Min Jin Lee

What was the most irrational thing about writing Free Food for Millionaires?

that it took 12 years.

And I wrote it in omniscient point of view, which almost no one does anymore.

It's considered passé or it was something that it's actually really difficult to do.

And at certain points,

What the modernists said in terms of literary artists that you didn't need to do it anymore because you need to be more psychological penetration of just one character and third person limited.

It was also a rejection of the idea that since God is dead, you don't have this all-knowing narrator anymore.

And I said, you know what?

I still really love...

Anna Karenina.

I still love House of Mirth.

I still love Middlemarch.

And I want to write like that.

And I think that my decision to learn how to do that craft took such a long time.

But I didn't know that that's what I was doing.

I knew that I wanted to learn how to do this thing, but I didn't realize that it would take this long.

And I didn't know that I would be so alone.

And I don't have a training program.

in the classic way.

I don't have an English major.