Garrett Hongo was born in Volcano, Hawaiʻi, and grew up on the North Shore of Oʻahu and in Los Angeles. His most recent books are The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays and Coral Road: Poems. A regular contributor to SoundStage! Ultra, he lives in Eugene, Oregon and is a Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. His newest book The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo is published by Pantheon Books.
He will be discussing The Perfect Sound with Maxine Hong Kingston in our City Lights LIVE! virtual event series on Wednesday, February 16th, 2022!
Where are you writing to us from?
Eugene, Oregon.
What has been most important for you, personally/artistically/habitually, during the pandemic?
Writing this book, receiving responses to it, chapter-by-chapter, from a close friend whose book-in-progress I also responded to, chapter-by-chapter. His book is an emotional, personal appreciation for American poetry. Mine is largely a memoir about music as the soundtrack of my life. Each week weʻd exchange work and then talk on the phone about it. Listening to a lot of music was also very important—music of all kinds.
Which writers, artists, and others influence your work in general, and this book, specifically?
Hah! Maxine Hong Kingston! Her talk-story in books like China Men and The Woman Warrior.
But, for this book specifically, Ian Frazierʻs Great Plains, James McManusʻs Positively Fifth Street on Texas hold ’em and the World Series of Poker, Yunte Huangʻs Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, Anthony Hechtʻs The Venetian Vespers, and Joseph Brodskyʻs Watermark.
Other writers important to me are the poets Charles Wright and Derek Walcott, memoirist William Kittredge, and non-fiction writer Lawrence Wechsler.
What books are you reading right now and would you recommend any to others?
John Banvilleʻs novel Shroud, Matthew Aucoinʻs The Impossible Art: Adventures in Opera, Hanif Abdurraqibʻs A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, and Tomás Q. Morín’s Machete, a book of poems.
I’ve also just finished reading, in manuscript, Edward Hirsch’s The Heart of American Poetry, forthcoming from the Library of America in April. I endorse every one of them. And last spring I loved Chang-Rae Lee’s novel My Year Abroad.
If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?
I think in San Francisco, in North Beach. And I’d call it City Lights! My bestseller would be The Perfect Sound: A Memoir in Stereo.
