Above it All

In his newest book, ‘Aloft,’ Chang-rae Lee invents a protagonist who finds solace in the sky.

Staff photo by Mark Czajkowski

Chang-rae Lee begins a national book tour March 8.

   Chang-rae Lee has put me in the pilot’s seat. Specifically, it is the Aeron chair with tobacco-brown leather arm-rests at his oak writing desk, upon which his Macintosh laptop is folded neatly shut. From this vantage point I can see the world as he sees it while he writes: the light gently filtering in through the window on the right, and at left the glass-enclosed bookshelves made from old kitchen cabinets found in the basement of the stately brick home. To reach this lofty space we have ascended one flight, passing walls painted the soft blue of a cloudless sky. I sip the amber-colored tea Mr. Lee has brought back from Harrod’s in London.
   While I imagine what it’s like to see the world through the novelist’s eyes, the Princeton University professor discusses how he viewed the world through the eyes of Jerry Battle, the hero of his new release, Aloft (Riverhead Books, $24.95,
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