GENUINE CHARACTER

Chang-rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014 ) ("If she possessed a genius--a growing number of us think she did--it was a capacity for understanding and trusting the improvisational nature of her will. This might seem a contradictory state, and for most of us it would be. We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears. Fan was different. As we have come to realize, she was not one to hold herself back. She was someone who pursued her project as a genuine artist might, following with focus and intensity as well an an enduring innocence a goal she could not quite yet understand or see but wholly believed." Id. at 156-157.  Also, see Andrew Sean Greer, "Diving Into The Wreck," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/5/2014.).