“I’m going to say something and you’re going to think this woman is so horrendously snobbish and arrogant and preposterous,” said MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow Yiyun Li from her home in Princeton, N.J.
asserted
MacArthur → go → Princeton
“I feel that I have written everything I know about life into this book.”
asserted
I → feel → book
She’s talking about “Music Against the Night,” the first novel in a planned trilogy about 19th-century musicians and sometime spouses Adelaide “Percherette” Percheron and John Field and the unlikely meeting in 1807 Moscow of an orphan from Pondicherry in French colonial India and a musical genius from Dublin.
asserted
She → talk → Dublin
It’s an extraordinary book about childhood, loneliness, music and grief, and it’s dedicated to the memories of Li’s sons Vincent and James, both of whom died by suicide as teenagers.
asserted
both → ’ → teenagers
For her 2025 memoir about the aftermath of their deaths, “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” Li was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
asserted
Li → grow → Prize
During the pandemic lockdown in March 2020, Li and her friend Edmund White began a book club of two.
asserted
Li → begin → two
(White, who died in 2025, was the author of “A Boy’s Own Story”; a pioneering figure of gay literature; the celebrated biographer of Genet, Proust and Rimbaud; and a former colleague at Princeton University, where Li is director of the creative writing program.)
asserted
Li → die → program
“I always say I met John Field in 2022, when Edmund and I read Tolstoy’s ‘Childhood,’” said Li.
asserted
Li → say → Childhood
In that autobiographical novel, Li learned that Countess Tolstoya’s son Leo wrote feelingly about his mother playing her teacher John Field’s nocturnes on the piano.
asserted
mother → learn → piano
Li and White would speak daily for 30 minutes about what they were reading, “showing each other what we underlined and pretending to be surprised when we underlined the same things,” she said.
asserted
she → speak → things
They were both curious readers and saw each other frequently in the last years of White’s life, during which they read 120 books together.
asserted
they → see → books
“I used to go to a hairdresser in Chelsea, so every eight weeks I would travel to New York to have my hair done and to meet Edmund,” Li recalled.
asserted
Li → use → Edmund
“I’d bring lunch, but sometimes he cooked for me.
asserted
he → bring → me
I think we were in love in the most platonic way.”
asserted
we → think → way
It was more Percherette than John that got Li to think about writing “Music Against the Night,” because her life would have been overlapping with Jane Austen’s characters’, “women who never leave their village,” she said, before adding, “Nobody knows how she gets to Moscow from Pondicherry, and such a journey would have taken about a year.
asserted
journey → get → year
I feel like now we forget how everything takes time.”
asserted
everything → feel → time
Li read a biography of John Field, so she had a sketch of his life, but discovered that Percherette “appeared in only a few paragraphs, no more than five.
asserted
Percherette → read → paragraphs
I thought, ‘This young woman, a prodigy and an orphan, deserves to be written.’”
asserted
woman → think → ?
Though Li read plenty of books about French colonial India in the 1800s, learning about the smart, multilingual young local women who often married white men, she said, “The entire Percherette storyline is my fiction.
asserted
storyline → read → men
When Li began writing “Music Against the Night,” one of her friends suggested she was spending too much time on the characters as children, that she ought to simply provide them each with a pivotal experience that would launch them into their adulthood.
uncertain
that → begin → adulthood
Li bristled at the memory, saying, “I was so resentful of that approach, because what matters to me is what they came from.
asserted
they → bristle → what
And these were extraordinary children, and they were not always understood.
asserted
they → understand → ?
But they could feel profoundly about their life, about music, about many things.
uncertain
they → feel → things
“Children are in an unfair situation when they feel so much and think so much and don’t have the language to express themselves yet,” she added.
asserted
she → feel → themselves
“I spent so much time observing my children, I sort of knew what children did, what they would say, what they would think.
asserted
they → spend → what
I did a lot of imaginative living in their bodies.”
asserted
I → do → bodies
The novel’s gifted children are wise beyond their years, one of them observing, “Perhaps there really was nothing terrible in dying young, when dreams were still dreams, unsoiled,” and another noting, “Words are like music notes, wounding some people and yet leaving barely a scratch on others.”
asserted
Words → observe → others
Li’s great respect for children reverberates throughout to book.
asserted
respect → reverberate → book
“It’s unfair to them to be told that they have to live from a place of gratitude,” she said.
asserted
she → ’ → gratitude
“Gratitude is invented by adults to imprison children’s souls.
asserted
Gratitude → invent → souls
It’s a very strong word for me.”
asserted
It → ’ → me
Learning to play
One of the many joys of the novel is a layer that appeals to anyone with a music education: it’s a grace note.
asserted
it → learn → education
Not a musician herself, Li decided that she needed to learn to play piano in order to more fully understand her characters.
asserted
she → decide → characters
“My teacher didn’t want to take me up as a student at first,” Li said, “because she is a serious player, a professional, and did not want another adult hobbyist.”
asserted
she → want → hobbyist
Determined to change her mind, Li persevered.
asserted
Li → determine → mind
“I’m going to audition to be your student with a book proposal,” she told her.
asserted
she → go → her
Not only would her narrative include such composers as Mozart and later Muzio Clementi, with whom Field becomes a live-in student, but there would also be an acute awareness of music in the natural world: an owl hoots in G-sharp and bees hum in B-flat.
asserted
bees → include → flat
“Though sometimes an A-flat joined the chorus,” Li said.
asserted
Li → join → chorus
“I wrote those things because I think that’s what musicians hear.”
asserted
musicians → write → what
As part of his mentorship, Clementi assures teenage John, “We can never write music as beautiful as what we hear in our heads.
asserted
we → assure → heads
…and 11 more, not listed.
The Aporia
