You Private Person

by Richard Chiem

Fiction. Asian American Studies

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Poetry, Collections

139 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2012

About the author

BIO: Richard Chiem is the author of You Private Person (Sorry House Classics, 2017) and the novel King of Joy (Soft Skull Press, 2019). His work has been published in City Arts Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Fanzine, 3:AM Magazine, and Moss Magazine, among many other places. His book You Private Person was named one of Publishers Weekly's 10 Essential Books of the American West. He lives in Seattle w/ his partner.

Reviews

[Samuel Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

       This is Chiem's first
published book, he has two e-book's out and approximately one hundred
million short stories published online. He obviously went hard for You Private Person: it's heart is beating and it is drenched in sweat.

The organization of this book is nebulous, there are two major story lines which are formed by numerous connected shorts: sociopaths and animals. There are a number of short stories inserted which may or may not be related to the greater story lines. Potentially your call.  The erotic is in every nook and cranny then spread blanket like over the whole. Here it is the worthless drug while love is a distant
memory, if that. Life and work: a chronic ache, some nagging beast with
its bilious claws dug in. Chiem's world is real. Hyperreal. The colors
ring through the pages, even a glance at the angles and edges will mar
your eyes. There is humor but it is a blown leaf.

      Sociopaths, the first series of stories, is simple in its conception yet complex in its acrobatics. The events revolve around two characters in a relationship, plus three others which act as catalysts of action. The action here is portrayed bluntly; there is little suspense in the
plot. It is the feelings, movements, relationships and various ideas
however which carry the story. The subtleties and small motions of the character are able to betray deep pasts, cogitations et c. The characters flesh out a little more than just simple abstractions yet exist in a half world of personality. As such we are left to determine the motives of
some of their actions; Chiem never lets us know them deeply. This might be a flaw in another writer but Chiem effectively uses this to form a sort of mystery in them. The characters are in certain ways vary familiar and yet unhuman. They could be us even, or perhaps twisted shadows of ourselves. As with the people around us we often think we know them, have their traits pinned, yet come to find that circumstances will push them to extreme actions and unthinkable reactions. Notable in Chiem's writing is the ambiguity which serves to write much of the story off the page. He throws us bits and pieces which we may use to determine for ourselves whole other stories which lie behind the one in the book. Sociopaths is also notable for a number of winding extended sentences and while a few are clumsy, others are deftly pulled off.

      A second series of stories titled Animal is even bleaker than Sociopaths. We find the boxer River and his girlfriend Sam entwined in a relationship with Mary. Time is a manipulated variable here, Chiem slowing it down or speeding it up at his will. Often River and Sam will be engaged in a low stakes, every day activity then for no apparent reason break into hysterical fighting. Again Chiem provides us with only the barest of clues as to the history of these three but it is evidently fraught with drama. Writing this way, writing the spaces between the letters, illustrating the events that precede or follow the action as Chiem does here is a tricky endeavor. If executed well the reader is left with a lofty and magical story which engages the imagination long after the book has been closed. This is extremely difficult however and if done without the required grace it can be confusing. Chiem seems to utilize the method in both of these stories and is very close to nailing it. Both Sociopaths and Animals are enjoyable stories but the "writing off the page" doesn't always connect. I do hope however that this is a method which Chiem continues to employ as he seems to have a good grasp of it and could certainly make it shine in future writing.

     Chiem's shorter, less traditional stories are his strong suit. He nails it in his gripping second person account of a car accident How to Survive a Car Accident. Baby is Going to Die Tonight portrays a nameless ageless dreamy love, the missing details causing us to beg for more. Cutty depicts a relationship at the heart of which is an unequal power struggle. Told partially in texts these poetic missives often communicate more than the characters are able to convey verbally. They offer a beautiful release, the last one holds a key which turns the story after it is read. Planet B Boy holds some of my favorite lines in the book. This story describes a masterful b boy practicing and competing. It heavily references a movie which I haven't seen and I suspect that understanding the movie would illuminate certain part of the story. Regardless there are two lines here which demonstrate perfectly Chiems sparkling, head cocking ability for description:

"He says: I am going to see what's happening. He says, I can dance so symmetrically for so long it feels like nihilism. I can make my body a catastrophe"

and

"He has danced every day for the past few years with a signature presence. All the muscles in his arms glow in open tension" 

He takes the ordinary and presents it to us in a new way which feel strange yet strangely fits,  bends our synapses into new configurations, opens up rooms which are illuminated in a benthic light.

       While there are a number of themes touched upon in YPP the recurring meditation is young love which is seen from every facet: the ache of desire, the ease of long term, the burn of long distance, the rut of forgetting. Good, bad, ambivalent, apathetic. It is all here. Many of Chiem's character have different surfaces but similar cores. We see different angles of love from roughly the same subject. Thus YPP is something of a monograph, a comprehensive study of the subject. His view is dark, and in the world we live in one could hardly find fault with this. But he conveys the darkness beautifully, and with heart. This is a book in which you will find lines which will stymie you for hours, weeks, until one day, in the midst of personal tragedy it will click, it's meaning suddenly revealed. This will be a book that you find more beautiful every time you read it,
that you will keep beside your bed in order to open in the middle of the
night to read, at random, one line.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ridiculously good. It reads like poetry, and the author's mastery of speed and cadence is spectacular. I particularly liked "What If, Wendy" and "Planet B Boy." Richard Chiem's style is really unique and his way of writing without simile is awesome, as he just links words and ideas and feelings with conjunctions. It reads like being propelled along by sentient water, because there's this sense of slowness without impediment. You're moving at a very deliberate pace through the stories, but the rate is perfectly set.

Having nerdgasmed about the craft here, I have to say that the content really resonated with me, which is part of why I rated this so highly. It explores the dynamics of relationships and love, but it does so in a sincere, not hackneyed way. But it's quietly sincere, it's not like you're being showered with an overabundance of affect, it's quiet and it pays a lot of attention to details. Part of the way he can get away with not using similes (in the traditional sense, at least) is because he just picks his details so f***ing well. But I'm going back into craft again. Clearly the content and expression bleed into one another.

[Tyler Crumrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

You Private Person is full of love. Of incredible closeness and insurmountable distances. Of repetition and the unexpected. Most of all though it is full of very good stories. It tells you that you too are a private person, and that that is not a good or a bad thing, that it's just a thing. These stories grow on you, and beckon rereading whether romance enters or exits your life. I really liked this book, and I highly recommend it.

Highlights: "sociopaths," "the first time or someone like me would have a chance in a movie," "animal," "how to survive a car accident," "planet b boy"

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

these stories to me feel timeless / the literal meaning of that word, without referring to any particular time / i was talking to someone the other day about how the ability for a [reader (or just me maybe)] to relate to a piece of writing depends on the ability of the writer to navigate between two extremes, that of ambiguity & details. i feel like these stories do that: give enough of the specific details required for it to have an identity of its own, while also somehow still retaining a sense of vagueness, time/place-less, which allows you to imagine that what you are reading is happening to you / allows you to identify & empathize with the characters. this quality seems rare to me but this book has it / another thing i felt was a reason as to why i liked this book was the way the situations / imagery seemed quiet & intimate. i like quiet books, i don’t think the ‘quietness’ of a book depends solely on the things that go on in the peripheral environment, maybe more the way the narrator responds to these things / how observant they are of the things happening around them. after reading the first story (which had a sequence of smaller chapters within it) i felt like the title was good, or described the nature of the stories well, private people, who keep what they are thinking/feeling to themselves. i value that a lot i think. also thought about something i said to another person the other day, when he tried to explain/seemed to want to justify the reasons for his behaviour towards someone else, i said ‘no one but you and her will know what happened between the two of you.’ felt like a lot of these stories were about these quiet/private/intimate moments. like lying down together skin only, or when someone touches your hair, how you want a specific person to touch your hair, or the way the room seems to expand when the person you like most enters / these seem like the things i remember most about relationships, how completely present in that past moment i begin to feel when i try to recall it, and how what i remember are the times spent when it was just me and that one other person / then i thought about a thing that tao lin wrote about almost transparent blue, which is something i think about often now / “I think that scene is ‘touching’ to me because—by seeming to have no purpose except to non-rhetorically relate what seems, to me, like a memory—it promotes, or is evidence, to me, that a single specific experience that doesn’t cost anything, and has no effect on anyone that isn’t involved, and that doesn’t have to be known by anyone else can be ‘worth more’ to a person than years of comfort or love or accomplishment or millions of dollars or the respect and admiration of thousands. That a single person, or two people, using only themselves and each other, can easily create an intense, unrecorded, unshared memory that is more emotional, memorable, and affecting than winning the lottery or getting a masters degree or even ‘falling in love,’ maybe, seems ‘beautiful’ and exciting and affecting to me.’ / this is what i want most from books i think, and also what i feel like i try to recreate in the things i write or photograph

i guess i like how ‘real’ (or true to what ‘reality’ seems to be to me) the emotions in the book seem, not only the emotions that seem commonly written about, like desire/long-distance yearning but also things i have been thinking about, like being aware that the person you’re in a relationship with is a separate person from you & you can’t ever assume his or her thoughts / hence never can assume that how he/she feels towards you will continue for always in spite of how strong it can be at a certain point of time / reminded again that the existence of a feeling can’t be taken for granted / and then, how that makes you feel

the first page i folded was this:

his text message will ask a poem:

(1/2) Are you working? There is a lot you can have by
wanting. In the light I made a bargain. Envisioning
a house where I never lived, you could not
convince me we’d spent but

(2/2) one life together.

HER: Are you awake? Describe the house to me.

my fav quote: 'long distance relationships are like believing in God and do you want to believe in God again?'

[Tom Bensley · Rating 4 out of 5]

You Private Person – Richard Chiem

First of all, I need you to do something that you need to do for yourself. Read “How to Survive a Car Accident” here. Honestly, it’s one of the most captivating pieces of writing I’ve ever come across. It shows that Chiem is a master at picking the important details, because he knows the ones that put us there in the experience, with him/as him/as ourselves. In HtSaCA, the narrator is “You” and you are instructed on how to have that narrator’s experience, which is to be involved in a car accident. What’s important here are the little details: the song playing at the time of the crash, not knowing the people you’re about to spend time with, the girl you don’t want to think about, etc. I first read this story in The Yolo Pages, having never heard of Richard Chiem, but after finishing the story I knew I’d managed to stumble across a writer I was never going to forget.

Anyway so I got his book, You Private Person, soon as I had time to read it. The little bits of magic in “How to Survive…” are all here in this collection of linked short stories. The collection tells of a relationship that begins toward its end, then it ends and we see the aftermath. But the story is not straightforwardly told (because when is any relationship “straightforward”), rather, Chiem brings the reader along as he hovers in and out of moments between two people, Mary and Richard. These are little private moments, little snippets of dialogue that always feel unsure, anticipating something neither Mary nor Richard wants to instigate. There are moments when they are apart, with their friends or at work, moments where Richard leaves the apartment and we see what Mary does in his absence. That was something that really struck me about Chiem’s writing: He doesn’t stick to one point of view to tell the story and instead of feeling like an easy way to give readers more information, it seems to give us less, or at least makes things no clearer, perhaps so that we may take no sides, so we may empathise with both and understand that any relationship is two halves of a very messy and fragmented whole.

As beautiful as it is, I found the book quite hard to follow. I think because I was trying to read it as a narrative. Not necessarily as a novel but as having some progression toward a point. And I think that it does, but it’s missing all the bits in between the snapshots that, if included, would piece the whole story together. I think I was torn between reading it as a collection of isolated stories and a collection of progressing linked ones. It was kind of a frustrating feeling, but it forced me to pay closer attention to Chiem’s every word, to the experience conveyed in every sentence, to vividly create each setting in my mind, and I feel that this is what he wants us to do (as much as an author can want their reader to do anything), to get inside the story and be a part of its world, live with its characters. If we can do that, then literature comes close to allowing empathy, which I think Chiem achieves in certain moments with his debut collection. I really can't wait to see what he does next.

[kate]

fave bits:

"(1/2) are you working? there is a lot you can have by wanting. in the light i made a bargain. Envisioning a house where i never lived, you could not convince me we’d spent but
(2/2) one life together.

HER: are you awake? describe the house to me"

and

"cigarettes can levitate you and the bare weight you have very bored in your head and you have never known you were unhappy until the feeling leaves you like imagined geese from hills eager for migration. birds are so fun to imagine. this all comes from years of wanting to know how to fly standing out on balconies pretending sex is the name same as flight because surely geese can feel in the air like i do when her eyes go crossed when bedrooms soften after foreplay when language works much like animal speech. only by repeating each other’s names. i do believe all birds are named chirp.”



dreamscape / meticulously detailed / v. pretty prose

[Michael Seidlinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Love dreamy." Two words procured from You Private Person that fully encapsulate the texture of Chiem's writing.

Chiem has control of a curious literary trait - the ability to weigh in description and explicit detail as light and majestic as golden-age animated television shows; that is, to say, existential set-pieces given to fantasy and clever whimsy.

I dare say You Private Person is the acted out snapshot of the private life of a couple in love, playing along to their favorite movies and TV shows, reenacting their favorite scenes as a means of expressing purity for the words at play.

[Alexander Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

In You Private Person, Richard Chiem tickles the underbelly of language: he probes what is tender, what is exposed. His operation is soft. He moves the reader softly through these stories. He tells them patiently. There is space here. Cool, clear space. The collection is full of allusions to popular culture; Richard makes no excuses for his contexts, but he does manage to show their beauty & if not that, then their potential for it. These stories are spells and I'm smitten. May he cast them forever.

[Albert]

The writing style occasionally gets a little ponderous but the storm-bright arrivals made it worth it. Parts had me whirring with the moment conjured by well-wrought phrase and resonance across the stories.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the one about the accident. The stories should be read aloud.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of brief, troubling short stories that seem to intersect with one another. While reading them I was totally engrossed, and writing this a week later I can scarcely remember any details beyond one early and jarring confession of murder. I definitely enjoyed Chiem's writing, but perhaps this was a little too sparse to make an impact on me.

[Matt Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Love feels like a thing people eventually learn to live without like tonsils or God."

[Maria Cerase · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very deep and insightful at times, but the format is just too intellectually pretentious for my taste

[Nicole Hardina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book knows what a nuanced thing it is to be a person.

[o · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pretty. There’s something about Chiem’s writing that feels so light and ephemeral, something to be cherished and held closely. The people in his fiction feel so real and yet alien.

[charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

the last story made me sob and think about the beauty of life and my mortality i hate it here

[Kelly Novahom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book so much. Took my time with it because every line was so sensuous and lyrical.

[Philip Palios · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of short stories that can also be read as a novel. This was the first of Chiem's work I've read and believe it provides a great introduction to his literary prowess.

At first, I was disturbed and upset by the dark and obscene nature of many of the early stories in this collection. However, upon further reflection I realized that my disgust was truly a denial of the darkness that I believe exists within all of us, and certainly exists within me. I typically am the type of person who walks with my shadow behind me, fooling myself into thinking it doesn't exist at all. Reading "You Private Person" reminded me to walk with my shadow in front of me, so that I am aware of both the darkness and light that make me human.

Chiem's ability to dive into the grit of human existence is not common among most modern writing and is a much-needed challenge to society. He is truly an artist. I found "You Private Person" to consist of a unique blend of prose, poetry, memoir and fiction. Read it!

[Rivka Yeker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Chiem touches on the interpersonal thoughts of two average people living a fairly average life who confront fairly average thoughts, only they are heightened by the amount of poetry he injects into his characters. They are what I wish all people were like.