fact and fiction

If you're at all into literature, the annual New Yorker debut fiction issue is a must read. Last week it was this time of the year again, and the New Yorker website brims with good stories. I was most impressed with Sweetheart Sorrow by David Hoon Kim. I would have liked the story anyway, I guess, because it has many of the things I like in stories, lives banging into each other in a foreign country, guys and girls confused about where they come from and where they should go, and authenticity in all thoughts (except the expired student visa right at the beginning – Europeans don't need that anymore).

It's not just one good but two great stories, unconnected if you look at them from afar and yet lightly interwoven on many levels. The reader will intuitively know which of the narrative strands the writer is really passionate about but is held in gently tickling suspense up until the last paragraph.

There is baloney theoretical physics waiting to be translated from French to English on one side and a disturbed Japanese girl locked up in her dorm room on the other. The narrator should be navigating these two worlds guided by his heart but goes astray tragically.

Done reading, I was left slightly depressed, not just because of tender love that ended catastrophically but also because I could never hope to write so beautifully.

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Talking about recently published articles I cannot go without mentioning the Economist. In a radical break with a tradition that calls for the preeminence of economic and political topics, it's science that takes center stage this week. RNA made it to the cover of this venerable magazine. Go figure. The accompanying article summarizes without goofs obvious to the non-specialist the current state of RNA research and the confusion that reigns in this field that is still at its inception. Despite its merits, I would discommend bragging at next cocktail party you go to with the knowledge you gained from reading the article. Rather go to your local university library and read Nature or Science News & Views pieces to get the facts.