomes approval.
I no longer predicted a future with any of them, and it could have been, in fact, that I subconsciously chose women who were so fucked up, disaster was virtually assured, providing fodder for the stories I was now writing about Asian guys who dated fucked-up white girls.
But you, you’d never hire a hooker, would you? Because you believe the concept of love is real and attainable and not merely a myth perpetrated by religious demagogues and prohibitionists and fascist conglomerates.
They see an unremittingly sad film, and they think it’s depressing, whereas we’re fucking enthralled, because the catharsis for us is in witnessing great art, seeing the undiluted truth, in the shared recognition that life is pain.
To produce art, great art, you’ve got to be willing to alienate people and suffer the consequences.
There were no excuses. If you want to write, you write. You find the time. You make the time.
You idealize me. You don’t even know me. If you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me very much.
“There are no strings here, Charlie.”
“But don’t you see? I want there to be strings. I want this to mean something.”
It was one of those pointless arguments you enter without any strong formulations, but then, by dint of the opening parry, find yourself heatedly defending a position in which you don’t really believe, yet from which you can no longer withdraw.
You need to be willing to live on the street to be an artist. Getting sucked into a career is an invitation to bail. It makes it too easy to give up. It makes it almost inevitable that you will.
Call me cynical, but I have difficulty putting much stock in Christianity, when the entirety of the religion was built upon believing an unmarried fifteen-year-old girl’s explanation for how she got pregnant.
Conversation is not dialogue, it’s monologues. No one ever really listens in conversations. It’s civility that makes you wait and pretend you give a fuck what the other person is saying.
You’re not going to be able to save her, you know. If you keep trying, she’ll break your heart.
Art’s not about being didactic. There’s nothing more boring or tedious than that. Art should simply be about what makes us human. Its only obligation, if anything, is to try to break the frozen sea within us.
I’ll never fall in love, because I could never trust that I wouldn’t be abandoned.
We can’t sit around waiting for things to happen. We’ve got to make them happen. Nothing’s going to fall in our laps. That only happens to beautiful white people.
You think your comment was innocent, but these things are never innocent, it’s never just a joke, they’re never just words.
At what point is it acceptable to give up?
People might not change, but situations do.
If they haven’t compromised themselves already, in their hearts they want to, because being true to one’s art, keeping the dream alive, is utterly exhausting.
Just so you know, I am a hateful person.
This was your fatal flaw–you always had a backup plan. You were never willing to risk everything.
There was something exquisite and poetic about those fucking catastrophes.
How the hell did we get here?
We want to think that there’s an inviolable continuity among old friends, a bond that cannot be fissured despite years of lassitude and neglect. We want to believe that there’s truth and solace in our memories, that there’s meaning and purpose to the things that have happened to us.
Youth is about promise.
What drove him to kill himself, she says, was realizing that he would never have what I now possess–a life beyond the pursuit of art–because being an artist, a writer, means isolating yourself in a room for hours, days on end, going into the darkest parts of yourself, and really, what sane person would want to do that?
How can you explain that it’s just that he was sad, that he’d been sad all his life, and he knew he’d always be sad?
All this I am projecting, of course. I’ll never know for sure. We can’t fully understand what plagues each other’s hearts, much less our own at times. Ultimately even our best friends are unknowable to us.
February 12, 2016
I…have been sitting on this review for a while, trying to figure out how to go about it. Because I didn’t like it, but I feel like I should have liked it, but I can’t quite elucidate what it is that I didn’t like. Which is pretty important, you know. In a book review. To know what you did and did not like. About the. Book.
Yeah.
Um, to start, this book was dreadfully boring, which surprised me, because it’s not a typical Asian American ™ book. It’s not an immigrant narrative, for which I was infinitely grateful and which was a huge part of the reason I picked the book up to begin with. Because let me tell you, I am sick and tired of Asian American immigration narratives that focus on assimilation and perpetual foreign-ness. Give me a book about Asiam protags from all over Asia from the northeast to the southwest going on a roadtrip and fighting about food. (That would totally happen. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but pretty much all of Asia has great food. That’s why we’re such foodies.) Give me a book about Asiams rescuing faery princes and saving the world from collapsing in on that.
Not that this book was either one of these; it still focused on (East) Asian American political identity and the notions of communal responsibility, as well as the pitfalls of activism that is mostly motivated by ego. One of the characters was, I think, a very revolutionary character in terms of (East) Asiams – he was passionate, charming, well-read, and talented, but also mercurial, manipulative, dangerously codependent, and self-destructive. The other two characters were less dynamic, but were equally well-rendered, but –
But.
There’s always a but.
It felt so contrived to me, more a moralist tale than a novel. And it’s not like I have a problem with authors who are outspoken about, for example, the politics of oppression. I have great respect for people like Junot Diaz, as well as nonfiction writers like Liu Binyan, who do not censor themselves in the face of oppression, who are outspoken against it. I think in this case, the problem is that 1) Lee’s politics did not fall in line with my own and 2) the approach was heavy-handed, and felt more like a diatribe than anything else at times, and, at the end of the novel, I was wondering – why? What was the point? (Catharsis for the narrator, perhaps, but I was left distinctly annoyed.)
Of course, it’s theoretically possible to enjoy novels whose politics are not your own, but you know, you’re probably not going to see me praising Ayn Rand and her cult of selfishness anytime soon (my friends used to give me the “BUT SHE’S FROM COMMUNIST RUSSIA!!!” excuse. Yeah, well, my parents are from “Communist China” and were Cultural Revolution babies but they still manage to grasp the concept of “sharing” and “thinking of the wellbeing of people beyond ego” – a large effort on their part, I’m sure). The author seems intimately familiar with both the dialect and the pitfalls of Asian American activism, and very certainly I agree with his observations – I have seen firsthand the way activism that is fueled by self-interest and self-aggrandizement can result not only in counterproductivity, but also in abuse and a dialogue stagnated by the dominance of a single cult of personality. He maintains that art should be done for the self and not the community and, again, I agree. I agree, I agree, I agree, and yet.
The poisonous attitude of some forms of activism should not taint the larger notion of activism itself (and I don’t think Lee fights that, but the one character who does not soften his politics over the years is, within the first three pages, killed, and his death is framed as selfish by the narrator – which in and of itself is a shit move to pull – and it reminds me of the notion that only young people are bleeding hearts who have strongly held opinions). And as an artist (both of the scribbling and the doodling variety, though I’ve had more training in one than the other; I’ll let you guess which), I do think our highest obligation is to our own integrities and telling the stories that we want to tell, but at the same time it’s necessary to realise that even if we shouldn’t be politicised, we are, and whether we want to or not, we will be seen in some way or another as representative of our communities. And I don’t think the two necessarily clash as often or as dramatically as in the novel.
(I also do think it is important to often ask ourselves who we choose to include or not include in our art. Why would a Midwestern white girl choose to write about Cultural Revolution China, as was so dramatically portrayed in the novel? Of course, these are presented, within the novel, as questions an asshole asks when he is looking to be contrary or when he’s feeling insecure. But is it not important to ascertain the motivations of an author? Have we not always asked “Why does JD Salinger choose to portray Holden Caulfield as a privileged boarding school child?” or “What was Fitzgerald’s purpose in the recurring motif of the colour yellow in his seminal work The Great Gatsby?” Even the politics of white, male authors are dissected – how did Orwell’s time as an agent of British imperialism in the British colonies influence his later politics, as portrayed in his novels? How did Hemingway’s wartime experiences influence his writing style and the themes he chose to portray? How were Shakespeare’s works influenced by a heavily expansionist England and the politics of Queen Elizabeth’s court? Is it only when it comes to portraying the Other that these questions are dodged and evaded, and only insecure, manipulative, whiny assholes will ask you them to undermine your talent?)
Now I’ve turned into a political diatribe, golly.
I think, though, what soured me to the novel was ultimately its portrayal of political activism, which, though nuanced and though I did often nod in agreement and could identify with, ultimately came down on the side I’m choosing not to come down on. Aside from that, and the dry prose (though it might not have been dry so much as “god I can’t stand the narrator’s personality shut up and go away” sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference), and the stagnant narrative, it was a decent novel. I did have to force myself through it, and was pretty close to putting it down b u t that’s not to say that it wasn’t worth my time. It was an (East) Asiam narrative you encounter very rarely in contemporary English language literature, and even if I wasn’t the fondest of it, I still think it’s important.
Yeah.
Um, to start, this book was dreadfully boring, which surprised me, because it’s not a typical Asian American ™ book. It’s not an immigrant narrative, for which I was infinitely grateful and which was a huge part of the reason I picked the book up to begin with. Because let me tell you, I am sick and tired of Asian American immigration narratives that focus on assimilation and perpetual foreign-ness. Give me a book about Asiam protags from all over Asia from the northeast to the southwest going on a roadtrip and fighting about food. (That would totally happen. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but pretty much all of Asia has great food. That’s why we’re such foodies.) Give me a book about Asiams rescuing faery princes and saving the world from collapsing in on that.
Not that this book was either one of these; it still focused on (East) Asian American political identity and the notions of communal responsibility, as well as the pitfalls of activism that is mostly motivated by ego. One of the characters was, I think, a very revolutionary character in terms of (East) Asiams – he was passionate, charming, well-read, and talented, but also mercurial, manipulative, dangerously codependent, and self-destructive. The other two characters were less dynamic, but were equally well-rendered, but –
But.
There’s always a but.
It felt so contrived to me, more a moralist tale than a novel. And it’s not like I have a problem with authors who are outspoken about, for example, the politics of oppression. I have great respect for people like Junot Diaz, as well as nonfiction writers like Liu Binyan, who do not censor themselves in the face of oppression, who are outspoken against it. I think in this case, the problem is that 1) Lee’s politics did not fall in line with my own and 2) the approach was heavy-handed, and felt more like a diatribe than anything else at times, and, at the end of the novel, I was wondering – why? What was the point? (Catharsis for the narrator, perhaps, but I was left distinctly annoyed.)
Of course, it’s theoretically possible to enjoy novels whose politics are not your own, but you know, you’re probably not going to see me praising Ayn Rand and her cult of selfishness anytime soon (my friends used to give me the “BUT SHE’S FROM COMMUNIST RUSSIA!!!” excuse. Yeah, well, my parents are from “Communist China” and were Cultural Revolution babies but they still manage to grasp the concept of “sharing” and “thinking of the wellbeing of people beyond ego” – a large effort on their part, I’m sure). The author seems intimately familiar with both the dialect and the pitfalls of Asian American activism, and very certainly I agree with his observations – I have seen firsthand the way activism that is fueled by self-interest and self-aggrandizement can result not only in counterproductivity, but also in abuse and a dialogue stagnated by the dominance of a single cult of personality. He maintains that art should be done for the self and not the community and, again, I agree. I agree, I agree, I agree, and yet.
The poisonous attitude of some forms of activism should not taint the larger notion of activism itself (and I don’t think Lee fights that, but the one character who does not soften his politics over the years is, within the first three pages, killed, and his death is framed as selfish by the narrator – which in and of itself is a shit move to pull – and it reminds me of the notion that only young people are bleeding hearts who have strongly held opinions). And as an artist (both of the scribbling and the doodling variety, though I’ve had more training in one than the other; I’ll let you guess which), I do think our highest obligation is to our own integrities and telling the stories that we want to tell, but at the same time it’s necessary to realise that even if we shouldn’t be politicised, we are, and whether we want to or not, we will be seen in some way or another as representative of our communities. And I don’t think the two necessarily clash as often or as dramatically as in the novel.
(I also do think it is important to often ask ourselves who we choose to include or not include in our art. Why would a Midwestern white girl choose to write about Cultural Revolution China, as was so dramatically portrayed in the novel? Of course, these are presented, within the novel, as questions an asshole asks when he is looking to be contrary or when he’s feeling insecure. But is it not important to ascertain the motivations of an author? Have we not always asked “Why does JD Salinger choose to portray Holden Caulfield as a privileged boarding school child?” or “What was Fitzgerald’s purpose in the recurring motif of the colour yellow in his seminal work The Great Gatsby?” Even the politics of white, male authors are dissected – how did Orwell’s time as an agent of British imperialism in the British colonies influence his later politics, as portrayed in his novels? How did Hemingway’s wartime experiences influence his writing style and the themes he chose to portray? How were Shakespeare’s works influenced by a heavily expansionist England and the politics of Queen Elizabeth’s court? Is it only when it comes to portraying the Other that these questions are dodged and evaded, and only insecure, manipulative, whiny assholes will ask you them to undermine your talent?)
Now I’ve turned into a political diatribe, golly.
I think, though, what soured me to the novel was ultimately its portrayal of political activism, which, though nuanced and though I did often nod in agreement and could identify with, ultimately came down on the side I’m choosing not to come down on. Aside from that, and the dry prose (though it might not have been dry so much as “god I can’t stand the narrator’s personality shut up and go away” sometimes I couldn’t tell the difference), and the stagnant narrative, it was a decent novel. I did have to force myself through it, and was pretty close to putting it down b u t that’s not to say that it wasn’t worth my time. It was an (East) Asiam narrative you encounter very rarely in contemporary English language literature, and even if I wasn’t the fondest of it, I still think it’s important.
October 17, 2019
I have an uncomfortable relationship to "Asian American literature", and find myself often steering clear of it, worried it will be the same familiar stuff. But The Collective was refreshing and validating for an Asian American writer such as myself. It was a weird sort of meta feeling I got, reading this book, a book about Asian American artists struggling with the questions I have as an Asian American artist, or as an Asian American, period -- Do I have to write about Asians? How do I strike a balance so that I'm neither too complacent nor too zealous? -- while also discussing the difficulties of being an artist -- Do I have what it takes? Am I a fraud? -- and realizing that these questions were being explored and their possibilities depicted IN A PIECE OF ART. I read in an interview with Don Lee once that a young Asian student of his once asked him if he (the student) had to write about Asians. Don responded, "No, because I'm doing that for you." What I loved about this book (clear prose and a great balance of hilarity and tragedy aside) is that it is a book that I probably would never have written myself, yet it was a book that spoke to me and told me I didn't NEED to write a book like that. That being said, the book is also so well-written, the characters so well-rendered (you kind of hate them sometimes but also really sympathize with them), and parts of the story evoked all kinds of serious emotion in me, from rage to sadness. Really loved it. Thank you, Don.
July 9, 2022
As with the last few books I've read, I wondered how much of this narrative was pulled from real-life experiences for Don Lee. The book was raw with the emotion and struggle of growing up Asian American. Notably, the commentary on pages 236-237 when the characters begin to dig into the title 'Asian American' and who that does or does not include. This is something that has been of attention in the public eye (again) recently and is still not easy to answer.
This is a novel, but it is also a critique on the dominant white society, especially in the creative world, where Asians are consistently 'othered' or overlooked. I appreciated that commentary but struggled to connect strongly with any of the characters. The narrator was weak, which seemed to be intentional. Struggling to figure himself out, and at times being walked on by Joshua.
Also, I want Joshua's novels, the ones mentioned in the last chapter to exist. I want to read THESE books!
This is a novel, but it is also a critique on the dominant white society, especially in the creative world, where Asians are consistently 'othered' or overlooked. I appreciated that commentary but struggled to connect strongly with any of the characters. The narrator was weak, which seemed to be intentional. Struggling to figure himself out, and at times being walked on by Joshua.
Also, I want Joshua's novels, the ones mentioned in the last chapter to exist. I want to read THESE books!
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