Throughout my reading life, I've enjoyed many memorable meals-if only fictionally. The oysters at dinner near the beginning of Anna Karenina, the dinner Nana throws for her overflowing guests in Zola's Nana, the walk through Les Halles for breakfast in Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, and nearly every meal in Monique Truong's The Book of Salt.
Alexander CheeCharacters to me are like sonnets, they have limits that you obey which allow a force to enter in, an invention that makes the novel possible. Change the limits and the force leaves. The novel becomes impossible.
Alexander CheeThe myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.
Alexander CheeI had a naiveté that I would remember the things that I had written already, but I was getting lost in the forest of my own ideas and having to find my way out.
Alexander Chee