FOUND: ESSAY “THE FACE OF SEUNG-HUI CHO” FROM N+1 NO. 6

n+1 issue 6, Mainstream

Our final installment of Week of Founds is in memory of the Virginia Tech shootings, which occurred a year ago today. Though we already mentioned this essay–”The Face of Seung-Hui Cho” by Wesley Yang, published in n+1 issue 6–in an earlier Carnival post, it seems an appropriate one to revisit.

Like the Columbine shootings or collapsing buildings on 9/11, such a loss of life as occurred in the Virginia Tech shooting makes any mention of it fail horribly in comparison to the actual event; writing often falls mute in the face of such tragedy. In the vein of journalism established by Capote or Mailer, Yang attempts to understand the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho’s state of mind–but this is far from the “point” of the piece. Instead, the essay is a moving mixture of autobiography and social criticism, resulting in one of the most painful and lyrical pieces published recently in a literary magazine. Similar to the essays of Montaigne, Yang’s subject is as much himself as it is the world. Here is the essay’s disturbing and difficult beginning:

The first school shooter of the 1990s was an Asian boy who played the violin. I laughed when I heard an account of the rampage from my friend Ethan Gooding, who had survived it. Ethan forgave me my reaction. I think he knew by then that most people, facing up to a real atrocity, as opposed to the hundreds they’d seen on TV, didn’t know how to act.