There seems to be a problem with writing Koreans. I just finished the second pleasure read of my research years, Super Sad True Love Story, which was not particularly super, I guess sad in a way (namely the parts that were true) and somewhat lurvely, but absolutely, positively not a porn star. I mean, a communist.

I mean, it was about a late-thirties Russian Jewish man looking for love from a physically and emotionally abused early-twenties Korean-American woman (at least about as much as The Great Gatsby was about a dirty nouveau-riche/pure old flame looking for love from a delicate fleur, only minus the unnecessary pseudo-French and written in Cerulean Satire crayon). Besides the annoying decision to narrate the story in alternating diary/e-mail/IM pattern without actually committing the effort to live by the limitations and idiosyncrasies of those formats, my main problem was that the female love interest was Korean-American. It's difficult to write Korean-American well. He does what he can, and it felt like it came from a combination of personal experience and Korean-American assistance (not really a good idea), which helped to at least make it sound authentic. The problem is that authentic Korean-American sounds like some horrific collaboration between a white (whiter?) Black Eyed Peas featuring Justin Timberlake and Michael W. Smith circa 1990 (or for Floridians, 2001), backmasking 2 Live Crew (How old am I? Why do you ask?). And, I guess Confucius. Personally, I think he should have gone with a South Asian love interest, but I suppose he should write what he knows.

Then there is the problem with writing Koreans. Here and there I've been reading Grantland, Bill Simmons and gang's sports/entertainment writing venture, and I've noticed at least one Korean-American among the mostly lackluster bunch (if I see one more post breaking down a YouTube clip or assigning a point system to the lowest common denominator without actual good writing in it, I swear). I don't like disparaging the work of a fellow brother, but I've found most of his writing to be fairly derivative, which, on that site, means that he's writing(/living) like a white man. American dream, you go. Except I'm not writing about any of them. So I looked him up. He is a Korean-American fiction writer who received an M.F.A. from Columbia, is currently living in San Francisco, made his name writing about his gambling addiction, and has written his first novel about a frustrated young writer with an M.F.A. who wanders through the plots of San Francisco. I'm not going to read this.

What I should do, especially now that I have more time, is put my six-figure debt where my mouth is and write something myself. I'm thinking maybe something about a black man studying architecture in Panama. It will give me the chance to write what I don't know, center the plot twist around a palindrome, and throw my writing at the mercy of the adoring public. My pseudonym, of course, will be Ben Caspian Dover.