Christal
Cooper 1,807 Words
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LEONARD
CHANG’s TRIPLINES
“The Seed of Definement”
This is the seed that
plants itself in Lenny’s mind, and California will be his destination years
later, where he will live near the beach, and where he will find the memories
of this time resurfacing during his fortieth year, and feel compelled to write
this book. TRIPLINES Page 221.
In 2008, when literary novelist Leonard
Chang turned 40, he already had five novels under his belt, been teaching at
Antioch University’s Fiction Creative Writing Program, and yet he felt burnt
out on writing.
“I'd been
keeping a very regular routine of waking up at dawn and working on my novels
every day, seven days a week, since I was a college student. So, we're talking
about over twenty years of constant writing. I was finishing up a new novel, CROSSINGS (http://www.amazon.com/Crossings-Leonard-Chang/dp/0930773926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403724046&sr=8-1&keywords=crossings+by+leonard+chang), and about to start a new one (I wasn't even going to take
a day off from one novel to the next). And I got very, very tired. Then around
this time a couple friends died -- one was in a freak skiing accident; the
other committed suicide. Something like this of course forces a reassessment of
a life thus lived, and I asked myself if I could write only one more book, what
book would it be? That's how TRIPLINES (http://www.amazon.com/Triplines-Leonard-Chang/dp/1936364093/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403724111&sr=8-1&keywords=TRIPLINES) was born.”
TRIPLINES, published by Black Heron Press (http://www.blackheronpress.com) is Chang’s most
autobiographical novel to date; but Chang insists it is still a fiction novel.
“It's a
novel, so it's fiction. However, it's based on fact and actual incidences,
so at the heart there's a truthfulness that I stuck to -- however I wanted to fictionalize
some aspects. As to which, I'll leave that to the readers' imaginations.”
The main character of TRIPLINES
is Korean-American eleven-year-old Lenny who lives with his father Yul,
mother Umee Chnag Pepe, older half-brother Ed, 17, and younger sister, Mira, 7. The family is terrorized by their father, a
South Korean Navy veteran, whose either making incompetent mistakes on the job,
drinking to excess, or beating the family, the mother his favorite punching bag. Lenny’s mother and father, both migrated to
the United States from Korea, move the family from New York City to a Long Island
suburb called Merrick, not far from where his mother owns a failing candy
store.
The family’s mood changes into a sad but
temporary calm when they learn Umee has to have surgery to remove a benign
tumor. Umee’s mother travels from South Korea
to help care for the children while Umee recovers. The family is thrown into violent chaos when
Yul kicks Umee’s mother out of the house, Umee closes the store due to bad
business, Yul loses his job, and Yul beats Umee severely. Soon, Umee reaches the point of no return . .
During all of this violence, chaos, and
sadness Lenny shows his cleverness, his talent, and his imagination by creating
hiding places to escape his violent reality:
the Merrick railroad station that rests on a high concrete platform; the
big maple tree in his yard; the Merrick Library; books; television shows like
The Brady Bunch; martial arts magazines; and the school’s crows. He also seeks
escape from his isolation by calling collect on phone numbers of individuals he
doesn’t even know, and in the process, meets a friend he will never meet, but
only hear.
Then Lenny meets Sal, the marijuana
grower and dealer, and the two develop a business relationship and a
friendship. The isolated Lenny is no
longer isolated and finds acceptance, and in the process learns a trade,
illegal though it may be, that leads him down the path of finding independence
and courage.
It is obvious that there are two
Lenny’s in TRIPLINES: the eleven
year old and the 40 year old man looking back at his life, and the effect his
father’s abuse had on him as a child and has on him now as an adult.
Chang wrote the first draft when he was
40, but then put it to the side when he moved from San Francisco to Los Angels
to write for television. Soon, he was
immersed in his television writing that he didn’t get back to TRIPLINES until two years later and he’s been
working on it off and on ever since.
Even though Chang was 40 before he wrote the novel, the seed of the
novel was first written when he was 18 years old.
“There's a scene in the
novel that I first wrote as a short story when I was eighteen years old,
living in Kingston, Jamaica, working for the Peace Corps. It was that story
that unlocked something for me, and what got me writing regularly.”
In
TRIPLINES
the 40-year-old Lenny has a memory of himself, not as an eleven year
old, but as a young man, and this memory makes the 40-year-old Lenny smile.
Year later, when he will
look back on this pivotal period in his life he sees that it helped define
him; he became independent, and he
discovered a sense of his self that could only emerge from solitude. TRIPLINES page 229
To be a true human being and a authentic writer, a person
must evolve and Chang, now 46, has evolved and now has different elements that
define him.
“I believe
in the redemptive and cathartic power of Art; in the search for connections
with those around me and around the world; in the pursuit of knowledge and
wisdom; and I believe we have to make the most of our brief time on this Earth.
Specifically some of the things I learned when I was a kid during that time is
that we are agents of our own change. Nothing is set in stone -- not who or
what we are; not where we are; not how we want to live -- and it's upon us to
make those changes when we need them.”
The eleven-year-old Lenny sneaks into
the Presbyterian Church, climbs and sits up on the bell tower, and experiences
a moment of peace, happiness, and centeredness.
The 40-year-old adult Lenny
informs the reader that Lenny will be 36 before he experiences that moment of
renewal again.
It
will be almost twenty-five years until he can find again that one moment of
peace, when he will be rock climbing in the Sierras, and one morning he will
scale a huge boulder at sunrise, sharing the top with a lizard, watching the
sun warm the mountains. TRIPLINES
page 230
It is not known what parts of TRIPLINES
are fictional and what parts are autobiographical – Chang would like to leave
that a mystery. We do not know if the
elven year old Lenny actually climbed the bell tower of the Presbyterian Church
and had that moment of peace; but we do know that years later, Lenny rock
climbs in the Sierras and experiences peace with a lizard. . . .
“We camped
out near the Buttermilks, and I woke up before dawn (as is my usual sleep
pattern), and didn't want to bother anyone, so I went for a hike and found a
huge boulder that looked easy to climb. I went to the top, and had a beautiful
view of the Sierras, of the desert landscape beneath it. The sun began to rise,
so I sat there calmly. Then, a lizard climbed up next to me, looked at me, then
turned to the sun, warming itself. It was in many ways a "peak
experience" as described by the psychologist Maslow -- one in which I felt
intense peace and connection with everything around me. It was absolutely
quiet, and the lizard and I were watching the eternal rhythms of the Earth. I
felt a oneness with the world around me.”
Today Leonard writes for the television
hit series Justified, is creating his own television program, and is
committed to his partner Toni Ann Johnson (http://www.amazon.com/Remedy-Broken-Angel-Toni-Johnson/dp/1940503027 www.toniannjohnson.com) and credits her
with giving him the peace he’d been searching for since he was a child.
“She
was instrumental in helping me find forgiveness for my father -not for him but
for myself, for letting go of the anger because it was ultimately a destructive
emotion.”
The major players of TRIPLINES
no longer live a life of fear and abuse, but are involved in passionate
careers and dedicated to family. Ed lives in Sonoma County, California with
his family, and is a plastic surgeon. Umee is now retired from her real estate
business and lives about twenty minutes from Lenny’s Los Angeles home that he
shares with Toni Ann. Mira lives in New
York City where she works as a documentary filmmaker. Her most recent project is Nicholas Kristof’s
HALF
THE SKY, the PBS miniseries examining oppressed women around the world.
TRIPLINES is poetic prose, especially when it
describes the moment shared by Lenny and his sister Mira in that Presbyterian
Church across the street from their house, when all the parishioners are gone .
. .
He
knows, for example, even as a kid, that the last time he and Mira break into
the church, at the end of that summer, is important, somehow. He suspects this because, first, it’s
morning. Mira wants to play her viola on
stage, but when they enter the main sanctuary area and stand on the pulpit,
they’re surprised by the bright sun shining through the stained glass
windows. They had always come here in
the late afternoon or evening, so the stern-facing windows have never been
illuminated. But now, this morning, the
pews are brilliant with greens and blues, and the shafts of dusty sunlight beam
down onto the worn red carpeting.
Mira
and Lenny stand there for a moment, awed, registering the beauty. Mira then pulls out her viola, tunes it, and
begins playing scales. She sits on the
dais leading up to the pulpit, and warms up her fingers. Lenny sits in the front pew and listens while
staring up at the stained glass images of circles and suns and glowing crosses
highlighted with rays of light. Mira
then plays what Lenny later learns is a simplified version of a Bach sonata,
and although she’s tentative at first, the notes squeaky, she soon repeats it
with more confidence, and Lenny sits back, feeling that this moment is special. He knows that the end of this summer marks
the end of a tumultuous time in their family.
He knows that a new school, new friends, the beginning of a new life,
await all of them. And when he watches
his sister playing a sonata in the brilliant sunlight, her face beaming with
delight, and he stares up at the stained glass windows colorful and radiant, he
knows he has to remember this moment, remember this image, because it makes him
truly and deeply happy. TRIPLINES
pages 232-233
Photo
Description and Copyright Information
*All
images have been granted copyright privilege by Leonard Chang unless otherwise
noted.
Photo
1
Leonard
Chang.
Photo
2
Jacket
cover of Crossings
Photo
3
Jacket
cover of Triplines
Photo
4
A
pull-apart on the Long island Railroad Babylon Branch being repaired bvy using
flaming rope to expand the rail back to a point whre it can be joined together with
in 2003 elevated portion.
CCA-SA
3.0
Photo
5
Painting
titled “Child In The Tree”
Attributed
to Renee Sheridan
Copyright
granted by Christal Rice Cooper
Photo
6
Title
Card of The Brady Bunch Show
Fair
Use Under The United States Copyright Law
Photo
7
Jacket
cover of First Black Belt Magazine
April
of 1961
Fair
Use Under the United States Copyright Law
Photo
8
Painting
of “Crow on a branch Galerie Janette Ostier, Paris”
Attributed
to Maruyama Kyo (1733-1795)
Public
Domain
Photo
9
Image
of a payphone.
Public Domain
Public Domain
Photo
10
Leonard
Chang at his high school graduation.
Photo
11
Full
jacket cover of Triplines.
Photo
12
Leonard
Chang rock climbing
Photo
14
Leonard
Chang rock climbing.
Photo
15
“Justified” film clip
Photo
16
Toni
Ann Johnson and Leonard Chang at the “Justified” party.
Photo
17
Leonard Chang at his
previous home in northern California
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