Entertainment
Katherine Min was ahead of her time. Four years after her death, her second novel proves it
On the Shelf
The Fetishist
By Katherine Min
G.P. Putnam’s Sons: 304 pages, $28
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This is the story of a fabulous book that almost never was. A lush and vicious novel with the pacing and urgency of a thriller, “The Fetishist” revolves around desire and revenge, focusing on the abduction of a classical musician with a history of predatory behavior by the punk-rocker daughter of his former paramour, who had killed herself after being spurned by him. It’s the second novel by Katherine Min and it arrives nearly four years after her death.
Min was a connector, a writer and professor who built communities through residencies, conferences and classrooms. This explains why her posthumous publication will be marked by a substantial book tour (including a Los Angeles stop Jan. 23) shepherded by a legion of friends and former students and helmed by her daughter, Kayla Min Andrews, who recovered the file that became “The Fetishist.”
While I was neither Min’s peer nor her student, I was a devoted reader of her work. In August 2006, I met Min at the MacDowell Colony shortly before the publication of her debut novel, “Secondhand World,” at Knopf, where I was then an editorial assistant. Her enthusiastic and unguarded demeanor was refreshing, and I loved her intense but tender novel. Her reading at the KGB Bar in Manhattan that fall struck me as an auspicious launch. Sadly, it was her last book tour.
“Secondhand World” was a coming-of-age novel, set in upstate New York in the 1970s, with autobiographical elements of the immigrant experience. But it was also a propulsive, remarkably literary work that burned with complicated longing. Knopf senior editor Victoria Wilson bought the novel for “the virtue and power of its writing.”
In the early aughts, books that captured the Korean American experience were not so prevalent, much less wildly feted (this was before Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko” and Michelle Zauner’s “Crying in H Mart”). One fan of “Secondhand World,” Putnam publisher Sally Kim, kept it on a small section of her bookshelf devoted to (the precious few) Korean American novels. She would end up editing “The Fetishist,” but at the time, Min’s debut didn’t find a wide audience.
Speaking over the phone 18 years later, Wilson remembers Min’s intensity, commitment and seemingly limitless promise. Knopf had a crowded list that fall — the season of “The Emperor’s Children,” “Half of a Yellow Sun” and other breakthroughs — but Wilson and others worked hard to bring attention to Min. Publicist Tessa Shanks recalls “cooking up a scheme” with Min to stretch the touring budget toward as many cities as possible. “I believe Vicky was a little taken aback by our excitement for what was a relatively small book,” says Shanks.
“Secondhand World” created a path for Min to become a tenured professor at University of North Carolina in Asheville. It received praise and a nomination for a PEN/Bingham award. Min continued to write at artists’ residencies, working on what would become “The Fetishist.” But when she was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer in early 2014, she shut the door on fiction.
Instead, Min shifted to nonfiction. “It was like a switch was pulled,” remembers her friend, writer Marie Myung-Ok Lee. Min “felt an urgent need to write essays, particularly on her new perspective on life having cancer.” While Lee is pleased by the publication of “The Fetishist,” she also hopes these essays will be published as a collection. “Even through all her treatments and their side effects … she was always writing. That was her way of being.”
Min brought the same commitment to this work as to her fiction. “She wasn’t willing to compromise the urgency at their core in order to receive faint praise or recognition,” remembers another friend, writer and translator Geoffrey Brock. When a “well-known journal” proposed “some wrongheaded cuts,” she withdrew the piece and sent it to Brock at the Arkansas International, where he ran it intact. (“An orange I can manage,” runs the darkly funny opening. “This sumo orange, with its pocky skin and bulbous shnozz.”)
“If there was any silver lining to the way she went out,” says Brock, “it was that she did so with that kind of confidence … intact, despite those publishing realities that must have made it hard to maintain.”
The year Min died, her family created a fellowship in her name at MacDowell, where she was an artist-in-residence eight times, which would provide opportunities for Asian American writers. This did much to preserve her memory, but what about her unpublished work?
Kayla Min Andrews helped bring out “The Fetishist,” the second novel by her late mother, Katherine Min, and worked to complete it.
(Bryan Tarnowski/Bryan Tarnowski)
Initially, the family hoped Min’s essays could be published as a collection. To that end, Kayla Min Andrews approached her mother’s friend, the writer Cathy Park Hong. Hong connected Andrews with P.J. Mark, Hong’s literary agent.
Reached by email, Mark recalls thinking the collection could work — if introduced and properly framed by her contemporaries. But he asked Andrews about any additional material. She mentioned that Min had shared individual chapters from her novel-in-progress before her diagnosis. “I had a sense of the characters,” Andrews recalls of her mother’s manuscript. “I had some sense of the plot, but I had never read the whole draft in order.”
After talking to Mark, Andrews went back to her mother’s laptop which she now used as her own. The files were there — a complete version of the novel, including notes on elements to add or check. It was dated from the end of February 2014, just before Min’s diagnosis. For an ostensibly unfinished manuscript, it was remarkably polished.
“The Fetishist” was Mark’s introduction to her fiction. “I found it hilarious and moving and so contemporary, which surprised me as it had been written some years ago.” Predating #MeToo, the novel directly addresses a generational shift away from patriarchal resignation. In the novel, Min pursues the idea of matching violence with violence, but also explores the gray area of reconciliation and rehabilitation. To Mark, “it felt like a timeless comic fable of revenge and also a modern cultural critique. And even though I had no attachment to Katherine, I felt an urgent responsibility for the book and to honor her legacy, which was an unexpected feeling I couldn’t explain.”
Kayla Min Andrews, left, with her mother, Katherine Min.
(Courtesy of Kayla Min Andrews)
Mark had an ideal editor in mind: Sally J. Kim. He offered her an exclusive submission.
Reading the manuscript alongside the rest of Min’s work felt, to Kim, like having a conversation with Min in her head over the course of one intense week. Kim thought, “What would she think of our world today, which has changed so much since her passing in 2019 — the pandemic, George Floyd, AAPI hate? I wished I could talk to her about so many things. I still do.”
During the editing process, Andrews, herself a writer, stepped in eagerly on her mother’s behalf, working hand in hand with Kim to expand scenes and smooth out loose ends. “There were moments and lines,” Kim says, “that startled me in how prescient Katherine had been about Asian American identity, objectification, desire and how all these things often get tangled up.”
For all of Andrews’ hard work, “The Fetishist” ultimately owes its publication not just to those with a personal stake in her life but to the people who found immense value in her work.
“I was never lucky enough to have met Katherine,” says Kim, “but I have such a strong sense of her wisdom, her warmth, her wit, her ferocity. It’s driven me to do everything I can for this book. I’ve been in book publishing for almost 30 years, and in many ways Katherine’s struggles as an emerging Asian American writer run parallel to my own, and there are times that I mourn that fact, for both of us. But it also feels as though I’ve worked my whole career to be in the position to publish this book in the fulsome way that it deserves. This book is a celebration.”
LeBlanc is a critic and board member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her Substack is laurenleblanc.substack.com.
Pizza Movie (2026) Director: Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, Star: Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone
Somehow, I got through an hour of this movie. I was seconds away from turning off in the first fifteen minutes because of the juvenile humor. Pizza Movie is too silly, repetitive, and the characters are annoying. Stranger Things Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone star as college friends, Jack and Montgomery. College angles are rarely seen in films right now, and that’s the one saving grace of the film. Similar to high school, people are also trying to fit in. The story and visuals were too corny. You can only watch someone’s head exploding for so long without letting yours.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) Director: Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, Stars: Chris Pratt, Charlie Day, Anya Taylor-Joy
I never saw the first Super Mario Brothers Movie when it was out, but I heard it got positive reviews. My brother always loved playing Super Mario video games as a kid, and I’d watch him. I tagged along with my friends to see Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it’s a cute and fun film. I like it when movies explore the video game world. The animation creates unique worlds and characters. The characters are split into their own storylines, and for me, I felt like it worked. It adds more action, especially for kids who are seeing the films.
Emily in Paris Season 5 (2025) Creator: Darren Star, Stars: Lily Collins and Ashley Park
After a bright spot in season 4, I thought season 5 of Emily in Paris would continue its growth in the story and its protagonist, but no, it’s all drained out in the usual Emily (Lily Collins) mishaps. Ashley Park (Mindy) has become too good for this show. Emily and Mindy waste several opportunities because of their love lives. The whole relationship angle is ruining it. I don’t understand why Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) is still in the show. I thought writers learned their lesson, but by the last episode, they’re continuing to bring the past into an apparent season 6.
Sarah’s Oil (2025) Director: Cyrus Nowrasteh, Stars: Naya Desir-Johnson and Zachary Levi
There’s always history lurking right beneath our noses. Sarah’s Oil (2025) tells the true story of Sarah Rector, an Oklahoma-born African American girl who became the first black female millionaire in the U.S. Naya Desir-Johnson is fierce and driven as Sarah. Zachary Levi is also along for the ride as Bert, a man who helps Sarah. Kate (Bridget Regan) was another favorite character as an intelligent woman. Cyrus Nowrasteh was drawn to the subject for its story and its themes. Nowrasteh’s direction is compelling as he unearths a hidden story from history. The film is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Jack Goes Boating (2014) Director and Star: Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Ryan
Jack Goes Boating (2014) didn’t quite work for me, largely because of its slow pace and uneven storytelling. The film stars the late Seymour Hoffman as Jack, who also directed the film. This was Hoffman’s first and only time in the directing chair. Amy Ryan also stars in the film, giving a solid performance. This was also based on a play that Hoffman starred in. Jack wants to participate in a swim championship. That’s hardly what the film is about, tracking other characters’ stories. While the film aims for quiet intimacy, it ultimately drags, making it an underwhelming viewing experience.
You Kill Me (2016), Director: John Dahl, Stars: Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, Luke Wilson
Meet You Kill Me (2016), yet another film that I found in the museum of underrated gems. The concept revolves around Frank (Ben Kingsley), a hitman, who is sent to an A.A. meeting to get his mind focused again. A different story happens, where Frank falls in love with Laurel (Tea Leoni). Leoni is one of my favorite actresses. It also stars the funny Luke Wilson. I liked the trio’s dynamics. You Kill Me is a mental health movie. It’s okay to make changes if you’re not happy. I recommended that you keep an eye out for this movie.
Entertainment
Review: Trigger warning? ‘For Want of a Horse’ gives new meaning to the term ‘animal lover’
“For Want of a Horse,” a play by Olivia Dufault receiving its world premiere in an Echo Theater Company production at Atwater Village Theatre, wants to have a rational conversation about a taboo topic that can provoke instant outrage.
The subject is zoophilia, not to be confused with bestiality, though for many of us it will be a distinction without much of a difference.
Calvin (Joey Stromberg), a good-looking, mild-mannered married accountant, has harbored a secret for much of his life. He has a thing for horses. His erotic interest began at an early age, and all his efforts to lead a normal life have left him depressed and contemplating suicide.
His wife, Bonnie (Jenny Soo), is a permissive kindergarten teacher who’s having difficulty restraining a girl in her class who has discovered the joys of masturbation. Worried about her husband, she discovers through his browsing history that he’s once again visiting strange animal sites.
She suggests he keep a horse, explaining that she doesn’t want to end up a widow or divorcée. Calvin is taken aback by her generosity but has come to recognize that his preference is more than a kink. It’s part of his identity — and maybe the only part that makes his life seem worth living.
Joey Stromberg and Jenny Soo in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
A horse named Q-Tip (Griffin Kelly) enters the couple’s lives. A stable is secured, and the mare, who senses that something strange is going on, is indulged with apples and caresses.
Kelly, a statuesque presence in a dress, harness and boots, brings the horse to life with wild, unpredictable movements. The sheer size of the animal poses a threat to humans. One kick, as Q-Tip herself explains in one of her thought-bubble monologues, is capable of penetrating a steel wall. But controlling an animal’s food supply is an effective way of winning over its trust.
Calvin has found support in the online zoophilia community. PJ (Steven Culp), a man whose current inamorata is a bichon frise, is considering moving to a country where zoophilia isn’t illegal. He’s tired of the shame and the secrecy. He’s proud of his attachment to pooch, even if his thing for dogs has cost him contact with his daughter and ex-wife.
Dufault doesn’t shy away from sexual details. For PJ, intimacy depends on peanut butter. Calvin describes the physical signals that reveal Q-Tip’s erotic satisfaction. The play occasionally descends into sitcom humor. (PJ says he’s considering creating a human-dog dating app called Rin Tin Tinder.) But mostly the subdued tone steers clear of sensationalism.
The production, directed by Elana Luo, is scrupulously well-acted by the four-person cast. Stromberg makes Calvin seem not only reasonable but surprisingly sensitive. Soo’s Bonnie sweetly embodies the excesses of a kind of progressive piety. As PJ, Culp gruffly embraces his role as the play’s polemical fire-starter. And Kelly’s Q-Tip, in the production’s most physically demanding performance, straddles the human-animal divide with theatrical aplomb.
Steven Culp, left, and Joey Stromberg in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
The open-mindedness that Dufault, a trans playwright, brings to the play creates some dramatic slack. Possibly the same fear of making value judgments that has inhibited Bonnie from imposing common-sense discipline in her classroom has robbed “For Want of a Horse” of a propulsive point of view.
The play moves monotonously between Calvin and Bonnie’s bedroom and the stable. Scenic designer Alex Mollo has worked out an efficient way of shifting between these realms by employing the same set of wooden trunks. But the argument of the play doesn’t so much build as elapse.
Time takes its toll, and Calvin eventually has to make a decision. But the character who interested me most was Bonnie, whose reality is only glimpsed. The play tacitly uses her husband’s threat of suicide as a trump card. Zoophilia isn’t merely a fetish for Calvin but a nonnegotiable part of his identity.
This questionable assumption can be psychologically scrutinized not only from Calvin’s point of view but also from his wife’s. The play wants to have an intelligent debate, but it doesn’t want to interrogate certain political positions too skeptically.
At one point, Bonnie objects when Calvin compares his situation to that of homosexuality, but the conversation ends there. The reality is that the right wing has been making a similar claim, arguing that same-sex marriage opens the door to bestiality, polygamy and incest. “For Want of a Horse” inadvertently lends legitimacy to this line of reasoning.
Griffin Kelly in “For Want of a Horse” at the Echo Theater Company.
(Cooper Bates)
Not that extremist positions should be off limits, but they ought to be more rigorously addressed. Similarly, Bonnie’s concern about the issue of consent — how can a horse say yes to intercourse with a human — is introduced only to be dismissed in a shrug of mild-mannered bothsidesism.
While watching “For Want of a Horse,” I recalled a program on PBS called “My Wild Affair” that wasn’t about zoophilia but about the problematic nature of human bonds with untamed animals. Relationships with a seal, an elephant and a rhino, for example — obsessive, protective, loving friendships — all seemed to end if not in outright tragedy, then in shattering heartbreak.
Q-Tip is rightfully given the play’s last word, and Kelly, an actor (HBO’s “The Book of Queer”), writer and comedian, is the production’s driving force. We can never know what’s inside this mare’s mind because Q-Tip’s brain has evolved so differently from our own. Kelly plays the anthropomorphic game while retaining some of the inscrutability of a four-legged creature.
It is through language that we, as humans, traverse the chasm separating us from one another. That’s not possible with animals, even with our closest domestic companions. (Try explaining a necessary medical procedure to a cat.)
“For Want of a Horse” sets out to speak about the unspeakable, but its construction may be too tame for such a wild subject.
‘For Want of a Horse’
Where: Echo Theater Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., L.A.
When: 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, Mondays; 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 25
Tickets: $15-$42.75
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (no intermission)
Info: echotheatercompany.com
Desert Warrior, 2026.
Directed by Rupert Wyatt.
Starring Anthony Mackie, Aiysha Hart, Ben Kingsley, Ghassan Massoud, Sharlto Copley, Sami Bouajila, Lamis Ammar, Géza Röhrig, Numan Acar, Nabil Elouahabi, Hakeem Jomah, Ramsey Faragallah, Saïd Boumazoughe, and Soheil Bostani.
SYNOPSIS:
An honorable and mysterious rogue, known as Hanzala, makes himself an enemy of the Emperor Kisra after he helps a fugitive king and princess in the desert.
With aspirations of being a historical epic harkening back to the sword and sandal blockbusters of yesteryear, Rupert Wyatt’s seventeenth-century Arabia tale is about as generic and epically dull as one would expect from a film plainly titled Desert Warrior. Yes, there appear to be real locations here, and there are some admittedly sweeping shots of various tribes storming into battle on horseback and camels, but it’s all in service of a mess that is both miscast and questionable as the work of a filmmaking team of mostly white creatives.
The story of Emperor Kisraa (Ben Kingsley, a distracting presence even with only one or two scenes) rounding up women from other tribes to be his concubines, which inevitably became the catalyst for a revolution led by Princess Hind (Aiysha Hart), uniting all the divided clans and strategizing battle plans for flanking and poisoning, is undeniably ripe for cinematic treatment. The problem is that what’s here from Rupert Wyatt (and screenwriters Erica Beeney, Gary Ross, and David Self) is less than nothing in the primary creative process; no one seems to have a connection to Arabic heritage or culture, but they have made a flat-out boring film that is often narratively incoherent.
Following the death of her father and escaping the clutches of oppression, the honorable Princess Hind joins forces with a troubled, nameless bandit played by Anthony Mackie (he totally belongs here…), who seems to be here solely to give the movie some star power boost without running the risk of white savior accusations. Whatever the case may be, it’s jarring, but not quite as disorienting as how little screen time he has despite being billed as the lead and how little characterization he has. It is, however, equally disorienting as some of the other names that show up along the way.
As for the other factions, Princess Hind talks to them one by one, giving the film an adventure feel that fails to capitalize on using beautiful scenery in striking or visually poignant ways at almost every turn; the leaders of these tribes also often have no character. There also isn’t much of an understanding of why these tribes are at odds with one another. This movie is filled with dialogue that consistently and shockingly amounts to vague nothingness. Nevertheless, each tribe doesn’t take much convincing to begin with, meaning that not only is the film repetitive, but it’s also lifeless when characters are in conversation.
That Desert Warrior does occasionally spring to life, and a bloated 2+ running time is a small miracle. This is typically accomplished through the occasional fight scene between factions that also serves to demonstrate Princess Hind coming into her own as a warrior. When the tribes are united in a massive-scale battle, and that plan is unfolding step by step, one certainly sees why someone would want to tell this story and pull it off with such spectacle. However, this film is as dry as the desert itself.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder
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