What Writers Can Take Away From the Bible
By Heart is a series in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature. See entries from Colum McCann, George Saunders, Emma Donoghue, Michael Chabon, and more.
For Min Jin Lee, the author of Pachinko, writing a novel is a nearly god-like act of creation, a way to preside over a small universe that authors fashion in the image of their beliefs. In a conversation for this series, she explained why her commitment to third-person “omniscient” narration is not just an aesthetic choice, but also an ethical one: That mode’s flexibility lets her build a functioning, self-contained world, one that’s governed by an overarching moral physics.
But if omniscient narration allows Lee to play god, the question is what kind of god to be. For inspiration, she looks to the biblical story of Joseph, a tale that’s helped to shape the way she thinks about good and evil. She explained how the story instilled her with a radical belief that supercharges her fiction: If suffering and injustice can be recast as opportunities for empathy and forgiveness, even life’s worst events can feel like divine fate.
dramatizes this idea starting in a Korean fishing town, early in the 20th century, with a cast of characters rendered with startling humanity. As a shows how momentous acts of kindness and cruelty shape lives through subsequent generations.
