KARTIKA REVIEW
MUN: I never know what the last line will be until I land on it. And when I do land on it, it feels a little like the aftermath of whiskey drunk slowly. Something warm happens to my chest, which unlocks the spine and sends signals to the rest of the body. Tiny, humble sparks of joy go off in the brain. A fog of gratefulness surrounds the heart. The lungs relax. You know it’s the last line because everything inside your body tells you that it’s the last line. Now, how do you know when the book is done? That’s a different story.
ON WRITING & IDENTITY ZILKA: I have to admit that I was one of the legions of people who thought that this book might have been a memoir-disguised-as-fiction. But the MOMENT I met you in person it was very, very obvious to me how very different you are from the character of Joon. Recently you wrote a fabulous essay called “The Kernel of Truth” in Omnivoracious where you address the question about whether or not your work is autobiographical by stating, “Maybe this is what writers mean when they say, "All fiction is autobiographical." As fictioneers, we make things up: stories, people, events, cause and effects, connections— fabricating these things is our job. But nothing comes from a vacuum. Every character, every story, has its root in something that makes it unique, so that only that particular writer could have written it.” 21 What do you think is unique to your writing? What about your writing makes it something only you could have written? MUN: I’m going to be honest here and say that I feel a little goofy trying to talk about the uniqueness in my own writing. So I’ll speak in more general terms and say that, for me, character and voice are the two main elements that make one book distinct from another. As a writer, I try my best to create singular characters with a particular point of view. That was certainly my aim for Joon (as well as Knowledge and Wink and even the tertiary characters). The way Joon thinks, what she chooses to see, what she chooses to see as meaningful, her stoicism, her capacity for empathy, her ability to feel numb at a moment’s notice—all of these things and more hopefully come through in her voice and work hard to make her a fully developed character who is both unique and relatable. The more you Tom, “Nami Mun on the Kernel of Truth,”OMNIVORACIOUS, September 09, 2009, http://www.omnivoracious.com/2009/09/nami-mun-on-the-kernel-oftruth.html (last visited November 18, 2009). 21
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