The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: 'Pachinko' (Rerun)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Book Review - "The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: 'Pachinko' (Rerun)"

Episode Information:

• Title: The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: 'Pachinko' (Rerun)
• Host: Gilbert Cruz, Editor of The New York Times Book Review
• Guest: Min Jin Lee, Author of Pachinko
• Release Date: August 15, 2025

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Introduction

In this rerun episode of The Book Review, host Gilbert Cruz engages in an in-depth conversation with Min Jin Lee, the acclaimed author of Pachinko. The discussion delves into the novel's themes, Lee's personal journey as a writer, and the broader literary significance of Pachinko as one of the top 100 books of the 21st century.

The Genesis of Pachinko

Min Jin Lee reveals that the inspiration for Pachinko struck her at the age of 19 when she learned about the Korean diaspora in Japan. She began working on the novel in 1996 but initially struggled with her first draft, which she deemed "good garbage" (02:24). Originally titled Motherland, the early version focused solely on the character Solomon, a second or third-generation immigrant whose life lacked the depth and turmoil necessary to engage readers.

Quote:

"Solomon is essentially kind of like a second third generation immigrant. Without much difficulty in his life. Things are pretty smooth sailing. So his problems are very 21st century, 20th century problems." — Min Jin Lee (03:01)

Realizing that the first-generation Korean experience in Japan was far richer and more fraught with challenges, Lee restructured the novel to center around Sunja, infusing the story with emotional and historical complexity.

Publication Challenges and Triumphs

Upon releasing Pachinko in February 2017, Lee faced significant personal and professional hurdles. Financial instability, lack of health insurance, and the sudden departure of her editor compounded the difficulties of launching her second novel (03:51). Initial reviews from major publications like The New York Times and USA Today were positive, but broader recognition was slow to materialize.

Quote:

"I was really scared because nobody was reading it... it was a very strange story where every year more people would read the book." — Min Jin Lee (04:24)

It wasn't until later in the year, as Pachinko gained traction through word-of-mouth and accumulating accolades—such as being a National Book Award finalist and making it onto top 10 lists—that the novel achieved widespread acclaim. This delayed success was likened to an Oscar movie that gains momentum towards year's end despite a lackluster initial reception.

Writing Process and Personal Growth

Transitioning from a career in law to writing, Lee discusses the immense personal sacrifices and challenges she faced. Quitting a high-stress legal career without an established path in literature left her vulnerable, both financially and professionally.

Quote:

"I just blurted out, I can't do this anymore. And then I quit, which is not smart." — Min Jin Lee (13:17)

To hone her craft, Lee immersed herself in writing classes and workshops, studying under renowned authors such as Jhumpa Lahiri and Joyce Johnson. This rigorous training, combined with relentless drafting and rewriting, enabled her to develop the nuanced storytelling evident in Pachinko.

Themes in Pachinko

At its core, Pachinko is a social novel that explores themes of work, identity, diaspora, and resilience. Lee emphasizes the importance of work not only as a means of survival but also as a source of community and self-definition. Through characters like Yosef and Sunja, the novel examines the exploitation and inequity inherent in labor systems, highlighting the personal and societal struggles faced by immigrants in Japan.

Quote:

"Work is a good thing. And yet because of exploitation and because of inequity, because of human greed, wherever you are, whatever system that you work in, people are also destroyed from work." — Min Jin Lee (24:30)

Lee also discusses how Pachinko serves as a commentary on contemporary issues of displacement and diaspora, drawing parallels between historical events and ongoing global migrations.

The Role of Religion and Narrative Structure

Lee shares her unique practice of reading the King James Bible daily, inspired by Willa Cather. This regimen influenced her narrative style, particularly her use of omniscient narration—a technique reminiscent of classical literature, allowing for a comprehensive and authoritative storytelling approach.

Quote:

"I know what's going to happen if there's a conflict, I think. And this is what I want to say. It's about stepping into that space of God." — Min Jin Lee (30:02)

This method provides a grand scope to the narrative, enabling Lee to weave intricate family sagas against the backdrop of historical and political upheavals.

Future Projects and Writing Philosophy

When asked about her upcoming work, Lee mentions American Hagwon, the next installment in her planned Diaspora trilogy. Her disciplined approach to writing involves drafting and redrafting, ensuring each iteration is as refined and purposeful as possible.

Quote:

"I throw out the first draft and I'll just start all over again." — Min Jin Lee (31:30)

Lee emphasizes the importance of emotional authenticity and purposeful storytelling, advocating for novels that resonate with readers on both intellectual and emotional levels.

Literary Influences and Recommendations

Min Jin Lee expresses her admiration for George Eliot's Middlemarch, praising it as "the best English language novel, period, without question." She highlights Eliot's profound understanding of human psychology, social dynamics, and moral complexity as key factors that make Middlemarch an exemplary social novel.

Quote:

"George Eliot is probably the smartest girl in the room ever, as a novelist... Middlemarch is the great social novel." — Min Jin Lee (33:11)

Conclusion

This episode offers a comprehensive look into Min Jin Lee's journey as an author, the challenges she overcame in bringing Pachinko to fruition, and the profound themes that make the novel a standout work in contemporary literature. Lee's insights into the craft of writing, the significance of social novels, and her literary influences provide valuable perspectives for both aspiring writers and avid readers.

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Notable Quotes:

1. Min Jin Lee (03:01): "Solomon is essentially kind of like a second third generation immigrant. Without much difficulty in his life. Things are pretty smooth sailing. So his problems are very 21st century, 20th century problems."

2. Min Jin Lee (04:24): "I was really scared because nobody was reading it... it was a very strange story where every year more people would read the book."

3. Min Jin Lee (13:17): "I just blurted out, I can't do this anymore. And then I quit, which is not smart."

4. Min Jin Lee (24:30): "Work is a good thing. And yet because of exploitation and because of inequity, because of human greed, wherever you are, whatever system that you work in, people are also destroyed from work."

5. Min Jin Lee (30:02): "I know what's going to happen if there's a conflict, I think. And this is what I want to say. It's about stepping into that space of God."

6. Min Jin Lee (31:30): "I throw out the first draft and I'll just start all over again."

7. Min Jin Lee (33:11): "George Eliot is probably the smartest girl in the room ever, as a novelist... Middlemarch is the great social novel."

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Note: Advertisements and non-content segments have been deliberately excluded to focus solely on the substantive discussion between Gilbert Cruz and Min Jin Lee.

Transcript

[Min Jin Lee]

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[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review and this is the Book Review Podcast. It is the dog days of August and the show is taking this week off to prepare for a full and wonderful slate of fall episodes. We didn't want to leave you empty eared, however, so here is a wonderful episode from last summer that was part of our 100 Best Books of the 21st Century project. It's me and the author Min Jin Lee talking about her novel Pachinko. I hope you enjoy it. Min, thank you for being here.

[Min Jin Lee]

Oh Gilbert, it's so fun to be here now.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Min Pachinko is a sweeping novel about several generations of Koreans who through various circumstances find themselves living in Japan, first during the Pre World War II moment when Korea was still a Japanese colony, and then in the post World War II moment when Korea was split in two, and then for many decades after. It starts in 1910, it ends in 1989. I'm curious, what time period did the book actually start in your head the first time you started writing this, when you really dug into Pachinko? What year were the characters actually in?

[Min Jin Lee]

This is so embarrassing. It's embarrassing because I got the idea for the book where I learned about the Koreans in Japan when I was 19 years old. So that means that's 1989. I started working on the book itself in 1996 and then I wrote a whole draft and it was good garbage and so I abandoned it and I started other things.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So that's 1989. Big year for you. Big year for Taylor Swift. So that's when you started writing it. But what year were the characters? Was it always set in 1910? Did it always begin in 1910?

[Min Jin Lee]

No, it actually was going to be in the 70s and 80s and 90s. So my initial draft called Motherland, there was no Sunja. It was only Solomon. He was the main character and he's really not that interesting. And which kind of explains why that book was garbage.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Why was Sunja more interesting character? Why did she end up being a more interesting character?

[Min Jin Lee]

Oh, because I moved to Japan. I moved to Japan in 2007, and this is after my first book had just come out. And I thought, you know, maybe I'm going to live in Japan. I might as well take a look at the book. And then I realized why it was so boring. And it's because the main character was so boring. And Solomon is essentially kind of like a second third generation immigrant. Without much difficulty in his life. Things are pretty smooth sailing. So his problems are very 21st century, 20th century problems. And I started interviewing so many Koreans in Japan and I realized, oh, it's that first generation. They're really interesting. So I created Sanja.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You put the book out. This was your second novel after Free Food for Millionaires. What do you remember from that time?

[Min Jin Lee]

Well, this is kind of awkward, but on 2017, on the day that my book came out, something really bad happened to us financially. So we lost health insurance and nobody knew because I couldn't talk about it. And then also I didn't have an editor because my editor had left. So the book came out and it got a nice review from the New York Times and USA Today. And then a few months later, San Francisco Chronicle. And then I got really scared because nobody was reading it. Anytime somebody would say, oh, would you come to a book club? I would get on the subway and go and talk about the book. And then things really changed at the National Book Awards because it became a finalist and then it got to the top 10 list for the New York Times in, I guess, November, December. Right. And then it hit the list in the New York Times. So it came out in February, but really nothing happened until November, December, which is, I think, kind of unusual for a book. And I also didn't get reviewed, so if you go back, I didn't get reviewed nationally or. So it was this really weird thing where people read the book and then told other people to read the book. So it had, I think somebody called it Pass Along. It had this sort of pass along thing. And then it hit all these top 10 lists of the year at the end of the year around the world. And things started to change. But it was like a very strange thing where I was so scared that I would fail again and things would take a really long time. But it ended up being this very strange story where every year more people would read the book and then it started to sell more rights around the world, but it didn't happen right away.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. So you put the book out in February and until the end of the year didn't get that many reviews. People weren't reading it. Maybe it's sort of like the Oscar movie that comes out at the beginning of the year and then you think everyone has forgotten about it and then actually comes back in sort of this wave at year's end for all these awards. That must have been a not great feeling because as you say, you had worked on this for such a long time. You really have talked over the years on how long it took you to write pachinko. So before I ask you about that writing process, what were those months like between March and September when you were maybe thinking to yourself, my editor is gone. The advocate for my book doesn't work at the publisher anymore. I've only gotten a couple of reviews. Geez, was this worth it?

[Min Jin Lee]

I was really scared. And then also I needed a job because we didn't have health insurance, so. And I don't have. I'm not an English major and I don't have a terminal degree. I don't have an mfa so I couldn't get a job. And then I had no teaching experience because I was mostly a stay at home mother and worked and I took a lot of classes at places like the 92nd Street Y and the Asian American Writers Workshop, these very inexpensive type places. So I didn't have any mentors. So all of this was kind of. It was just really humiliating because I was 48 years old, I think, or 49, and I remember trying to figure out how would I get employment and how would I sell books. And then later on I realized, and we talked about it with my publisher, my publisher is very supportive that the COVID wasn't working because although it was so beautiful, we had two problems. One is I had a name that sounds foreign, it's a Korean name, I never changed it. The other problem was pachinko. Nobody knew what pachinko was. So then you had two things and apparently I had an abstract cover. This is a lot of marketing nonsense, which I had no idea of anything. I guess the COVID even though it's so beautiful, had three barriers for an outsider. An English speaking reader, an Anglophone person would enter. And I guess I wasn't thinking about it because I was so in that world of making it for such a long time that I wasn't thinking about selling the book. Does that make sense?

[Gilbert Cruz]

It does. I think that's probably something that a lot of writers experience where they don't have to think too much about the marketing or maybe they don't you know, they think, as you said, this cover is gorgeous. This is the one we should pick as opposed to, you know, what is going to move books on bookshelves? What is going to invite people into picking this book off a table, which maybe those things aren't always the same.

[Min Jin Lee]

And I know this sounds really weird and sort of corny, but I had spent so much of my life thinking about these issues, and I really wanted people to read the book. Like, I really want people to understand what's going on with Koreans and about the Koreans in Japan specifically. And I don't know why it meant so much to me, but I felt that it was such a shame that I couldn't share these ideas.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And when did you. When was the moment? So you know, it was a National Book Award finalist. Those are announced in the fall. Was that when you started to get a sense maybe all is not lost yet?

[Min Jin Lee]

Well, I felt really gratified because. And this sounds. This is going to sound really crass, but I thought, oh, maybe I can get a teaching job, that I can get health insurance because I didn't have any credits.

[Gilbert Cruz]

So you can't teach unless you have an MFA or what?

[Min Jin Lee]

I think you have to have either an MFA and one or two books that are published by mainstream press. And then you also have to have mentors who are going to kind of speak up for you. And I didn't have these sort of backers. And then I think the awards are really helpful, but I don't know if it's a guarantee because there's a lot of people who have really nice distinctions. So then that's what happened. And then it started to sell and started to move. And then I did end up getting a position the following year.

[Gilbert Cruz]

We'll be right back.

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[Min Jin Lee]

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[Gilbert Cruz]

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[Min Jin Lee]

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[Gilbert Cruz]

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[Min Jin Lee]

Clyde.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Welcome back. This is the book review podcast and I'm Gilbert Cruz. This week I'm joined by Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko, one of the 100 best books of the 21st century so far. You just told us a little bit about the sort of scary period post publication of Pachinko where you were not sure if the book was working. You had some personal circumstances that were very scary. Not necessarily the first time this happened to you because you started your career not as a writer. You went to law school and you were a practicing lawyer. You were a lawyer for a couple years before you said, screw it, I actually want to be a writer. How did that come to pass?

[Min Jin Lee]

I started practicing in 93, so I graduated in 93. I was 24 years old. So I went straight from college to law school and then I quit in 95 because I was really good at being a due diligence person. So I was a young corporate lawyer and they would give me these boxes of documents to review and I would read them all and I would make little reports and hand them to my partner and they would keep putting me on new deals and I would never sleep. So at one point I billed 300 hours, which is a lot of hours that you're just never home.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Is that a monthly? In a month.

[Min Jin Lee]

In a month? In one month. Which means that you're really in the office. Almost 350 hours. Okay, so there wasn't a day where I wasn't in the office and one day I finished something and a partner gave me more work and I just blurted out, I can't do this anymore. And then I quit, which is not smart. And then I figured we had $15,000 saved in our savings account. So I thought for sure that I would be able to write a book right away in 1995 and then sell it and I'd be able to replace my income of $83,000. And that just did not happen to me. It happened to other people, not me.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What was that like? How did you support yourself during the time between when you said, I can't do this anymore and then you actually published your first book?

[Min Jin Lee]

Well, I made more money than my husband at the time, but we had a little bit of savings. Chris had health insurance, and we just really started to economize like crazy. And then gradually it was really hard. It was very, very difficult. And then somehow things got better. It got better.

[Gilbert Cruz]

But you also, during that time, needed to learn how to be a writer. You needed to actually start the writing and write the drafts and scrap the drafts and, you know, maybe learn some techniques, some skills, some practical sort of writer things that you had no way to work on when you were working 300 hours a month. How did you become a writer during that time? What did you do? How did you practice? What did you put on the page?

[Min Jin Lee]

I mean, I've read pretty much everything that you need to read. And then afterwards I took maybe 10 classes at the Y and also at other community centers and I took it at places like the Gotham Writers Workshop. But I will say this is my huge advantage of being a New Yorker, is that in New York there are so many great novelists teaching these six week classes that I studied with, get this, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lan Samantha Chang, Rana Reika Rizzuto, Wesley Gibson, Joyce Johnson. I mean, I studied with so many great writers that these were practicing writers. And I was really lucky. I was so lucky. And I think one year I got into the Swanee Writers Conference. I studied with Alice McDermott and Rick Moody for a two week class. I had opportunities to encounter great writers. And what's really nice about reading great writers who are also teachers and who are generous is that they'll tell you maybe not everything that you could learn in a degree, but they'll tell you, read this or you're going the wrong way, or you're going the right way, and then the other way I think that you could learn how to write novels is you have to write novels. You just have to write drafts over and over and over again and start different projects and look like an idiot.

[Gilbert Cruz]

For a long Time, it seems like when you started this process, you went into it with the attitude of a good student, presumably the good student that you were, which is, if I read and I take classes, I will be a great writer.

[Min Jin Lee]

Even if I don't know what I want to say.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Yeah. When did you learn what it was that you had to say? Because you can take all the classes you want, you could practice as much as you want, but if you don't actually have anything to say, then it's probably not going to resonate with people.

[Min Jin Lee]

Well, I published my book, my first book, when I was 38 years old. And by then I had been married for 16 years. I was a mother for nine. I had experienced great illness. Like, I had a very horrible illness, which I don't have anymore. And we had moved. There were so many things that we had done. I had, like, crisis in my family. There were so many things. And I think after a while, if you still stay with us with this course of I want to write something, you realize, oh, no, it's not that you want to write something, it's that you want to say something and you think that what you want to say is worth sharing. Because every book that I've ever loved, I love reading so much. It's because these authors wanted to say something and they wanted me to know and they created an experience in which they wanted me to really enjoy being with them. It wasn't about meeting the writers at all. I actually think you never have to meet a writer at all. Most of us are fairly disappointing. But then the very best works of authors, they created a space in which they were committed to having you with them. And I thought, oh, that's a different thing than wanting to write a book.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Your first book, as we referenced earlier, was Free Food for Millionaires. And then you did pachinko. What did you learn between the two? What did you learn about writing? Did you feel as if you had taken a leap between your first book to your second book in terms of style, in terms of ambition, in terms of sort of any of the tools that you have as a writer?

[Min Jin Lee]

I think that both the books share the omniscient narrator. And that is something that I was obsessed with. And I think that maybe this is a privilege of not having formal training. Is that because I turned so much 19th century classics, I wanted to write like that. I wanted to write this huge social novel. So I took on capitalism in my first book and feminism in my first book. And I'm really glad I did. And in the Second book I was going to write about this political question of homeland and racism and classism. And of course, I wasn't thinking I was writing a historical novel. And until people started to say it was a historical novel, I didn't know that that's what it was because I hadn't read historical novels as my template. I know that sounds, again, really dumb, but this is what happens when you don't have teachers or somebody else telling you what you're doing or not doing. I was sort of just figuring out by reading, reading. And I wasn't classifying so much. I was really thinking, what is it that I want to say? How are these scenes made? And the most important thing to me was I wanted to write social novels.

[Gilbert Cruz]

What is a social novel to you?

[Min Jin Lee]

I think it's when an author takes a look at what's happening to his or her or their world and really considers what it is that they want to say about it. So it looks like I'm looking backward, but I'm actually talking about today. And I'm saying, look at this, because this is what's happening today. So when I think about homeland, this is a question that's happening around the world today, in which people are being dispossessed around the world, and the numbers of people who are displaced in the globe right now is several hundred million. And it's only increasing because diaspora is becoming a permanent condition. So I thought, how do I write about diaspora? What does it mean when you have to move somewhere or you're forced to move somewhere, or you choose to move somewhere, and then does that mean that you change as an immigrant or a migrant or a refugee, or do you change other people around you? So that was an interesting thing for me to learn. And I thought, oh, I'm going to write about the Koreans in Japan, because you can't understand the Koreans in Korea without understanding the Koreans in Japan. But I'm really writing about politics.

[Gilbert Cruz]

It's so interesting to look at our list of 100 books. There's so many historical novels on there, pieces of historical fiction. And a couple of us at the Book Review were talking about this. What does it mean that there are so many of these here? And someone said something similar, which is essentially, yes, they all take place in the past, but most of these authors are trying to comment on the present. And this is just the lens that they have used.

[Min Jin Lee]

I don't think it's just about feeling a sense of immersion. I think what happens is that you create this narrative out of the chaos of our lives right now. We have so much information coming in at us nonstop. And you're not an informed person unless you're constantly paying attention to what's going on. And most of us have no control over what's going on around the world. And I think when you look back into one narrative of a certain point in time and sort of blow it up, you can make a social commentary about what's going on today.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Min One of the things that stood out to me as I read the book was a character's relationship to work as a result of their circumstance. Right. Yosef goes to Nagasaki, for example, for a job. And we know when Nagasaki is used that first time, what's gonna happen? Is he gonna die? He doesn't die, but he comes back maimed and destroyed. And as he says, he was a man who had done everything he could for his family. This had happened to him because he had gone to work just a few pages earlier in the book. Your main character says to the character Hounsou, when she doesn't want his money, I'll work until I can't work anymore, essentially, rather than take his money. Why was that such an underpinning of this novel?

[Min Jin Lee]

I grew up working class and then my parents became middle class, but they had been middle class in Korea. So I know what it's like to work. And I don't think work is a bad thing. I think work is actually a wonderful thing if you get to work and through work you can find friends, you can find community, you can feel good about who you are because you take care of yourself. So when I write these big books, I interview so many different kinds of people with different jobs. And also, especially today, people have multiple jobs in one lifetime, in multiple careers. And because I had had different careers then, I thought I wanted to know more in terms of work. I also wanted to talk about how when Sunja actually is able to find employment because women weren't always allowed to work in Korea, especially middle class women, working class women always had to work no matter what, no matter where. And I think my commentary about it is found in those dramatic scenes in which you're really trying to determine who you are. And that self definition and the self determination is so important to a kind of individuation and also self actualization. So I want to say that work is a good thing. And yet because of exploitation and because of inequity, because of human greed, wherever you are, whatever system that you work in, people are also destroyed from work. And then in the case of Yosep I really want to talk about how in history and in politics, men have been humiliated by two things. One is you have to work to take care of your family, but then they don't give you work and you have to walk around feeling like a failure in your own little unit of family with the persons who love you and who you love. And then also in society in which other men look down at you. And that level of humiliation is so painful. So when I talked to all the people that I interviewed, this kept on coming up over and over again. Why did men have to work in pachinko? A very low class, very looked down upon industry, even today. And it's because they were trying to take care of their families. And I thought it's so wrong to say someone shouldn't do that kind of work when they don't have a choice.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You have referenced several times in this interview all of the people that you interviewed and that you talked to. And in your interviews over the years about pachinko, you've also talked about all the research that you did so much research and that you did so much research that in an early version of pachinko you wrote a version that sort of felt possibly devoid of emotion or the animating life that makes this book what it is today. With all this research, when do you let pure imagination take over? Like, when is it time to put all the files down and just let them live in your head?

[Min Jin Lee]

Oh, well, the research part really helps me to get the feeling right. So it does two things. One is it addresses my insecurity. Can I write about something that I haven't lived? So that's important to me because I need to feel a sense of authorial confidence. It's not an accident that there aren't that many women of color writing novels like this. Because you have to really have kind of audacity to say, I'm going to write a social novel. I mean, that's not like when I was growing up, people didn't say, minja, when you grow up, I think you should write social novels. So I think that in order for me to write one, and I think I got the idea actually from a Tom Wolfe essay that when I read in college, he wrote this very famous essay in the at the Atlantic a long, long, long time ago about what is it called? Like the 10,000 legged beast or something, and how he was sort of chastising other novelists. I wasn't a novelist and I was just a reader and saying that other novelists weren't taking on the problems of the world. And I remember reading that going like, oh, that's so interesting. All the novelists that I really do love do take those problems on these old books that I read. So I thought, I know I'm going to try to do that one day. So the research part is very important. But the feeling. If novels don't have feelings, nobody wants to read it. Absolutely nobody and nobody should read them. I don't want to read novels that don't have feelings. But in order for me to have those feelings, at least for me, I had to become an older person. I just had to go through a lot of this stuff. I had to go through betrayal, heartbreak, poverty, humiliation, a sense of I don't have control over my life and my agency. All those things I had to sort of go through. And then I was able to say, wow, it doesn't just suck. It's not just horrible. Somehow I have to go through this, and somehow I have gone through it. And I think that sense of purpose, that sense of emotion, I had to grow into it.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I'm curious about the role of religion in this book. You again. In many interviews, you talk about how you did or still read the Bible every day for inspiration. And I'm curious how religion, or your opinions on it, shaped the universe that you created in this book, either in terms of the morality of the characters or even just the language. The Bible is not necessarily the most stylishly written book, but there are things to glean from it, both in terms of how we live our lives and also how we think about writing and telling stories.

[Min Jin Lee]

So the Bible thing is very strange. So when I first quit being an attorney, I read because I wanted to write social novels. I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times every day. I read those papers, and I would start writing, but it wasn't going very well. And then I read that Willa Cather read one chapter of the Bible every day. And I don't know if she was a Christian. I don't know what her faith was, But I thought, oh, the King James Bible. That makes a lot of sense to me because it has that sort of old English sort of prose. And Willa Cather's another author. Her style is so clean. Even now. She really ages very well. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna try to do that. So I started doing it because of Willa Cather, and now I do it, and it's really great because there's a kind sense of Scope. I think the scope of the. The Bible is just kind of breathtaking. And also I learned things that I would never think about, like war. I don't normally think about taking territories. I don't think about idolatry all the time. So I think that the Bible is a tremendous work in order to understand the Western literature and its canon. So I have found it very useful.

[Gilbert Cruz]

There is some of these, again, not all of them. If you're looking at the whole Bible, there is a rhythm to some of these books. And there is in terms of the scope of the storytelling, as you say, also the omniscience. Tell me a little bit more about that.

[Min Jin Lee]

For me, it's really about the omniscience. I really like this idea that as the author, I know the beginning and the middle and the end. I know what you're thinking and I know what I'm thinking. I know what's going to happen if there's a conflict, I think. And this is what I want to say. It's about stepping into that space of God. I think we're very, very uncomfortable with stepping into the space of God. And I think that is what the Bible does. It actually shows you there's a space of God. There is actually a God in the Bible. And I've heard literary critics talk about how so many authors don't do omniscient narration anymore. They only do third person or first person, third person limited, which is basically a cousin of first person. And it's because people don't believe in God anymore. And that makes sense to me. I was like, yeah, because you're only saying, I could only know what I know or he could only know what he knows. How in the world would he know what other people are thinking?

[Gilbert Cruz]

But I thought, I'm not an author. It seems very hard. I thought one of the joys of being an author is that you are a God, essentially. You are the storyteller. You create, you destroy, you make the circumstances in which your characters in your story live. I thought that's what it was to be an author.

[Min Jin Lee]

I think that's what it is to be an author who writes in omniscience. And as a matter of fact, I think it is probably the hardest point of view to do.

[Gilbert Cruz]

You have talked about the third book and what you once said was going to be your Diaspora trilogy. Is it terribly rude of me to ask how it's going?

[Min Jin Lee]

Oh, no. Thank you for asking. It's very kind. I always feel like by the time I publish a book, most People have forgotten about me anyway, or given up. So thank you for. For asking, Gilbert. Very kind of you. No, it's called American Hagwon and I just finished a draft of it. So I'm working on another draft, another big draft. Because I tend to. What I do is I throw out the first draft and I'll just start all over again.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Why do you do that?

[Min Jin Lee]

I find that it's a much cleaner way to work. It's a dumb way to work because it takes longer, but I have no fat on my work by the time I do that. And I try to teach this to my students as well, is just let it go. And you could look at it, but try to ask yourself what were you really trying to say in that scene? And then say it better, like from word one. And it's very challenging.

[Gilbert Cruz]

And so are you. Are other people giving you feedback? Or it's just you looking at the draft and saying, it's time to write this again, but 7% fewer words?

[Min Jin Lee]

Yeah, it's just me. I don't have a writer's group. I used to 100 years ago, but not anymore.

[Gilbert Cruz]

One of the things that we ask authors often on this podcast and that we're definitely asking people on this series to talk about, is the book that they've read or one of the books that they've read the most in their lives. I'd love for you to talk about yours, Min.

[Min Jin Lee]

I think I've read Metalmarch. Golly, I don't even know how many times because I turn to it endlessly. So this is one of my copies.

[Gilbert Cruz]

How many copies do you have?

[Min Jin Lee]

This is my newer copy because my old copy has fallen apart, so all the pages are falling out.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That's a good sign.

[Min Jin Lee]

And then it's all marked up, so I can't get rid of it because it's all marked up and I want to know what my notes were. Why? I don't know. I'm not going to refer to it. And then I have this new one, and the reason why it's new is because obviously it's still bound. That's nice. But the print is bigger.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Oh, no.

[Min Jin Lee]

Because I need a bigger print.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Gilbert, why do you love Middlemarch?

[Min Jin Lee]

Oh, I think I'm willing to say it. It's the best English language novel, period, without question.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Do you want to defend that statement, Min?

[Min Jin Lee]

I want to defend that statement as the best.

[Gilbert Cruz]

Give me two sentences for people who haven't read it on why it's the best.

[Min Jin Lee]

I think George Eliot is Probably the smartest girl in the room ever, as a novelist. And she really was a great thinker, a great logician, a great empathizer, and also a great psychologist. She was all of those things. And she was also political. She understood so many aspects of the human mind and the way we interact with each other. And then above all, I think she has a great heart. The reason why, I think, and this is going to sound very controversial, so let me just get in trouble right now. I don't think books work unless the author has a great heart that they are cultivating. Like if their heart isn't growing, you could feel it so quickly on the page. And it's the curiosity and the intellect, but it's not just the accumulation of knowledge. It's the fact that you can really feel all the things that the author is feeling in the work. Middlemarch is the great social novel. She's writing about a community, all the different people in the community, the work that they do, how they interact with each other. And then also she's talking about the important things like love, forgiveness, failure, success, ambition. And all those things are in this incredibly long, almost 800 page book. And it's in eight books. It didn't come out as 800 pages. And I, and I really want to caution the reader, when they see it, they get freaked out. But it's eight books. And when it was initially published, it was published one at a time, one book at a time. So it was less than a hundred pages each. And people waited for it, clamored for it to come out the next volume. So if you think of it that way, and that's the way I would approach reading it. And as a matter of fact, Rebecca Mead has a wonderful essay to introduce this, this version about how to approach reading it. And I think she's completely correct. You should read it one book at a time and then kind of give yourself a gold star or something every time you finish one book. And at the very end you're gonna feel like you did something very cool. Like, I think it's a very cool thing to say.

[Gilbert Cruz]

I read Middlemarch Min. That was a master recommendation. I feel like, like the Grinch, my heart just grew several sizes listening to you tell us about why that book is so wonderful. Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko thank you so much for joining the book review podcast.

[Min Jin Lee]

Thank you, Gilbert.

[Gilbert Cruz]

That was my conversation from last summer with Min Jin Lee speaking about her fantastic novel Pachinko. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review I hope you are enjoying these last few weeks of summer.

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