Name: David Yoo
Best Known For: The Choke Artist: Confessions of a Chronic Underachiever (2012), The Detention Club (2012)
Current Employment and Projects: I teach in the MFA creative writing program at Pine Manor College, and at the Gotham Writer’s Workshop. Currently I’m working on a nonfic project tentatively titled CHASING THE SHIRT, a book about my ten years desperately trying to win a measly/pointless adult co-ed intramural soccer league championship.
Favourite memoirs & essay collections: This Boy’s Life – Tobias Wolff, Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
Favourite magazines: I can’t afford to buy print magazines regularly–at this point I only allow myself this small luxury when I’m in an airport, in which case I usually buy Vanity Fair or something chunky that will a) last a while and b) make me smell like I’m going to my junior prom. I do read Deadspin and AV Club with regularity online, given that I’m an armchair athlete who has a verging-on-creepy reverence for really lame movies from the 80s.
Professional role model: Stewart O’Nan, who somehow manages to write a lasting, beautifully written novel every two years or so. When I feel overwhelmed by the seemingly un-climbable mountain in front of me, I think about how he’s already, in the same space of time, heading down the backside of it. His latest, The Odds, is that rarity: an engrossing, memorable short novel. What I’d give to be so concise…sigh.
In The Choke Artist, you admit that you “felt depressed about my crappy academic standing, yet at the same time more frustrated than ever that everyone still assumed I was an academic genius because I was Asian.” Describe how you feel about stereotyping in 140 characters or less:
I’ve never texted before + clueless re Twitter. Regarding stereotypes: surely I’m the only Asian guy who has never owned a cellphone…sigh.
One of your ambitions in high school was “to date a popular white girl (aka PWG)”. Do you use similar acronyms to describe people today?
It would be pretty lame if I did, given that I’ve long since graduated from high school. I suppose the one thing I say with regularity is this: when fouled cheaply from behind during a soccer game, I’ll mutter that the assailant is a worthless “hack,” which, if it were actually an acronym, would stand for, um…Hyper-Aggressive, Chippy Kangaroo-leather-cleated jerk?
It was refreshing to read your personal stories about body image. Is body image a theme you intend to re-visit in future books? What do you think is the greatest challenge facing young men today in terms of self-esteem?
Body image is something I’ll definitely revisit in future books. My perspective has changed a bit since my teens, as you’d imagine. When I was in high school, Arnold Schwarzaneggar (and his physique) ruled the silver screen and I was a typical boy in that I dreamed of one day also being able to similarly balance champagne glasses on the tops of my gargantuan, hairless pecs. Thankfully, today’s action heroes for the most part aren’t nearly as bulked up. But more so the reason for my changed attitude toward my body image is that I simply aged out of it. Once you hit your 30s, you suddenly become grateful as opposed to appalled that you’re thin. It’s no longer, “Crikey, I’m scrawny,” and more “Yea, I’m going to live!” Meanwhile, young men today face the same challenges they did in previous generations. There’s a line from a Graham Parker song that barely applies but I happened to just listen to it so I’m going to quote it anyway: The movie might be new but it’s the same soundtrack.
In elementary school, your principal offered you the chance to skip a grade. Do you think your life would have turned out differently if you’d taken that opportunity?
I’m too busy pre-emptively regretting the future to dawdle wondering “what if…?” about the past. That said, one reason why my grades suffered was due in large part to the fact that when I first moved to the United States from Korea I was, technically, advanced, having learned cursive and fractions already, and so in elementary school I barely paid attention to the lessons and didn’t develop any sort of work ethic in class, which hurt me once I got to the point where we started learning new things in school. Therefore, maybe I would have gotten off on the right foot starting out a grade above because it would have forced me from the get-go to pay attention in class, and as a result I would have worked harder and gotten better grades in school and ended up having a very successful career in insurance or something, to the sheer delight of my parents.
Describe a childhood memory that was not included in The Choke Artist:
One morning, after camping out in the woods overnight with a few friends en route to checking out a dead squirrel, I woke up before everyone else and sat down on a log, enjoying a rare contemplative moment alone, and when I looked up there was this frozen doe staring at me with its impossibly deep black eyes, and I felt for the first time a communion with, I don’t know what, all I know is it felt like a quiet acknowledgment from some higher power that I was going to be…okay. Alas, shortly thereafter I saw the movie Stand by Me and realized I could never write about that moment.
Your relationships are discussed at length in The Choke Artist. How have your relationships with friends and family changed since becoming a published author?
I don’t think they’ve changed because of my becoming a published author, but I do think they’ve evolved over time simply by virtue of getting older. Instead of talking about music and sports and pop culture with my friends I now spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about how my corns are killing me, etc. Okay, I’m not that old, but I do whine about how my body is breaking down much more than I did when I was too young to appreciate it.
If there was a movie adaptation of The Choke Artist, which actors would you like to be cast? What guidance would you give the producer to ensure accuracy?
When I was in high school I daydreamed about Ralph Macchio (aka The Karate Kid) playing me in a movie, which speaks to the dearth of Asian actors in Hollywood. Twenty years later, I don’t know who would play me…John Cho, I guess? Maybe Jesse Eisenberg could play me during the years when I was ambivalent about my ethnicity and desperately tried to be seen as white. My only advice to producers is that old adage about writing: make your good characters bad and your bad characters good. That is, show the warts and all of any character, because those are the only portrayals I believe. Oh, and make sure whoever plays me has, despite his otherwise skimpy frame, surprisingly strong-looking forearms…