Jinwoo Chong Elongates Reality

I first encountered Jinwoo Chong and his work in the online literary magazine, No Contact. He’d written a story about Timothée Chalamet that was playful and irreverent, all in service of dissecting a culture’s fascination with celebrity.

This feels like an apt entrée into Chong’s debut novel, The novel’s narrator is obsessed , even though its lead actor is in the midst of being cancelled. A time-traveling noir and ambitious climate novel, takes a close look at what happens when twenty-first-century egomaniacs bring their grifts to bear on the climate crisis. The result is a story that is equal parts wry and tender. Chong and I spoke over Zoom about scams, self-delusion, and the role pop culture