6/10/2023 0 Comments Story writer![]() ![]() The following day, he'd failed to show up to work. And I left in the middle of his party to go to a different party. And we felt like our futures were in sight somewhat, you know, just the - graduation's around the corner. It was the summer between our junior and senior years, at least for most of us. SIMON: Could you bring us back to that time? One day, you and your friends realized that you hadn't heard from Ken. And I found it actually quite haunting afterwards, this idea that something that felt so beautiful and hopeful at one point in your life could all of a sudden feel almost mocking, you know, just this - this beauty no longer feels so beautiful anymore. And so, you know, hearing it just now, whenever I listen to it, I think back to these late-night drives to get donuts we would take and how all of my friends would insist on singing along to it, which I found horrifying because it's just such a perfect song on its own, and my friends are not particularly strong singers.īut, you know, after Ken's passing, you know, after the nature of our school group friendship changed, like, I really yearned for that sense of harmony again. And it's a song that I listened to a lot with my friends, Ken among them. You know, I think I prized myself in being sort of sarcastic and not expecting much from the world. It expressed this kind of yearning and hope that I secretly wanted in my own life. And, you know, initially, I was really just drawn to how perfectly symmetrical it was. Like, I just read an article about it, and I sought it out. You know, it's a song that I got into in college. HSU: Yeah, it's, you know, "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys. THE BEACH BOYS: (Singing) God only knows what I'd be. SIMON: You write about this song at length. But long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it. THE BEACH BOYS: (Singing) I may not always love you. SIMON: We're going to play a song for you now. And, you know, I think he was just really curious what made me tick, you know, why I stood the way I stood, why I was insistent on ordering the weirdest thing on the menu, why I listened to the music I listened to. You know, the first time we actually hung out - not me judging him from a distance - was when he asked me to help him buy some vintage clothes for a party his fraternity was throwing. I was a very immature person, and so I think it's more a product of him being kind of open-minded, curious and kind. SIMON: What do you think drew you to each other? Could it have been partly those differences? And so when we initially met, I didn't really think we'd be friends, let alone friends who ended up, you know, sharing a lot of sort of intimate dreams and hopes with one another. These are all things that I sort of disavowed as uncool. You know, he was really confident, a sort of conventionally handsome Japanese American dude from San Diego. And when I arrived at Berkeley in 1995, I was seeking out people who were exactly like me. You know, like, I really prized the clothes I wore and sort of my unusual taste in music. You know, I was a typical sort of '90s alternative person. What you notice first when you introduce him to us is the differences. SIMON: Hua Hsu, who is now a staff writer at The New Yorker and a teacher at Bard College, joins us from Brooklyn. For a while, you were convinced that you would one day write the saddest story ever. We cycled through legendary infatuations sure to devastate us for the rest of our lives. You're so desperate for action that you forget to remember things as they happen. It was simply a matter of finding a map that led there. You're eager for something to happen - passing time in parking lots, hands deep in your pockets, trying to figure out where to go next. HUA HSU: (Reading) At that age, time moves slow. It opens with a gorgeous evocation of young Berkeley students driving around and coming of age, with Hua Hsu alongside his best friend, Ken. Hua Hsu was awarded the Pulitzer Prize last week for his memoir "Stay True." We spoke with the author when his book came out in September. ![]()
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