In your novella “The Server,” an American teaching English in Japan gets caught up in an old video game and discovers that his former best friend Vic is now dead, but somehow Alive and in control. Before this novella, there were very few fantasy elements in your work. What motivated you to adopt this idea? What challenges did it present you?
It was very challenging: it was way out of my comfort zone. Everything I’ve written — books, essays, audio fiction, nothing — has taken me this long to actually finish. I think most of the difficulty stems from my lack of generative experience with narratives, whose world rules allow for that kind of flexibility. It took me a while to understand (in a quantifiable way) that in the end, anything is possible on the page, which is a boon, but it becomes its own burden. anything It is possible on the page. So we did a lot of trial and error to calibrate the specifics that were best for the story.
But, for better or worse, I’m always interested in figuring out what my narrative constraints are and at least trying to push them a little bit with each project. And, thematically, it’s not too far out of my wheelhouse: questions of connection and community, and the infinite forms they can take, will always be fascinating to me, in large part because they are infinite endless. For several years, I worked on this novella while simultaneously working on my upcoming novel Family Dinner, with questions about queer friendship, family, and intimacy going back and forth between the two projects. So, in some thematic terms, they’re A-sides and B-sides to each other; but it’s still important to incorporate their respective narrative integrity into their respective universes. I’m working on something right now, and its DNA isn’t all that different from this story, but I’m not going to hold my breath considering how long this novella took me.
In either case, I want to write a narrative that oscillates between digital life and “real” life because there are differences (which is another issue I’m interested in). The challenge is to achieve this in a way that doesn’t feel didactic. Video games have always been very important to me and my concept of community. (Recently, if I’m gaming, I’m probably playing Apex Legends, Pokémon GO, or Animal Crossing – although I just finished A Year in Spring and I’m a Teenage Alien Colonist , which I love.) Fan of Mamoru Hosoda’s work, especially the way the real and digital worlds merge (Summer Wars, Belle, and Digimon: Our War Game! immediately pop up. In my head.) Also, it’s helpful to sit through books like NK Jemisin’s The City We Became and Kim Bo-Young’s The Origin of Species and Other Stories (translated by Sora Kim-Russell and Joungmin Lee Comfort) ; their unreal elements serve as a vibrant base rather than simply adding detail. It was a stroke of luck for me that I didn’t read Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow by Gabriel Zevin until I got pretty deep into the novella – that book was so shocking that if I If I start writing “Server”, I will give up if it is too late.
Ultimately, though, once the novella’s focus solidified and I spent more time with each character, the labor of finishing the draft became more literal than metaphorical. I am willing to do so. And, as usual, the music also helped: I wrote the first and final drafts in Osaka, listening to a lot of Tendre. Onthedal’s “Lobster,” Tina Turner’s “Let’s Stay Together” and Paella’s “Weight” are also on regular rotation. There was a song called “About Love” that I kept playing off the menu during the last few weeks of editing.
The narrator works at a preparatory school in Osaka, where students are at risk of not being admitted if they fail their end-of-year exams. This is a last chance situation. In a sense, the narrator’s contact with Vic also represents the last chance in a video game. What’s the parallel here?
I’ve always been interested in the different forms a narrative clock can take: given the length of the project, it’s important to have clear organizing principles for the reader, especially as the novella delves deeper into its more fantastical elements (the game’s world) . The prospect of exams, and the deadlines that come with them, is something you can legitimately focus on: whatever happens in the narrative, a big part of what’s at stake remains clear. The same is probably true of the narrator’s and Vic’s explorations in the game—they’re looking for something, and presumably they’ll find it by the end of the narrative. Unless they don’t. Either way, these structures bookmark the narrative, which creates a lot of plasticity for questions posed in the middle.
But as far as last chance goes – it’s just an illusion, right? Although this is an effective measure, its consequences are very serious. Among them are the whims of capitalism. Opportunity ebbs and flows (until it finally goes away, like we all do), but the end is never really the end until it’s over. How that “end” looks depends a lot on how close you are to wealth, whiteness, ability, patriarchy, or any other privilege, depending on your geography. I think what interests me most about these paradigms in my fiction is the way individuals find and form communities as they encounter the specter of seemingly earth-shattering transition points within their preexisting structures (or paradigms) The way.they used to be Tell accept).
In either case, for both narrative lines, their conclusions depend on the characters realizing that there is a life beyond the ending they are told.This journey is about figuring out how to form structures and support systems and (in the narrator’s case) find the family that really makes them feel good
The narrator enters into a casual—and then more serious—relationship with a Japanese man named Ren, who has a young son, Kota. Jen is not only the romantic interest here, but also the interest here. He and Kota were an opportunity to do some serious research on food. I think you are one of the greatest food fiction writers of our time. Why do you pay so much attention to this subject? Which other fiction writers do you admire about their encounters with food?
It’s funny – I’m still a bit resistant to being called a food writer (although apparently that’s been around for a minute now). But more than the meals themselves (which are great and fun to write about), I’m more interested in questions around pleasure, desire, labor, debt, need, and how people come together (or don’t). , literally and metaphorically). In these ways, sex is particularly useful as a narrative device, and I stumbled upon food as a basis for initiating similar conversations and questions in the context of my interests.
