--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Welcome to In Conversation from Apple News Today. I'm Duarte Giraldino. Every weekend we talk to the people behind the best stories on Apple News+. Today on In Conversation, you're going to meet E. Alex Jung. He's a features writer at New York Magazine and Vulture.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Jung recently wrote a profile of author Anthony Vyasna So. At 28, So was a burgeoning literary star. He'd just finished writing his first book. It's a collection of short stories called After Parties. But then in December of last year, So died of a drug overdose. This month, After Parties was published posthumously.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So was a first-generation Cambodian-American. He also identified as gay and was diagnosed as bipolar. For this profile, Jung spoke with So's friends, family, and his life partner. He found the people in So's life, they all seemed to remember him differently.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I think that maybe for Anthony, he was more immutable than maybe the average person. But I don't think that those versions of him were untrue. I think that they were his way of living in the world.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In an article called Infinite Self, Jung details these different versions of So. You can read and listen to it on Apple News with an Apple News Plus subscription.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In my conversation with Jung, we talked about some of the mysteries that surround So's life, his death, and his creative talents. He had so many of them.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Jung also explains how hard it was to write about the amazing skills and anticipated future of a young artist who's now dead. Walk me through his life briefly, his trajectory.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So he was born in Stockton, California, which is, it has its own unique history in Northern California, incredibly poor. But his family is fairly upwardly mobile.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So a lot of this is told to me through his sister, his older sister. And he comes from a super big extended family. His dad's side has three sisters. And so, there are 11 cousins total.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And they are very tight-knit. You know, they showed me photos of them like ducks in a row almost, right? Of like the little kids in height ascending order.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So, I think it was a really tight-knit family, essentially, that grew up together in Stockton. I think they were all like very successful in a professional sense, but he was the one who decided to become the creative, artistic one of the family, which was not something that had happened, really, you know?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And he went to Stanford, which is a big deal for anybody, but it's definitely a big deal if nobody in your family has done that before, and your parents didn't go to college and all of those things.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So, he's living this American dream, in the pride of his family, goes to Stanford, and yet he chooses to be a writer. Did they respond well to that decision? Or did they want him to do something else?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I don't think they did. I think they wanted what a lot of immigrant parents want for their kids, which is a life of stability and one where the future is secure.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think it's hard to understand what a life of, you know, fellowship applications and MFA programs looks like. And I totally understand that.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So, you know, I don't think they responded well to that, you know, when he decided to switch his major from computer science to English in Stanford.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Why did he switch from computer science to English? Computer science seems so much more secure, especially coming from Stanford.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Well, I think he hated it. So, Well, he also, he got in trouble. He got suspended for plagiarizing code in an early class at Stanford.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so I think he started to spin out around, you know, why am I doing this major that I hate? And I think that that sort of led to a kind of breakthrough, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: He told his parents he was bipolar, he told his parents he was gay, and that he hated computer science, and he wasn't going to do that anymore.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Why do you think the literary world was so excited about his work? You know, people love a new voice.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And they, especially in, I think, the literary world, were excited that he was a Cambodian-American. Sort of spoke a language that I think because of his stand-up, because he's well-versed on Twitter, he's good at a lot of these multiple languages that I think people can speak.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that that's kind of why people were really excited about him. Because, you know, I think someone put it really well that I was talking to where most Cambodian American immigrants fled from the Khmer Rouge genocide.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: The first wave of immigrants didn't really come until the 80s or so. So it would be people who are Anthony's age now who would be able to then write in English and become a part of this literary scene or Hollywood or what have you
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So I think that there are very specific historical reasons for that And then I think that he was also just a really fresh unique voice that people hadn heard before
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And he also had a background that hasn't really entered the American canon in any way. Clearly, he was really unique, you know, as a queer Cambodian writer with a tech background.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: But there must be something that appealed to a large number of people. How would you describe that?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Yeah, I mean, I think it helped that he was really funny, you know, like he tried to be a stand up for many, many years.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And then he sort of quit pursuing it so specifically, but you can still see so much joke writing in his work. In his nonfiction, sometimes he would sprinkle literal jokes that he had written in between sections of an essay or something like that.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And there's a lot of joke writing in the pieces themselves, a lot of paragraphs land on jokes. And so I think that that ability to disarm people, right, to sort of reveal who you are or say who you are or what you see while also making it funny, that's an incredible skill.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: That's a way to get people to listen, I think, and it's a way to sort of change how people think about you without the sort of prism of tragedy necessarily, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: It's not all hardship and genocide and all of these things. It's also the humor is a way of masking that, but also maybe revealing it at the same time.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that that's kind of what people gravitated towards. It wasn't just like tragedy porn that you were reading, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: It wasn't, it didn't feel like eating your vegetables in that way, right? Of like, oh, okay, I'm going to read this thing about this really hard experience and learn something and grow from it, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: He had this really incredible ability to do that while also just creating very specific worlds that you can then enter into.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that's just a trope of any good writing, right? Is that the more specific you are, the more people are able to relate to very specific feelings that you have in those spaces, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Of maybe not belonging or envisioning a different future for yourself or wanting something greater for yourself or people around you or the love that you have, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Those are all grounded in very specific things in Stockton, in the Kamae American community, all of that, right? But I think that those feelings are still very universal.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Before he died, where was his career headed? I mean, could he see the path? Was it clear?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I think he could. I think he was someone who thought in terms of paths and trajectories that were available to him.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that, you know, he wanted to go to Hollywood, he wanted to do screenwriting. Some people say that he wanted to be in front of camera, you know, which you could sort of see with the standup background too, that he wanted to be a performer in some ways.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And that writing fiction was also a way, an opportunity into that space. So yeah, I mean, I think you could very easily see a trajectory in which, you know, the book of short stories comes out, he follows it up with a novel, the novel gets adapted either into a TV show or a film, and he starts moving into Hollywood.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think the world saw it in some ways. The blurbs all happened before he died, right? So, the back of the book has, like, Mary Carr, Dana Spiata, all of these people who adored him and loved him, because they were his teachers at Syracuse, where he got his MFA.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: You could sort of see that the world was ready to kind of, like, lift him up, too. I think they were excited that he was a fresh voice to them, and he was ready for that. You know, I think he was really ready to be that person and to succeed.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I think he was very ambitious.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: How did his background as a Cambodian-American inform his style of writing? Around when Super King Sun Scores Again was published in N Plus One.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: The story is told in this first-person plural perspective. It's a we, which is kind of an interesting use of point of view in a short story.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that what struck me the most was that we voice that he used felt like an extension of how he saw his family, his upbringing, that feeling of closeness and intimacy felt to me like his childhood.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Him talking about like us in high school, I was like, oh, I could like see him and his cousins, you know, like thinking of them as a group sort of navigating this world and thinking about how to live in it.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that he was often thinking in terms of a group or a collective. His friends talk about how he would say like, oh, if I make it, I'm going to bring all of you with me. If I make it to Hollywood, you can do this, I can do this, you know?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So, I think that that to me is what strikes me the most in terms of his writing too, is a sense of closeness. It feels very warm and close to the skin.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: A lot of the blurbers will talk about how funny he is, and that's all very true, but I was always struck by how tender the work was There a real love in the fiction that felt very real and grounded in his family
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Alex in your profile of him which was beautifully written you make the point that everybody in his life seems to describe him differently almost as if each of them knew and loved a different Anthony So
--:-- E. Alex Jung: How does Anthony's family remember him? They think of him as quiet and awkward.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So you know you can imagine these huge family gatherings right like 20 people for holidays for birthdays for graduations they're super close and according to them he was the quiet one kind of tapping away on his laptop in the background or reading
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So they like to talk about it as a very woman-centric household you know the women love to talk gossip share tell people what to do and the men are kind of more taciturn, quiet, milling around in the background, grilling, something like that, you know?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that Anthony in their mind was this person who was sort of quiet and more in the background and kept to himself and was always good.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And they didn't have to worry about him. There was this feeling, I think, that they always thought that he was not one that they had to be concerned about.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Did he keep any aspects of himself hidden or separate from his family?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Yeah, I mean, I think that that was inevitable in some ways as his father's more conservative.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I think his father had trouble accepting that Anthony was gay. And so when that happens, I think you inevitably start to, you know, not necessarily hide, but maybe you don't bring that to the forefront or you don't bring that part of yourself to this space because it's not necessarily welcome with open arms or can't be talked about.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: about in the same way as your sister's husband and her relationship.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So, I think that there was a kind of compartmentalization that was happening, obviously, when he was coming out and dating men and dating his partner, Alex.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: You know, he didn't even tell them about the domestic partnership that they got a few months before he died.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: So, I think that that tells you a certain level of what is kept from parents and the family in that sense.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: You mentioned his boyfriend, then domestic partner. He plays a unique role in the final days of Anthony's life. How would you describe that?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Where was he when Anthony passed away? As far as we know, he's the only one who was with Anthony the night that he died in their apartment in San Francisco.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Can you paint a picture for me? What do we know about that night?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Yeah, I mean, that's complicated. You know, reporting this story, I think inevitably, most people would ask me, and it was a question that I always had too, was just, what happened?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: It's something you're asking right now. It's something you want to know, right? You just want to know what happened.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think it's partially this feeling that knowing how he died might reveal something more about who he was when he was living.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And it's vague. Alex is not super forthcoming about exactly what happened that night.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And he often says that he just doesn't really remember what happens.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so that clarity sort of doesn't really come until I read the police report and the coroner's report, where it sort of explicitly states that in the morning after the EMT arrived and the police arrived, Alex said that they had taken GHB together along with like a marijuana edible and stuff like that.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so the coroner's report also confirms that he died of GHB meth and MDMA overdose.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: That's a really different picture than the one that his family had of him.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Sure, yeah. And it speaks to this notion that there were different versions of Mr. So.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: How did his friends see him? What was the version of Anthony that they knew?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: It sort of feels like more of a middle because two friends in particular from Stanford were very close with Anthony and Alex in San Francisco.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: They were part of the same quarantine pod. But, you know, the way they tell it is Alex was the one that they were concerned about in terms of drugs.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: He was the one actually that they were like, oh, he might be partying too much, might be into drugs too much.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And that Anthony was the one who was more sort of concerned about his work, wanted a studio space to potentially, as his own space, to be able to focus on his writing.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: He's still like very chaotic and funny and loving and all of these things.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: As you describe him, I see you waving your arms in the air. And that's such a different version of the Anthony that you're channeling than the one when you spoke about him through his family's eyes, where you were almost still.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Is that the way he was? He was larger than life outside of his family and much more quiet and still at home?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Yeah. I mean, I think that both things can be true.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I think that he probably was a quieter more observant more internal version of himself when he was with his family
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And then I think that in the world he was kind of an extension of his family The way his friends describe him felt like his family.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Like when I met his family in Stockton, you know, they're boisterous, they're loving, they have lots of opinions, they love to eat.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: There's a sort of real communal, familial feeling to them, you know, and the way his friends describe him is exactly like that.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Like, kind of a little prescriptive, a little bossy, super loving, has an opinion about what you should do or not do or eat or not eat.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: You know, all of these things, right? Where I was like, oh, he was his family, right? Like, he embodied his family when he was with his friends in a way that he maybe didn't feel like he could when he was actually with them.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Which is this kind of, like, contradiction that I, I don't know, I get it.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Did you face any challenges writing a profile about someone who died so suddenly and just before the prime of his life? Someone you couldn't even speak to yourself?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Yeah. Yeah, this was a challenge.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: When I profile someone, I'm used to interacting with them and writing the profile around that interaction.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so this one was, I thought it was going to be more straightforward, I will say.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I think I sort of very naively stepped into this thinking that people would have a fairly coherent idea of the same person.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: But then what I sort of quickly found out when I was reporting was that people had very different ideas of who he was and the life he led and how his life related to his fiction and all of these things.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so that was a challenge because I sort of felt that splintering and fracturing immediately when I was in California and talking to different people.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that immediately after those interviews, I thought all of that could be true, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: That he could be a different person in a different space.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And that that was not necessarily untrue. It was just who he was at that time or with these people.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And I think that's true for all of us, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And we can be different people with our parents versus our lovers versus our friends versus our boss.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so that's sort of what led to the structure of the piece, which was to try to tell it as different people saw him and allow all of those pieces to exist and maybe be true, but also acknowledge that there's no way to really know.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I was impressed by the way you organized the piece into 10 sections.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And in one of these sections, you actually feature four of Anthony's tweets. Why the tweets?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I love his Twitter because to me, it demonstrates his facility at language, because Twitter is a very specific thing, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: To be quote unquote, good at Twitter. You know, you have this kind of like, slightly exaggerated, like he was good at this slightly exaggerated Gen Z slash millennial speak.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I don't know, I described his Twitter as like a very chaotic bottom Twitter, you know, like he's just very funny, you know?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And when I read his Twitter, I was like, oh, I kind of get him, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: There's a part of him that I understand that is this public-facing persona that he's created that is a construction that I understand because it fits very well within the schema of what is allowed on Twitter, right?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so, that's sort of what I mean about these worlds, right? Twitter is its own world that he was stepping into, creating content for, representing himself.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: It would be a mistake to say that his Twitter persona is him, right? But it's also definitely an extension of him.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: It is something that he was putting out into that world to be consumed by other people that I think is really interesting because it's so funny and also, like, weird.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And that's not necessarily, like what he's gonna tell his mom.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: You spent so much time with the people he loved and spent time with and so many hours thinking about him as you wrote this profile.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: After all of this, who was he in your eyes?
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I wrote all of this and it was all kind of incomplete and it would never be complete.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so I think that ultimately what I have is what I started with, which is not actual memories of him.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: You know, I never actually got to meet him.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: It's the book, After Parties.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: I think that's why so many people care so much about it too, is because it is an extension of him.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: You know, Cambodian Americans think a lot in terms of reincarnation too.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And the book is how he lives.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: That is the thing that everybody can have that is a part of him that he created and put into the world.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And it's going to be the last thing that he does.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: And so that's what I have, right, as a reader, is ultimately the book, which I think is really beautiful.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Thank you so much for being on Apple News today. E. Alex Jung, a features writer at New York Magazine. Thank you.
--:-- E. Alex Jung: Thank you.
--:-- [Theme music fades in]
