How do you satirize Hollywood's treatment of Asian Americans in a novel? Charles

U will be here to talk about his National Book Award winner, Interior Chinatown.

Who is the last American aristocrat? David S. Brown will join us to talk about his

new biography of Henry Adams. Alexander Altar will have an update from the publishing

world. Plus, we'll talk about what we and the wider world are reading. This is

the Book of View podcast from the New York Times. It's January 8th. I'm Pamela Paul.

Charles U joins us now from Irvine, California. His latest novel is Interior

Chinatown at just one the National Book Award for fiction. Charles, thanks for

being here. Thank you, Pamela. I'm excited to be here. And let's start with that

winning the National Book Award. Your speech was so great. I just loved it

because you you seemed genuinely surprised. I don't know what was that moment

like for you. I was genuinely surprised. I was screaming, you know, as as they were

sort of reading the citation, my family and I were all sort of looking at each

other and just yelling and we didn't know what to do. And my son after a

while said, I think you need to give a speech. And so I sort of pulled myself

together, but I didn't really because then I proceeded to forget to think my

wife, my kids and my parents. So it happened when we were in the room with me.

It was just awful. You know, there's a fine tradition though, I think of leaving

like the most important people out in acceptance speeches. I hope so. I don't

know. Do you think it would have been different if it had been in real life? I

guess it might must have been nice to even if you forgot to thank them, at

least have all those people, those close family members in the room with you.

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