This year has seen a fair bit of Korean literature reviewed on Tony's Reading List, and the instigator for this was definitely the Library of Korean Literature project brought about by Dalkey Archive Press and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. The number of K-Lit reviews has already passed twenty-five for the year (fairly impressive when you think that prior to 2014 I'd only read and reviewed one...), but today is a landmark day anyway. You see, this post is my tenth review from the Dalkey series - and, luckily enough, it turns out to be on my favourite book from the series so far :)
*****
Haïlji's The Republic of Užupis (translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton, review copy courtesy of the publisher and Australian distributor Footprint Books) is a wonderful addition to my burgeoning K-Lit library, a novel much more experimental and western-influenced than most of what I've read before. The novel begins with an Asian man arriving in Lithuania, attempting to get past the rather tall guards at immigration. When asked if he plans to stay long in the country, his reply is rather unusual - he intends to depart within a day or so, as soon as he has worked out how to get to his intended destination.
So, where is he off to? Russia? Poland? Belarus? No... Hal, our inscrutable Oriental, is actually a native of a land which has just reclaimed its independence after decades under foreign control. His goal is the Republic of Užupis, the land of his birth, the home of the language he understands but can no longer speak. If only he could find someone who knows where his country is actually located...
The Republic of Užupis is a superb book, one-hundred-and-fifty pages of inventiveness, the story of a man trying to find a country which may not exist. It's full of a deliberately confusing series of events including encounters with strangers, beautiful women, tall men and lots of snow, geese and grandfather clocks (really). Trust me, it all makes some kind of sense (to the author, at least).
In Vilnius, there is a real Užupis (a semi-official micro-state), a place which inspires jokes from the locals, and the book acknowledges the real-life situation:
"The people of this city call this particular area Užupis - it means 'the other side of the river'. It is the most run-down area in Vilnius. As a joke, the struggling artists who live here began calling it the Republic of Užupis. They even wrote a Declaration of Independence and established April Fool's Day as their Independence Day."
pp.19/20 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2014)
This mock republic, however, is not the place Hal is looking for:
"That's interesting - a bogus Republic of Užupis. But where I'm going is not a joke, it's the actual Republic of Užupis." With that, Hal pulled the postcard from his pocket and displayed it. "This was mailed from the actual Republic of Užupis." (p.20)
Exiled for most of his life in the land of Han (a thinly-concealed Korea), where his father was an ambassador, all Hal has to guide him on his way is a suitcase with photos showing people and flags. Oh, and memories of the haunting anthem...
On the search for his elusive homeland, he heads onto the streets of Vilnius and is thrown straight into a whirlwind of parties and chance encounters. Just who are these 6' 6'' men he encounters (and seriously, what's with the obsession with the grandfather clocks...)? Eventually, he catches up with a woman he spotted during his first hours in Lithuania, the beautiful Jurgita, and hears about her involvement in the past with an Užupis man of Asian appearance. With time running out, will this chance connection show him the way home?
The Republic of Užupis
is a short book, but it's one which throws up a million questions. Time loops around (this isn't a book to follow the laws of time and space), and over the course of his constant encounters with his new friends, the reader begins to suspect that they might actually be old ones. Everywhere Hal goes, he sees places he vaguely remembers, photos that look oddly familiar:
"In another photograph, taken in a study, people sat around a huge table engaged in conversation. The walls were lined with bookshelves packed with ancient tomes in ornate bindings. The walls to the right, as you looked at the photo, bore windows, the source of light for the scene. Prominent in the photo was the marble sculpture set between the windows, a bust of a man whose agonized face was cupped in his hands. The study was virtually identical to the room in which Hal now sat with Vladimir. But the three men failed to notice this." (p.38)
It's almost as if he keeps walking into another time, his memory failing to remind him that he's seen these things before...
The book is a superb look at the importance of home and the impossibility of reaching that different country, the past, and while Haïlji is a writer with his own style, a western reader would be hard pressed to read this novel without being reminded of Kafka. There's the snowy beginning, the aimless wandering through menacing streets, the large ramshackle houses, the cafés, the meandering corridors in government offices - all recounted in the writer's own calm, casual voice. The reader is never quite sure exactly what's happening - they're sure to enjoy it, nonetheless.
One of the keys to the novel is language. The Republic of Užupis is set in Lithuania, but as Hal doesn't know the language, much of the dialogue takes place in English (a story of our times...). However, as the book progresses, there are more occasions when Hal suddenly hears Užupis being spoken. He knows what's being said, but, having lost the ability to communicate in the language, he finds himself in the frustrating position of being unable to make himself understood. This miscommunication only adds to the difficulty of finally getting home...
All of the above makes for a clever, mind-bending book which will appeal to anyone who enjoys novels which require more than simple page-turning. It's superbly translated by the Fultons (which goes without saying), catching the slightly off-kilter tone and the unnatural conversations which often occur between people communicating in a third language. The Republic of Užupis is a book I want to reread when I find a few spare hours, and it's one I hope will get some decent recognition. Just as is the case with No One Writes Back and Pavane for a Dead Princess, this is a book which deserves to rise above the status of merely one work in the Library collection. Here's hoping it finds the audience it deserves :)
*****
Footprint Books, as always, assure me that this book is available in Australia, either at bookshops or through their website :)
I haven't quite finished the first ten books in Dalkey Archive Press' Library of Korean Literature, but the next five in the series are already out, and I couldn't resist trying one of the latest batch. Number eleven is a contemporary story looking at modern Korean society and its obsession with superficiality - and for fans of Japanese literature, it might all seem oddly familiar...
*****
Park Min-gyu's Pavane for a Dead Princess (translated by Amber Hyun Jung Kim, review copy courtesy of the publisher and the Australian distributor Footprint Books) has a writer looking back to the mid-eighties, a time when he arrived at the threshold of adulthood. The opening scene is of a bus arriving in the snow, bringing the writer (and the reader) to a final, heart-warming meeting between two young lovers.
Moving back a year, we learn how the two met while working in the underground car park of a busy Seoul department store. Both of them are eye-catching, but in very different ways. The narrator is a young man who stands out, having inherited his father's movie-star looks. The girl? She, as is made very clear, is totally, breath-takingly ugly...
Pavane for a Dead Princess is an easy, comforting read, a story chronicling the development of a relationship against a back-drop of near hedonistic consumerism. The two main characters, young people at odds with society, have arrived in the adult world without the appropriate social tools to survive and ignore outside pressure. It's hard to follow your own path when countless millions seem to be telling you that there's only one way to go (and it's not yours).
This is particularly true of mid-80s Seoul, a city seemingly attempting to fit decades of consumer development into a few months - this is truly the age of the commercial and the superficial:
"The world had laid down its judgement long ago. It was an age where pretty trumped justice and pretty had the last word. Nearly everything was determined at first sight, in terms of what school you went to, how much money you had, and how you stacked up in the eyes of others. Glancing at the calendar on the wall, with its picture of a provocatively posing model practically demanding our attention, I poured my friend another glass."
p.48 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2014)
Having worked hard, the Korean middle classes want to enjoy their gains, and shopping has become a national past-time. In truth, though, they have been swept up in a race to buy more, spend more and become 'better', getting into debt in order to have the latest fashions. It's all seems more like hard work than real leisure.
The narrator, his girl-friend and their friend Yohan stick out in this sea of consumerism, all misfits in their own way. The narrator is a budding writer, a school drop-out recovering from the break-up of his parents' marriage (his actor father dumped the narrator's plain mother once he hit the big time...). Yohan is the foil to the introverted narrator - he's clever and witty, and he helps his friend to cope with the daily grind. However, underneath his affable exterior, there's a palpable sense of darkness waiting to emerge.
The boys' issues, however, are nothing when compared to the girl's problems. Her appearance prevents her from living a normal life (and the writer makes sure that we understand how big a problem this is). Whenever she walks down the street, people gape at her, unable to quite believe what they're seeing, and most turn away rather than keep looking at her. Her looks prevent her from getting, and keeping, decent jobs; understandably, she sees her appearance as an affliction:
"Some people might point to handicapped people and tell me things can be much worse. I'm aware there are many people who are in pain. But, although I know this will sound shameless and selfish, there were many times when I envied those people. At least the world recognizes their handicaps for handicaps. The world never accepted my darkness as a handicap, yet everyone treated me as such. My handicap was never recognized as one, although, while I don't want to admit it, it was the world that had crippled me. I had to go to the same school and wear the same clothes as other kids, but I was always treated differently. I had no choice but to live this life. That was my fate.
Ugly." (p.179)
The writer later contrasts her situation with fleeting portraits of pretty girls. Unlike the narrator's girlfriend, theirs is an easy life, life pandered to by a safety net of admirers. Coincidentally, I was reading this book when the Renée Zellweger 'controversy' erupted - a sobering reminder that it's not just 80s Korea that had a fixation on beauty...
Pavane for a Dead Princess is a touching love story (with a twist...) and a scathing indictment of modern society. It's a compelling tale, and if the themes and style sound familiar, they cetainly are. You see, there's more than a touch of the Murakamis about this one with the Japanese writer being a very obvious influence on Park. In fact, some of the writing is very reminiscent of Haruki's idiosyncratic style:
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Her voice was tiny, but it unsettled me. Why was she sorry? She began to cry to my utter confusion. The thought crossed my mind that maybe twenty-year-old guys are like AM radios. We can turn the knob all we want, but we'll never receive that elusive signal called woman. I sat there blank as a dead radio, facing her tears. I felt I'd done something very wrong. (p.8)
That's a passage which could have come straight out of A Wild Sheep Chase or Dance, Dance, Dance... The scenes of the three friends at the run-down bar, 'Kentucky Chicken', will instantly have Murakami fans thinking of the many nights Boku and the Rat spend at J's Bar, and there are constant mentions of pop music and reading books in public places. Yes, if you wait long enough, there's also a cat ;)
Even the title is unmistakably Murakamiesque. It refers to a piece of classical music, Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte, music from an LP given to the narrator by his girlfriend on their last night together (a melancholic piano piece). If only Park had Murakami's sales, I'm sure it would soon be as frequently searched for on Youtube as the Liszt pieces from Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki... or The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle's The Thieving Magpie!
Park is a lot more than just a Murakami clone, though. Pavane for a Dead Princess is a straight-forward, but fascinating story, a book I flew through. I've had some issues with the translations in this series, but this one was generally good, and I found it easy to remain absorbed in the story, eager to keep turning the pages. I'd probably still recommend Jang Eun-jin's No One Writes Back as the standout of the ones I've read, but this one is definitely up there with the best. Now, if the other four new additions to the series are this good, I'd be very happy to try them. It might be a while before I finish off the last couple from the original ten ;)
*****
Footprint Books, as always, assure me that this book is available in Australia, either at bookshops or through their website :)
It's time for more K-Lit and another book from the Dalkey Archive Press Library of Korean Literature - review number eight from the series to have made its way onto the blog. So, do we have a joyous affair to celebrate that? Erm, no... Today's book continues the theme of trauma; in fact, it's a depressing book in more ways than one...
*****
Hyun Ki-young's One Spoon on this Earth (translated by Jennifer M. Lee, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a stylised memoir of the writer's early life. We begin with a visit to his birthplace brought about by his father's funeral, and as he muses on mortality (and how quickly life goes by), his mind inevitably turns back towards his childhood.
However, this isn't quite your standard Bildungsroman. Hyun's hometown was on Cheju (Jeju) Island, and he was born at a very important time in Korean history. No sooner had he managed to put the illnesses of early childhood behind him, than the whole island erupted into violence. You see, 1948 saw the Cheju Uprising, and the narrator's childish eyes saw some very horrible things...
In my recent piece on O Chong-hui, the translators (Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton), described Korean literature as a literature of trauma, and that's certainly the case here. Hyun is scarred by his childhood experiences, both by the illnesses he suffered and the atrocities he witnessed, but the trauma didn't stop there. In later years, he was arrested and beaten by the police for daring to write about an event which is still fairly controversial today.
The novel (if it is one) covers the writer's life up until he reaches the end of middle school, a point at which he considers his childhood to have ended. His early years are spent in a rural region of an island which is far less advanced than the mainland. While there is the occasional anecdote about playing with friends, much of the early pages make for grim reading. In an eventful first few years, Hyun manages to survive scrofula, a cholera epidemic and a fall from a tree where he landed on his head. The beatings and constant hunger are secondary concerns.
Part of the reason for Hyun's problems is his unsettled family life. His father, a wandering man who neglected his family, absent for seven years of his son's childhood, is yet another example of the common K-Lit trope of the deadbeat dad (as is the over-worked mother, beating her kids with one hand, feeding them with the other...). Another Korean cultural norm is shown in the refusal of the paternal grandparents to allow the young boy to join the mother at her parents' house in the nearby town, even though they have more room for him. His place is in the house of his father - even if his father is nowhere to be found...
The first few years of life are merely the build-up to the uprising, though, with the cholera and famine of the post-liberation years pushing the islanders to stand up to the mainland troops 'occupying' the island. What happened next was pretty disturbing:
"The attackers might have enjoyed the feeling of rabbit hunting, running after the people scattered in all directions in the snowfield. Mostly the old people, the children, and the women with small children who couldn't run fast enough were targeted victims. Mothers who beat their small children for not walking fast enough were shot, and their children were mercilessly bayoneted as if they were being skewered. I was told that the blood spattered on the snow was monstrously red. Mt. Halla was buried in the sullen clouds all winter long."
p.52 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
Once the uprising has been settled, we move on to the Korean war, where Mt. Halla once again features, with planes targeting the mountain top for firing practice. These historical insights are fascinating, perhaps the most interesting parts for an outsider to read.
With the book being a semi-autobiographical work dealing with childhood, it's hard to avoid comparisons with a certain Karl Ove Knausgaard, and there are many similarities. Both Hyun and Knausgaard grew up on an island, and their books (this one and Boyhood Island) cover pretty much the same period of their lives. Both run wild, swimming in the sea and roaming the fields and woods, and there are even similarities in the description of slightly effeminate, book-loving young boys.
One Spoon on this Earth is not quite as elegant, though, and it's often clumsy and crude. The cruelty of children is a frequent theme here, and with Hyun's tales of torturing insects and butchering pigs, it definitely isn't a book for animal lovers. The writer is also fairly graphic with his descriptions of bodily functions, taking great pains to describe the exact colour of the snot dripping from his classmates' noses and where he went to masturbate in later years. As for going to the toilet, there's a passage in which Hyun describes what he calls 'field shitting', which includes wiping his behind with a bunch of grass - or on a warm rock. He then tells the reader:
"I'm sure you all know what it feels like." (p.94)
Erm, no...
While there's much that's interesting about the book, it does have its flaws. It's rather repetitive at times, giving me the impression that it might have been serialised in a newspaper originally. The way in which it's written (hundreds of short sections) and the fact that information is often reintroduced a matter of pages after the original mention certainly gives that impression. However, there's another, much more serious, issue with the book...
*****
Sadly, something seriously affected my enjoyment of the book, and that was that this is a really poor translation. I usually give translators the benefit of the doubt, but here there is absolutely no doubt about the quality of the writing. The key to a good translation, a fundamental requirement, is to make the translation readable in the target language, and that certainly doesn't happen here. There are far too many sentences which just don't make sense, and the whole text is packed with clumsy, clunky expressions. At times, it doesn't even read as if it was written by a native speaker of English.
So what exactly is wrong with the writing? Well, quite apart from frequent poor vocabulary choices, odd prepositional decisions and the occasional wrong pronoun (he v she), one constant grammatical mistake was the lack of commas in defining relative clauses, a lack leading to many absurd sentences. For example:
"My father who was in the mainland received the notice late..." (p.68)
No, he only has one father... (and it's *on* the mainland)...
"And we received an urgent message informing us that my youngest uncle who drove a police car died in an accident." (p.46)
Hmm - so how many uncles who drive police cars does he have?
It doesn't end there, though. There are some truly awful sentences, pieces of writing that I had to examine several times to make sure that this actually was what had been printed. Below are just a few of the worst (I could have added many, many more):
"For us children we didn't care about the speeches; it was fun to look at the speakers' expressions as they changed from pale to red and their ridiculously high-pitched voices." (p.54)
"The vast and flat grassland that sprawled out covered in snow because the scenery resembled those chaotic days." (p.51)
"Soon after, a fire broke out and one hut after another got caught on fire and burnt down more than twenty huts." (pp.65/6)
Awful, I think you'd agree (and if you don't, well, perhaps you'd better enrol in my ESL class...). If you've been paying attention to the page numbers, you'll notice that this was all from a very small section of the book - after that, I just gave up taking notes...
I really don't like doing this, but the one thing that hurts the image of translated fiction more than anything else is bad translations - this is why many people avoid books translated from other languages (and why publishers hide translators' names inside the covers...). I hope I play my part in praising good translations and making people aware of the wonderful work people like Margaret Jull Costa, Philip Roughton, Stephen Snyder and Anthea Bell do - sadly, there are times, like today, when I need to do the opposite. Silence on the issue can't be a good thing, can it?
If you're a regular visitor round these parts, you'll know that this year has seen a lot of Korean literature reviewed, mainly because of the Library of Korean Literature project from Dalkey Archive Press and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. While we may be focusing on Women in Translation this month, the K-Lit trend will still continue throughout August, so here's another to add to the collection :)
*****
Jung Mi-kyung's My Son's Girlfriend (translated by Yu Young-nan, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a collection of short stories about life in modern-day Korea. The collection runs to almost 220 pages, but as most of the stories are about thirty-pages long (extended stories seem to be fairly common in Korean writing), there are actually only seven pieces in the collection. However, there are several powerful stories, each exploring the problems faced by people trying to live their lives in 21st-century Korea, some universal, some specific to those living on the peninsula.
A major issue in Korean society is social mobility, and in the title story, a mother is confronted by this problem after her son falls in love with a young woman from a background of poverty. As she attempts to allow her son to work out his feelings for himself, the beautiful, shy young girl reminds her of an admirer she had in her youth, a boy she led on even though she had no intention of developing a serious relationship with him.
It's an excellent story in which the reader sees life from various social strata. The woman's family lives at the top of an exclusive apartment building, literally looking down on the city, and it's hard to believe that the son's passion is anything but a temporary rebellious notion. In addition to the main action, there's also a clever sub-plot involving a driver employed by one the building's residents in which the idea of social inequality is further reinforced.
Of course, being at the top is a lot easier than getting there, and in 'I Love You' Jung takes a look at a couple who are desperate to get a foot on the ladder to success. A struggling investment analyst and a lecturer desperate for a permanent position, they're people at risk of falling behind their contemporaries, comfortable, but going nowhere. When an opportunity comes along for them to form close ties with a wealthy businessman, it's little wonder, then, that they take it without too much consideration. However, it turns out that this involves a fairly indecent proposal, and the couple are left to wonder what sacrifices are worth making for a shot at a luxurious lifestyle.
Another troubled relationship is described in 'The Bison', where a sculptress puts on her first show after the death of her husband:
"Only after he was gone did I realize that all of us are carrying a chill in our hearts as heavy as the weight of the universe. Just like the bison who lived during the Ice Age, we've been thrown here, though we don't know whence we came or why, and we must walk on ice, fighting off the cold with our entire bodies. After he was gone, what seized me was not sorrow but an intense chill."
'The Bison', p.55 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
This passage is a little deceptive though - while the artist may miss her husband, their relationship was far from ideal. With his saintly obsession on providing aid for the starving in the North, she felt a cold chill well before his untimely death...
By now, you'll have realized that there aren't too many happy souls in this collection, and existential malaise is a theme which runs through the stories. 'In the Wind' sees a woman going through the mental agonies of IVF treatment, all the time wondering if it's what she even wants, especially when she's not even sure about her marriage any more:
"Once formed, a relationship meant bondage to another person for a lifetime, so why did people want to weave new webs of relationships?"
'In the Wind' (p.90)
The protagonist of 'Cicadas' is also tortured, but in a very different way. He's suffering from tinnitus, and the constant noise of Seoul is slowly driving him crazy. A chance encounter with a fragile young woman offers some relief, but having read some of the other stories in this collection, the reader doesn't hold out much hope for a happy ending here either ;)
My Son's Girlfriend may be a little depressing, but it's a very good collection of stories (only 'Signal Red', a story about a woman's relationship with a colour-blind man, was a little disappointing). A phrase which kept coming back to me while reading the book, my own, personal leitmotif for the collection, was one from my own younger days. As all blur fans will no doubt remember, modern life? Well, it's rubbish. The sad thing is that many of these protagonists aren't even holding out for tomorrow - they'd rather just end it all today...
The last story is, in many ways, perhaps the darkest. 'Night, Be Divided!' follows a successful film-maker on a trip to Oslo, where he takes advantage of the trip to catch up with an old friend from school, a hyper-successful doctor whose brilliance always amazed his friend. Having turned to research, the doctor's new challenge is to create a drug - to make people fall in love:
I ask, "Do you think the loss of love is a disease?"
"Well, doctors call what they can cure a disease and what they can't cure inherent human traits. They don't call loneliness, jealousy and sorrow diseases. Before the advent of sleeping pills, people just couldn't sleep. Insomnia wasn't an illness. With the emergence of Prozac, depression became a more common ailment. When my drug is perfected, the extinction of passion will become a disease."
'Night, Be Divided!' (p.191)
It's another chilling, horrible thought, and the story (which becomes very bleak indeed) is a fitting conclusion to the book. It's worrying to think that for many Koreans (according to Jung, at least), modern life really is that rubbish. Luckily, I can assure you all that My Son's Girlfriend is far from rubbish - it's actually very good :)
Recently, I received an e-mail with some welcome news regarding the Dalkey Archive Library of Korean Literature, namely that the series will be adding five more books to its collection later this year. Before I start thinking too much about those, though, there's the small matter of trying the rest of the first ten (see my other reviews here), and today sees my review of the sixth of those original ten - and a very good one it is too :)
*****
Kim Joo-young's Stingray (translated by Inrae You Vinciguerra and Louis Vinciguerra, review copy courtesy of the publisher) takes place in a small Korean village in the 1950s. Se-young, a teenager living alone with his mother, is alarmed one morning by his mother's cries, and when he goes to see what has happened, he discovers an unexpected intruder - a young woman who has crept in to shelter from the cold.
Her name is Sam-rae, and after initial arguments, she temporarily becomes a part of the family, helping out with the housework. She eventually disappears, leaving Se-young and his mother to fend for themselves, and it seems as if this has just been a brief, memorable interlude in their lives. However, Sam-rae is to return, and her initial arrival is just the start of a chain of events which have a huge impact on the young boy's life.
Stingray, at 124 pages, is more of a novella than a novel, and it could definitely be seen as a sort of Bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. Throughout the work, Se-young begins to understand more about the world around him, forced to grow up a little more quickly by the events unfolding at home and wider afield. By the end of the novella, circumstances have changed completely, but the reader feels that Se-young is better equipped to deal with whatever happens next.
The title has a significance as the stingray is a fish which is left tied to a door handle as a symbol of the father's possible return. While Se-young has few memories of his father, nevertheless, he longs for his return, flying the kites which act as a symbol of his childhood:
"On those days I would often lose my kites, their strings usually snapping after becoming too taut when the kites soared so high. After the kites broke free, they would fly away over the mountain ridges, flapping up and down as they did, and I used to watch them vanish from my sight while feeling a great loss, and all this always reminded me of my father, who had left us behind a long time before."
p.9 (Dalkey Archive, 2013)
While the mother rarely mentions her absent husband, she is complicit in Se-young's behaviour, dropping her sewing and making new kites whenever he loses one...
One of the unanswered questions of the story is why Se-young's father left (we know who he left with...). One thing that is clear is that he is another example of a common K-Lit figure, the no-good, drunken, lazy husband - if there's one thing I've learned from my recent reading, it's that Korean writers don't think much of family men of the past century. Of course, this is contrasted with the saintly, hard-working, long-suffering (and domineering) mother, again, a typical literary character (c.f. The House with a Sunken Courtyard). Se-young's mother is another overworked character of the type, in ill health and socially isolated.
Se-young himself doesn't quite get everything that is happening (and has already happened), but the beauty of the story is that neither do we. The reader is frequently (deliberately) left in the dark, forcing us to identify even more closely with the adolescent hero and underlining Se-young's innocence and naivety. In fact, what appears to be a fairly simple story turns out to have a lot going on beneath the surface.
The actual writing, and translation, is fairly accomplished and elegant, with some nice, poetic observations:
"Two days later it snowed again. Being naturally shy, snow always fell during the night and thus people could only see her figure in the morning." (p.47)
Stingray is far from plotless, however, the plot is far from the only concern of the book. It's a story which flows along slowly, with the reader constantly aware of something happening away from the main events, an effect achieved in part by the indirect language used, drifting (like the snow...).
A book I was reminded of on reading Stingray was Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country, another elegant, wintry novella. There's the snowy setting, of course, but there's also a sense that there's far more to the story than the Western reader is able to glean on a first reading. One surprise is that a few of the major characters are a lot more tangential than most readers would expect. Both Sam-rae and Se-young's neighbour, Jang, turn out to have much smaller roles than I would have thought half-way through the book. It's all part of getting to grips with a slightly different literary culture :)
Stingray is one of my favourites from the series so far, at the same time simple and enjoyable, yet puzzling and slightly inaccessible. This is partly due to cultural differences, but I'm convinced that this was also Kim's intention, putting the reader in the shoes of an adolescent attempting to come to terms with life and the big, wide world, without all the tools required to fully understand the games people play in society. It all makes for another great entry in Dalkey's K-Lit library - can't wait for the next one ;)
Having just received another batch of books from the Library of Korean Literature (courtesy of the ever-generous Dalkey Archive Press), it's time to review the next one from the series. Today's choice is one which takes us back in time, looking at life just after the end of Korean War - one year in the city of Daegu, spent in a large, interesting house...
*****
Kim Won-il's The House with a Sunken Courtyard (translated by Suh Ji-Moon) is set in 1954, shortly after the armistice brings an uneasy end to the conflict in Korea. After spending some time apart from his family, twelve-year-old Gilsam is summoned to the southern city of Daegu to rejoin the rest of his family - two younger brothers, an elder sister and his hard-working, over-bearing mother.
While the war is finally over, times are still tough, and the five of them are cramped together in a room they rent in a large, sprawling house (the titular house with a sunken courtyard), sharing close quarters with other refugees. As 1954 turns into 1955, we see the relationships between the residents of the house unfold, and the six families, including that of the landlord, living in such close proximity give us a representative cross-section of the Korean people of the time.
Kim lets the reader know from the first page that the setting is far from salubrious:
"Janggwan-dong was a small district of about two hundred and fifty houses, and the street, that stretched for only three hundred meters, was narrow and winding, too narrow for automobile traffic and only wide enough for hand-drawn carts, and was bordered by other administrative districts on either side. Along both sides of the street ran open sewers, so it stank except during the winter, and in the summer pink mosquito larvae swarmed in them."
pp.5/6 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
This squalor continues when we get to see where Gilnam's family lives, as despite the splendour of the landlord's main house, the refugees' quarters are dirty, cramped rooms in another building, right next to the sewage trench. The sad thing is that, by the standards of the day, these families are actually the lucky ones.
Having arrived too late to try to get into a middle school, Gilnam is persuaded to go out onto the streets of Daegu to try to make a living, taking the role of the head of the family in place of his father (possibly dead, possibly living in the North). While he would prefer to study, he realises that the family needs money to supplement his mother's income from sewing, so he pounds the streets selling newspapers, hoping one day to be able to share in the delights he sees richer people enjoying.
While The House with a Sunken Courtyard mainly focuses on the struggles of day-to-day life, there are some political elements. One of the sub-plots is centred on a family from the North who are frequently harassed by a detective, and there is plenty of talk about the way society has changed since the war:
"This war has corrupted everyone," Jeongtae argued. "Everyone has become money-mad and would grovel before the worst of thieves if they had money. Everyone thinks of nothing but making money fast and escaping poverty, and won't stop at anything, even stealing. But under this system only the capitalist thieves can make more and more money, and the honest poor folk remain poor no matter how hard they work." (p.115)
True or not, this is dangerous talk in post-war South Korea. When even the mere fact of praising Communism can land you in prison, it's sometimes best to keep as quiet as possible...
In reality, though, the book concentrates on Gilnam's family, and the figure who presides over them is the mother, that quasi-mythical Korean creature. Deserted by her husband, she will go to any lengths to support her family, even if that calls for some (very) tough love at times (it's no coincidence that Gilnam is recalled to Daegu too late to try out for Middle School). In order to help everyone survive in the long-term, she is quite prepared to inflict short-term pain and hunger on her unwitting children. For a Westerner like myself, she's a very ambiguous character, but I suspect that a Korean reader would see her in a much more positive light, even when she's whipping her children and making them go without dinner.
You'd be forgiven for assuming that The House with a Sunken Courtyard is a rather depressing novel, but that's not entirely true. It's actually a nostalgic look back at the narrator's youth, a time when things were very different and, despite the poverty, not always worse. There's more than a hint of The Wonder Years about it, and I could easily imagine the narrator's voice taking us back through the decades to a poorer, simpler time (in fact, there are a couple of connections here, with that show starting around the time this novel appeared in Korea - and featuring a veteran of the Korean War as the father!).
The sepia-tinged air is created, in part, by Suh Ji-moon's translation. While it's very well written and highly effective, there is a deliberate choice of old-fashioned vocabulary and syntax. I was a little dubious at the start, but as the novel progressed, I could see how it was a deliberate stylistic choice, distancing the reader (and narrator) from the action and fixing the setting as a very different time and place. It won't be to everyone's tastes, but I suspect that it reflects the intentions of the original very well.
In The House with a Sunken Courtyard, Kim has recreated a slice of history, a photographic record (in black and white, of course) of a fascinating period in his country's history. Anyone with an interest in Korea will enjoy reading about the struggles people faced after the war and the way in which they began to come to terms with the new world order of living in a state separated by ideology. While it's not the best of the Library of Korean Literature books I've read so far, it's a certainly one I'd recommend, a sombre reminder that the country wasn't always a high-tech marvel...
With 2014 seemingly becoming the year of Korean literature here at Tony's Reading List, I'm continuing my look at Dalkey Archive's Library of Korean Literature. Today's choice is from a very well-known and popular writer, and after a few novels, this time we're looking at a collection of short stories. What's it all about? Well, many things, but mostly it looks at growing old in a changing society - and the problems this entails...
*****
Park Wan-suh's Lonesome You (translated by Elizabeth Haejin Yoon, review copy courtesy of the publisher) contains nine longish stories focusing primarily on issues the elderly face in modern-day Korea. From love in life's twilight years to dealing with the in-laws, Park examines the way changing traditions have left the older generations adrift, at the mercy of relatives who no longer feel quite as much veneration for the elderly as was previously the case.
Several of the stories look at the realities of striking up new relationships at an advanced age. The opening story, 'Withered Flower', sees a widow meet a handsome widower on a coach journey back to Seoul, gradually developing a close friendship with him. However, there are a couple of obstacles in the way. One is the determination of overbearing family members to push the two into marriage; the other is slightly more personal:
"I strutted out of the bathroom into the adjoining bedroom naked - moments like this undoubtedly being one of the perks of living alone . I threw a small towel under my feet to catch the water dripping from my body and reached for the phone. Then I froze in mid-action. Who was that hideous old woman? I almost screamed out loud at the reflection in the mirror."
'Withered Flower', p.26 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
It's an unwelcome reality check for a woman who prides herself on her appearance...
The title story, 'Lonesome You', takes a slightly different look at the topic as it explores the life of a couple who have virtually separated. Meeting at their son's graduation, the two escape from the son's girlfriend's interfering parents, ending up alone together for the first time in a while. Initially the wife is repelled by the man she is tied to by law, but she gradually starts to realise why he has turned out as he has and the extent of his sacrifices for the family. While his actions may have angered her at times, she comes to realise that he was always thinking of what was best for his wife and their children.
Unlike the protagonists of these stories though, some of the elderly characters are dependent on their families, and the responsibility of caring for parents is a common theme running through the collection. In 'Psychedelic Butterfly', an old woman frequently shuttled between her children's houses runs away, and the children feel guilty about their inability to decide what to do:
"This world was too, too small, and allowed all kinds of associations. One could always find a link, however remote, among relatives, school friends, and hometown acquaintances. Even a bottom feeder and a top dog were connected in some way, if one searched hard enough."
'An Unbearable Secret' (p.97)
It's this societal pressure which makes things so difficult. Everyone expects the eldest son to take on the responsibility of caring for a widowed mother, and when this doesn't happen, people start to talk...
This guilt is also prominent in 'Long Boring Movie', a story in which a woman recalls her mother's last days while planning her father's move to an apartment close to hers. In this story, her brother is constantly making biting remarks, tacitly accusing his sister of having an eye on his inheritance - despite the fact that he has no intention of looking after his father himself. This eldest son's pressure is actually mirrored in the father's behaviour as the daughter starts to think that his wandering eye may have stemmed from the pressure he felt as the head of the family.
A slightly different theme which appears in Lonesome You is the connection between Korea and the United States, with several of the stories featuring tales of emigrants in, or coming back from, America. 'Thorn inside Petals', a story of two elderly sisters, first looks at the bizarre behaviour of an elderly ex-pat before showing us how she made her way in the US. This sombre tale is nicely balanced by 'J-1 Visa', the light-hearted story of a Korean writer desperately trying to get a visa to attend a seminar in the US, one which turns into an amusing rant about colonialism...
There's a lot to interest the reader here, particularly in its view of a male-dominated, patriarchal society, but Lonesome You is certainly not my favourite of the series so far. For one thing, the stories tend to be overly long, unfocused and rambling. The nine stories are spread over 250 pages, and to be honest, you get the feeling that they would have been much better if they'd only run to 150. There were a couple of times when I was simply skim-reading to get back into the flow of the story, not something I usually do.
I'd also say that I wasn't overly convinced by the writing, whether that's the fault of the original or the translation. There were too many odd vocabulary choices, and at times it all felt rather stilted. As a whole, it didn't really flow, and there were a couple of stories (including 'A Ball-playing Woman') which I just didn't rate at all...
An interesting comparison to make here is with the undisputed Korean hit-in-translation of recent years, Shin Kyung-sook's Please Look After Mother. Lonesome You explores many of the same themes, and if you liked Shin's book, you may well enjoy this. Of course, as my regular readers will know, I hated it with a passion, so it's unsurprising that I didn't enjoy Lonesome You as much as some others might;)
Park may be a big name back in Korea, but I'm afraid her work isn't really to my taste. There's a lot more K-Lit coming this way over the next few months, but I think I'll continue my K-Lit odyssey with someone else's books...
It's time for another selection from Dalkey Archive's Library of Korean Literature, and today's choice is a fairly recent one, a novel which looks at modern society and all the bad things that exist within it. You haven't read it? Please, no need for apologies...
*****
Lee Ki-Ho's At Least We Can Apologize (translated by Christopher J. Dykas, review copy courtesy of the publisher) starts off in a mental institute, where two men, Si-bong and our narrator Ji-man, are whiling away their days, taking their pills and packing socks for sale to the outside world. Suddenly, though, they are co-opted by a new inmate into appealing to that outside world for help, and shortly afterwards they find themselves released, free to return to their former lives.
As Ji-man has no memory of his home, the two stay with Si-bong's sister, Si-yeon, but with few skills their lack of money soon starts to bite. One thing they're very good at, however (a skill picked up in the institute), is their ability to apologise, and with the help of Si-yeon's partner, they begin a business offering their apologising skills to the public. Soon though, they discover that a case they've been offered, one involving a man who abandoned his family, might just be a little more than they can cope with...
The book revolves around a very clever idea. For two men with limited intelligence trying to reintegrate into society, the only thing they really have to offer is a keen sense of the idea of 'wrongs' and apologies. It may sound bizarre at first, but it's a service that is more in demand than you may think, particularly when you consider that everyone has something to hide if they look hard enough.
These 'skills' were first developed at the institute, and much of the important action happens there, mostly in the form of flashbacks. It's here that the casual tone is interrupted by the brutal truth of time inside:
"After we confessed a wrong, we always made sure to commit it. That was on account of feeling unsettled after having the confession in our heads all day long. So, on days we said we didn't take our medicine, we really threw it away instead of taking it. On days we said we'd cursed the superintendent in the bathroom, we really cursed him, We made sure to commit exactly the wrongs we confessed, and only those wrongs. Only that way could we ease our minds and sleep soundly."
p.26 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
In fact, the inmates are persecuted by the 'caretakers', and these confessions are accompanied by savage beatings. The abuse doesn't stop there though - the two friends are also used to cover up some inconvenient occurrences...
Lee uses a deliberately understated, neutral style, one excellently conveyed in English by Dykas, and we can only infer that this is meant to be representative of the limited intelligence of the narrator. Despite this, there's often a surprisingly dark humour running though the novel too - as when Jin-man thinks back to the institute's superintendent:
"Sometimes he would suggest we put on a play. He said that it would help our treatment. We were always the mother, and the superintendent was always the child being spanked. The dialogue was always the same: We would spank the superintendent on the behind with a pointer while shouting, "That's it?! Is that the best you can do?!" Then the superintendent would yell out loudly, "Mother! Mother, please, more! Hit me more!" With his behind facing us, raised high into the air, sometimes he would even start to bawl. Then, when the play was over, he would give us chocolate milk or a yogurt drink." (p.45)
Even in telling us this story, Jin-man doesn't blink an eyelid...
Having developed a tough mental shell, the two friends are able to carry out their apologies and are surprisingly effective at manipulating people into using their services. It's not an easy job though. You see, apologising involves taking whatever action is deemed necessary to right the wrong, and the bigger the wrong, the more drastic the action required to right it. The case which they take on involves a pretty big wrong, and the price of the apology seems far too high. However, this is where a bit of lateral thinking comes in handy - sometimes thinking differently can be a distinct advantage.
At Least We Can Apologize is a clever, cutting look at society seen through the eyes of an outsider. While Jin-man and Si-bong are treated like little children, when you see all the sex, violence and abuse happening around them, you begin to wonder. At times, it's difficult to decide who the crazy ones really are in this novel.
It's an interesting story, one which ends ambiguously in many ways. As mentioned, Lee has done an excellent job in constructing Jin-man's voice, allowing him to manipulate the reader's opinions of the main characters. Despite the signposting and clues, the way matters come to a head is still a rude shock. It seems that no matter how much you apologise, in the modern world, you just can't trust anyone.
I'm sorry about that - I really am...
After going back to the 1930s for my first dip into Dalkey Archive's Library of Korean Literature, a balancing look at modern Korea seemed like a good idea. My second book from the series then was a contemporary novel exploring communication, or a lack of it, in everyday life - and this one was a big hit :)
*****
Jang Eun-jin's No One Writes Back (translated by Jung Yewon, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is the story of a young man who has been travelling aimlessly for the past three years, with only his dog, Wajo, for company. Every day, he leaves the motel he's slept at, randomly chooses a direction and sees what the day will bring. If it brings a conversation with a stranger (and if the stranger agrees to swap addresses), then they are added to the traveller's mental database, each being given a number.
Each night, before going to bed, our friend writes a letter about his day, either to his family or one of his collection of encounters; sadly, every time he calls a friend back home to find out if he's had any replies, the answer is always in the negative. This long-running routine is interrupted one day though when a woman the traveller sees on an underground train decides to follow him - the woman he is to dub 751 thus becomes the first person to join him in his travels...
No One Writes Back is a wonderful little book, simple, subtle and very enjoyable. The writer starts off by giving the reader very few details, showing us an anonymous man free of ties. As the novel progresses, information is introduced gradually, making for a perfectly-paced story where the reader is never quite sure where the book is going (but is quite happy to be along for the ride).
The traveller sees himself as a collector of stories, writing down anecdotes about the people he meets every day, a task which has become an integral part of his travels:
"Words penned while traveling do not lie; they're not for showing off, but for making you reflect on, and take care of, yourself."
p.8 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
His letters are merely the outward manifestation of his thoughts. Each of the random, fleeting encounters is stored away in his impressive memory, waiting to be recalled when needed.
We slowly learn more about the young man and his situation (even learning his name eventually). For some unknown reason, he is unable to put up with living at home, constant seizures under his own roof forcing him to keep moving on a seemingly never-ending trip around the country. In his mind, he is waiting for something to end his travels, and he suspects that this might be a letter, a reply to one of the many he has sent during his journey. However, as we well know, no one writes back...
This is where the woman comes in, an itinerant writer peddling her latest novel, Toothpaste and Soap. Like the young man, she is travelling for a reason, in her case to gather ideas for a new book. Curious (and a little nosy...), she desperately wants to know more about the traveller and becomes an interruption, welcome or unwelcome, in an otherwise smooth journey. She is 751, but who is he? She decides, using his own logic, that he must be 0, a very apt, and enigmatic, choice.
In No One Writes Back, numbers are extremely important (the book itself is divided into 152 short chapters). The traveller is able to categorise people thanks to his amazing memory, allocating everyone a number and then writing to them when the time comes. This focus on numbers comes partly from the young man's mother - as he recalls when thinking of childhood:
"But more than that, you believed that all the truth in the world could be found in math. All creations are numbers. That was your philosophy in life." (p.48)
Gradually, however, we move away from the rational, logical world of numbers and into the realm of feelings and words, and as we do, we see a very different side to the traveller.
Even more than numbers though, it's the letters which define the novel. In a digital world, our hero is an analogue man, preferring to commit his experiences to paper:
"I write letters because I want to convey to someone the stories of these people, but also because I want to let someone know that a day had existed for me as well. Letters, in other words, are like journal entries to me. The only difference is that the day does not stay with me, but is sent to someone else. Journals are monopolized, but letters are shared." (p.13)
He clings to the hope that one of his letters will garner a reply, and when his hopes are dashed time and time again, the reader feels just as crushed as he does. There is a far greater significance to the letters though, one which only becomes apparent towards the end of the novel.
No One Writes Back is a wonderful story and expertly paced, with Jang drip-feeding new information at exactly the right point each time. It's written in a very smooth, simple style, and the translation appears to be excellent, making for a fluent, enjoyable read. There's more than a hint of the Murakamis about the book, particularly his early work. The start of the novel, with the loner main character calling his friend every day, is especially reminiscent of The Trilogy of the Rat. Jang has her own style though, and the way she develops the relationship with the woman is excellently done - and even Wajo, the dog, has his own story :) Towards the end, things get a little manipulative, but the events of the book never seem contrived and make for a wonderful finish.
The idea of the Library of Korean Literature is a great one; it draws people's attention and gets people to try several books, trusting that the publishers have picked a good selection of works. One flaw though is that a really good book can be buried under the idea of the series, and I hope that doesn't happen here. No One Writes Back is a wonderful read, one which deserves a higher profile. It's a book which most people would enjoy, finely balanced as it is between literary quality and readability. I'm not sure if it's going to catch the eye of IFFP or BTBA judges (although Michael Orthofer did recently sing its praises), but it's definitely one for lovers of translated fiction to look out for :)
New literary projects are always fun, and I think I may have just found another one. I recently received several books from Dalkey Archive which form part of their ambitious Library of Korean Literature project. Ten of the books are already out, and the overall plan is to release twenty five(!) in the space of a year.
Dalkey are doing this in partnership with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, an organisation which appears to be impressively aggressive in promoting K-Lit (see, for example, the recently promoted free translations of twentieth-century short stories).
K-Lit is a fairly new area for me, so you might expect the journey to start off slowly - perhaps with a short-story collection, or maybe a modern novella...
Really? You should know me better than that by now ;)
*****
Yi Kwang-su is one of the big names in early twentieth-century Korean literature, and The Soil (translated by Hwang Sun-ae and Horace Jeffery Hodges) is a big book. The novel, a story of life in the country and city in pre-WW2 Korea, runs to just over 500 pages and was serialised in a Korean newspaper in 1932/3. This edition keeps to the structure of the serialisation, with each of the 272 sections, divided into four parts, taking up less than two pages.
The story follows Heo Sung, a student from the country, who is in Seoul hoping to become a lawyer. After an enjoyable summer at home, he makes plans to return to his village after graduating, hoping to make a difference to the poor farmers - and marry the charming Yu Sun. However, life has different plans for him. After the death of the son and heir of Sung's patron in Seoul, the young lawyer is chosen as a suitable groom for the daughter, Yun Jeong-seong, ending up with a beautiful wife, a lucrative profession and a lot of money.
A happy ending? Not exactly. Sung is unsettled in his new life, and his marriage is not as happy as he might have hoped. His wife is a vain, shallow creation of the big city, and she soon grows to despair of her hard-working, honest husband. After one argument too many, Sung decides that enough is enough and heads back home to Salyeoul. It's time to put his idealistic plans into action...
The Soil is a big book, one with an array of interesting characters and several ambitious ideas. At its centre is an honest man in a moribund, corrupt society, a dreamer who wants to make his homeland a better place. After his initial slip, Sung works hard to improve life for his home village, using his money to improve farming methods and help free the locals from the shackles of perpetual debt. He dreams of a bucolic Korean utopia, hoping to raise living standards for all.
It's not going to be easy though when even those he wants to help are suspicious of his motives. The farmers find it hard to understand why someone would choose to leave the city behind (and the administrators are rather suspicious of his motives, suspecting anti-government behaviour...). Sung's pro-Korean fervour is also anachronistic as this is the height of the Japanese colonial era; the educated elite look down on the masses and hunt elsewhere for inspiration. With ignorant locals, poverty everywhere and totally outdated beliefs in areas such as traditional medicine, it's hardly unsurprising.
The writer's views on the possible effects of foreign influence are shown in two of Sung's rivals in love. Kim Gap-jin, another suitor hoping for Jeong-seong's hand, is a rich Japanese toadie and an arrogant womaniser, a man who looks east to Tokyo for excellence in all matters:
"There's also a Department of Korean Literature at your university, isn't there?" said Sung, who had not yet given up on leading Gap-jin in a certain direction.
"Yes. There's the department of Korean Literature. I really don't know what students learn there. I think literature is useless anyway. And to study Korean literature? Even worse. I don't understand the motives of anybody admitted to a prestigious university who studies Korean literature."
p.48 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013)
This is typical of his attitude towards his mother country; he loathes the Korean language (and its primitive Hangul 'scribbles'), preferring to use Japanese whenever possible.
The second of Sung's rivals, Dr. Lee Geon-yeong, takes his inspiration from another source. At the start of the novel, he has just returned from ten years in America, having completed his PhD. However, beneath his smooth exterior and his claims to bring back new ideas, he is shown to be an inveterate skirt- and money-chaser, a heartless user. Like Gap-jin, he treats women terribly, behaving contrary to the dictates of traditional Korean customs.
While the womanisers have their moments, for me the most interesting aspects of the novel are those examining the Japanese colonial administration. Sung and Gap-jin are typical of the new governing class under the Japanese, sailing off to Tokyo to take law exams before returning to govern the country in the name of the invaders. It's fascinating when read against what was being published in Japan at the time - a sort of colonial shadow side of J-Lit (a good example of this is the plan the waster Kobayashi has in Natsume Soseki's Light and Dark to make his fortune in Korea...).
The colonial side reminds me a lot of what was happening in Ireland and England in the 19th century, where the elite Irish youth were incorporated into the system to become administrators of the Empire (Trollope's Phineas Finn is a book which comes to mind immediately). In fact, once you start thinking about connections with Victorian literature, it's easy to find more. The exploitation of workers brings Gaskell's North and South to mind while the tough life of the poor farm workers is fairly Hardyesque:
"Of this grain planted and harvested by the people, half would go to the storehouses of the landlord. The other half would pass through storehouses of several debtors for transport by car and ship providing dealers their profits before ending up as food or alcohol in the mouths of people who had never worked in fields or seen their reflection in the water. But those who had worked so hard in the fields, using their bodies as fertilizer, would remain forever poor, forever servants in debt, and forever hungry." (pp.92/3)
You might even say that these were hard times... ;)
The Soil is an excellent story with lots to recommend it, but it is a product of a different time and place, so a modern reader might struggle at times. It can be rather didactic and overplain, and it is frequently extremely melodramatic - the bad are cartoonishly bad, the good are far too good. Sung, a man who is apparently able to withstand anything, eventually wins over everyone in his presence, including characters we thought too far gone to bring back. At times, it seems a bit a little too much of a stretch...
While the writing is not always as perfect as you might wish, this is a book I enjoyed immensely. It's a novel which will be perfect for readers with an interest in Asia, post-colonial history or the fraught relationship between Korea and Japan - and it was the ideal start to my Korean literary journey. Let's see where the next leg takes me ;)
