interview

Today’s episode is a conversation with Eugene Lim, the author of the novel Search History. Eugene’s one of our favorite writers. We talk about experimental fiction, Asian writers, Eugene’s life as a school librarian, what constitutes good and bad writing, identity questions in fiction, and we even take questions from the audience who watched this talk on Discord.

https://goodbye.substack.com/p/book-time-with-eugene-lim?utm_source=url

Thanks to Drew and Christopher. Episode link here: https://www.somanydamnbooks.com/episodes/episode-174

Thanks to John P. Loonam for this interview. Read the rest here: https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/an-interview-with-eugene-lim

“This week’s installment of Ten Questions features Eugene Lim, whose latest novel, Search History, is out today from Coffee House Press…. Often simultaneously hilarious and devastating, Search History is an adventure story that offers profound insight into grief and grieving in the contemporary era…”

>Q: What is the earliest memory that you associate with the book?
>A: I remember thinking the title would be bad for SEO. 

Read the full ten-question interview here: https://www.pw.org/content/ten_questions_for_eugene_lim

A little late posting this, but here’s an interview I did a month ago as part of Entropy’s excellent small press series.

Tell us a bit about Ellipsis Press. What are your influences, your aesthetic, your mission?
From our submission statement, we say: “We like novels that look normal but aren’t (more than those that look weird but are actually quite normal)…” And I think that that gets close to it. The novel is a flexible container. I think I’m interested in those books that transform and transcend the genre but in a way that brings the reader along—does not forget or insult the reader—and, in the best case, expands what it is possible to understand via new forms of long narrative. 

https://entropymag.org/ellipsis-press/

Read the interview here: https://www.ssense.com/en-us/editorial/culture/roadside-picnic

big thanks to Margaret Rhee and her students for this interview! They created a podcast series with author interviews, including those with myself, Mark Doten, Katie Williams, George Abraham, and Darius Kazemi.

Machine Dreams is a podcast created by the English undergraduate seminar in the Department of English at Harvard University. In our course, we’re interested in how machines, robots, and codes are represented in, and shaped by literary texts. For example, in 1920, Czech playwright Karel Capek coined the term “robot” in his play RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots) and transformed societal conceptions of mechanical beings. The contemporary literature we read as a class, similarly push the boundaries of the intersection of technology, machines, and literature. We had the fortunate opportunity to speak with invited authors on this topic of machines and literature, and engage in a collective conversation together. What follows is a dialogue that explores robots, technology, science fiction, intimacy, human conditions, and literary form. We are also interested in literature beyond the page, and the classroom. Our podcast interview is our gesture to a Machine Dream, and we hope you enjoy listening, and join our exploration together.”

Podcast homepage: http://machinedreams-podcast.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/?fbclid=IwAR032qyD6qwg7mauFo9dLgWWQF9kEiGbVxKnvQOvu6GRRkMkUbJ2TFAOt78

Podcast Soundcloud page: https://soundcloud.com/machinedreamspodcast

Link to episode: https://soundcloud.com/machinedreamspodcast/eugene-lim-dear-cyborgs

Welcome to Shhh…Secrets of the Librarians, a new series (inspired by our long-running Secrets of the Book Critics) in which bibliothecaries (yes, it’s a real word) from around the country share their inspirations, most-recommended titles, thoughts on the role of the library in contemporary society, favorite fictional librarians, and more. Each week we’ll spotlight a librarian—be they Academic, Public, School, or Special—and bring you into their wonderful world.

This week, we spoke to Queens-based writer, publisher, and librarian, Eugene Lim.

Read the rest at:
https://bookmarks.reviews/eugene-lim-on-leni-zumas-rupert-giles-and-libraries-full-of-tears/

“This episode features writer Eugene Lim reading from and discussing his short fiction, his novel Dear Cyborgs, and his novel-in-progress.

Among the many things we talk about are writing, literature, reading, books, editing, editors, libraries, librarians, experimental fiction, Jorge Luis Borges, publishing, Ellipsis Press, Third Space Theory, Renee Gladman, Miranda Mellis, Joanna Ruocco, Evelyn Hampton, Tom Whalen, dialogue, monologue, Karen An-hwei Lee, Jean Echenoz, Jonas Mekas, Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Tomine, and more.”

https://bigother.com/2019/05/02/jamming-their-transmission-episode-12-eugene-lim/

out of chicago, Lumpen Radio (105.5 FM WLPN) has a books and literature program called Eye 94. this year’s past shows have included interviews with Open Letters publisher chad post and translator charlotte mandell. their full archives are here.

i was happy — though a little nervous — to be interviewed live this past sunday by the trio of gentlemenly hosts: jeremy kitchen, mike sack, and jamie trecker. you can listen to the interview through the widget above or here.

i’m interviewed and have a box over my head in the latest issue of The Scofield, the theme of which is : Kōbō Abe & Home. a big thanks (again!) to Tobias Carroll.

In Issue 3.1, read @TobiasCarroll‘s wonderful conversation with author @lim_eugene regarding his book Dear Cyborgs. Download free now: https://t.co/4et5F1bbRT pic.twitter.com/A5nsHY89Dj

— The Scofield (@TheScofieldMag) December 6, 2017

thanks to Ross Barkan.

[and additional thanks for the illustration to Mich Yeh. you can find her work here, here, and here.]

There’s a point in Eugene Lim’s slim, haunting new novel, Dear Cyborgs, where the cyborgs finally reveal themselves. They are not, it turns out, cybernetic crime-fighters or machine killers with human hearts and laser blaster hands.

“When I say cyborgs, of course I mean us,” Lim writes, laying bare what lies at the crux of his project, an unusual book now drawing the sorts of critical accolades that should vault him into the first rank of American writers. The New Yorker and New York magazine were laudatory. Jonathan Lethem said the novel blew him away.

read the rest here: https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/08/15/how-eugene-lims-dear-cyborgs-explores-life-death-and-asian-identity/

Thanks to Paul Lai for this interview in the latest issue of the Karikta Review.

Eugene Lim is a singular voice in contemporary American literature—read one of his novels, and you’ll never forget the stories, characters, and atmosphere he evokes in his quasi-dreamlike narratives. His first novel Fog & Car (Ellipsis Press, 2008) traces the diverging and converging paths of a recently divorced couple. The man settles into a quiet life in a small town while the woman starts anew in New York City, and the people who enter their post-marriage lives are not always as disconnected from their married lives as they may seem. In his second novel, The Strangers (Black Square Press, 2013), a larger cast of characters centers around various twins separated by geographical distance as well as starkly different worlds. His third novel, Dear Cyborgs (FSG Originals, 2017), is framed by the story of childhood friends who re-encounter each other later in life, and the stories within this frame consider spies, superheroes, and very pointed commentaries on protest and art. In all three novels, Lim explores resonances, coincidences, and links between characters that bring up questions of fate or otherworldly design. He carries over names between novels as well, so even though the novels seem to concern very different characters and worlds, there is a semblance of continuity that lingers.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Lim’s novels is that the worlds he creates seem at once generic (with a timeless, universal quality) while also strongly rooted in contemporary political concerns. In his latest novel, Dear Cyborgs, for instance, the characters reference South Korean activist Kim Jin-suk who famously spent a year on top of a construction crane; Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden; the Occupy movement in the United States; and the large scale anti-war protests during the build-up to and start of the second Iraq/Gulf War. Lim also includes Asian American characters and narrators regularly in his novels though the plots and themes generally engage obliquely, maybe allusively, with more traditional narratives of racialization. Overall, at least for me as a reader, Lim’s novels also present a haunting atmosphere that treads on possible supernatural elements without tipping over into outright horror or fantasy. We are excited to talk to the author about his writing and working life in the interview that follows…

Read the interview at the Kartika Review.

Thanks to Evan Allgood for this interview.

Eugene Lim will not choose between superheroes and soliloquies. His new novel, Dear Cyborgs, shifts between quick bursts of pulpy action and long philosophical monologues. Characters kidnap, shoot, and poison one other, then weigh the merits of protest and relay brushes with gentrification. Capitalism looms over the book like one of Marvel’s Sentinels — inescapable, maybe indestructible. Low art sits next to high, smudging the hierarchy. The term “thoughtful dystopian romp” comes to mind. The year or universe is hazy, but we can make out some of our less fine hours, our targeted ads. Two worlds slide together and a third comes into focus. Is this how people write in the future?

Lim and I exchanged emails about the value of protest, the act of reading as resistance, and the death and rebirth of the novel.

Read the interview at The Millions.

“Eugene Lim joins us to discuss his novel Dear Cyborgs. The novel begins in a small Midwestern town, with two Asian American boys who become friends over their mutual love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternate/future universe, Lim tells the story of detective Frank Exit, who is trailing a cultural terrorist named Ms. Mistleto, and their chase around the world.”

Listen to the interview here: http://www.wnyc.org/story/eugene-lim/

thanks to Sara Cutaia for this interview.

the headline might overstate things slightly. it wasn’t *constant* despair at any rate…

If you’re one of the millions of people who check the news every morning, you know citizens are joining marches and calling representatives daily. In the months since the election, we’ve seen the power of civil disobedience. And though these forms of dissent aren’t yet losing steam, they raise an interesting question: can these struggles continue in the face of capitalism?

Eugene Lim’s new novel Dear Cyborgs addresses this question as his characters meditate on art, political dissent, and purpose. In nestled narratives, the novel weaves a story of friendship that calls for a provocative conversation. If the novel is smart, the author is more so: Lim shared recently shared some of his thoughts on contemporary politics, the power of art, and a thorough reading list for those of us who want more after finishing Dear Cyborgs.

Read the interview here: https://chireviewofbooks.com/2017/06/05/eugene-lim-dear-cyborgs-interview/

Over at the FSG Work in Progress blog, Donald Breckenridge and I have a chat. Read the conversation here.

Cyborgs, comic book superheroes, protesters in the streets, disenfranchised artists, first-generation immigrants struggling to assimilate—all these outsiders, outcasts, and oddballs have more in common with each other than one might think, as Eugene Lim’s novel Dear Cyborgs beautifully illustrates. Blending Hollywood chase scenes with sharp cultural critiques, hard-boiled detective pulps with subversive philosophy, Dear Cyborgs is a playful and profound meditation on resisting oppression and alienation. Donald Breckenridge is the fiction editor of The Brooklyn Rail and author of And Then, a novel about desolation, regret, and a “father’s long decline into humiliation and death.” Here the two longtime friends talk about the foreign filmmakers and authors who have inspired them to embrace their own “outsider-ness” as “helplessly American” artists and citizens.