S9 Ep. 52 Yiyun Li on Art, Fame, History, and Music Against the Night

About this episode

Acclaimed writer Yiyun Li returns to the show to talk about her new novel, Music Against the Night, with co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell. Li explains how she first became interested in fictionalizing the lives of married musicians John Field and Adelaide Percheron and reflects on the limits, challenges, and opportunities of conducting historical research for fiction. She discusses the role grandparents play in her characters’ lives and how older mentors can shape an artist’s personal and professional growth. She also shares how she chose to structure two wide-ranging life stories within one novel, and how her characters illustrate disparities in opportunity among equally talented peers. Li considers how her characters define failure and success, and how these definitions affect John and Adelaide, neither of whom achieve fame. She reads from Music Against the Night. Yiyun Li • Music Against the Night • Encountering the Past in “Music Against the Night” | The New Yorker • Things in Nature Merely Grow • The Book of Goose • Wednesday's Child • Must I Go • Where Reasons End • Kinder Than Solitude • Gold Boy, Emerald Girl • The Vagrants • A Thousand Years of Good Pr