The Long Tail of Boyhood Swagger

Tangled themes of violence and masculinity run like buried cables through Chang-rae Lee’s work. One of contemporary American literature’s major chroniclers of manhood, he’s been writing for three decades about assimilation, suburban alienation, and the mystery of how his characters survive loneliness and, often, shocking loss. Lee uses his careful prose to sink slowly and deeply into the minds of men who resist thinking about their feelings, even as they ruminate obsessively about their past…