Paul Yoon = yes please!

Sarabande put out a collection of Paul Yoon stories called Once the Shore. Though I've only read the stunning title story, I imagine the rest of the book is just as glorious. Rumpus interviewed him and I love how he closes the interview:

I recently read Don Lee’s brilliant new novel, Wrack and Ruin, and what stays with me the most from that book are these moments we’re talking about. There’s an amazing narrative force to that story but once in a while it pauses, briefly, and he reveals these surprising scenes of intimacy and tenderness. (Both of which can be a form of kindness, I think.) It gave the story breath and silence and I admire that so much. The way Terrence Malick does in his films. They stay with me, these small moments I have read about or witnessed or experienced; they last a minute, perhaps, even less, and yet you become connected to another person through that act. I mean, in the end, it’s a form of love, isn’t it?

Years ago I was on the coast of Belize and I had stumbled on my very first coconut and I had no idea how to break open the husk. I was holding a machete—that was a first, too—and practicing my swing when a neighbor, an old woman, appeared, smiling, and without a word placed the coconut on the sand between her legs, took the machete from my hands, bent her knees, and broke open the husk in seconds. Then she smiled once more and walked back to her house. I never saw her again. But I will always remember her, the shape of her body and her stance and her arm swinging.

I think that, at the bottom of it all, these small moments is what this blog tries to capture. And that I love.