Regular readers may have heard of Asia Publishers through my reviews of a couple of their Modern Korean Literature Bilingual Edition books (I Live in Bongcheon-dong, The Road to Sampo), but they recently added a new series to their collection. Where the first series focused on some of the older writers on the Korean scene, the recently announced K-Fiction Series looks at stories by the next generation - and the first one I looked at was by a writer whose name is rather familiar :)
*****
Park Min-gyu's Dinner with Buffett (translated by Jeon Sung-hee, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a story featuring American finance guru Warren Buffett, an endearingly bizarre tale which looks at a day in the life of the wizard of the stock market, one he's unlikely to forget in a hurry. After a meeting with the American President in which they discuss peculiar developments, he rushes back to New York for dinner with the winner of a charity auction.
You'd expect a man who's shelled out big bucks to eat with Buffett to be eager to get some insights into his financial dealings. In fact, the winner, a young Korean man, just seems happy to share dinner with the great man, with no ulterior motive. Something's not quite right here...
My last look at Park's work was the excellent Pavane for a Dead Princess, and this is another wonderful piece. The story takes a look at the contemporary world and wonders if there's an alternative to the soulless neoliberal state we find ourselves in. The reason Buffett has been summoned to Washington is that the President has become aware of a threat (one the reader is not entirely privy to) - all we know is that 'they' are coming, and that their values are very different to those the two men share.
It seems a rather unusual threat, but for people like Buffett this is scarier than any alien invasion, the idea of money having little value. On the plane back, he reminisces about his beginnings, a time which may be about to fade into history:
"He thought that people were like sailors on a ship, sailing across time itself, and that he had been living in the great age of investment. That age was not yet over. But he also wondered if he was perhaps still carrying out the business of the past century, the sweet flavor of which had already vanished. He was still chewing his gum."
pp.19/21 (Asia Publishers, 2014)
Little does he know that his first encounter with 'them' is just around the corner...
Ahn, the winning bidder for the meal, is not the kind of person Buffett was expecting, and the dinner doesn't exactly run as he would have expected either. The winning bid is a six-figure sum, but when we find out where it came from, the great financier isn't the only one to get a surprise. With Ahn seemingly uninterested in pumping Buffett for financial knowledge, it all seems a waste... Why did he come to the dinner? Is he happy with the choices he's made?
"I'm fine thanks,"
And then,
"And you?" (p.67)
It's a question that Buffett might need some time to ponder.
Dinner with Buffett is a rather topical story (the traffic jam Buffett runs into on the way to dinner is caused by Occupy protests); in a post-GFC climate, it's a story looking at a possible post-capitalist ideology. The idea is that if enough people turn their backs on chasing the dollar, great things could happen - the way to shake bankers from their complacency is to simply ignore them... It's an intriguing idea, although I'm not sure quite how feasible it is. What's certain is that this is a wonderful story, with Jeong Sung-hee's translation bringing the deceptively casual tone across nicely. Definitely a piece that makes you wonder if it really is that easy to change the world...
*****
The new K-Fiction series has kicked off with five stories by young writers. It has the same format as the Modern Korean Fiction series, with the text in both Korean and English, plus an analysis at the end of the book (the only difference is that the covers are more colourful!). If you're interested in the rest of the series, all five have already been reviewed over at Korean Literature in Translation. I have another two to read and review, so I'm sure you'll be seeing more about them over here at some point too.
But wait - there's more... In Seoul, on the 13th of December, there's an opportunity to meet all five authors at a special event. You can check out this link for all the details - including the fact that it's free! This is an excellent chance to get up close and personal with some of the rising stars of K-Lit, so congratulations to Asia Publishers, Barry Welsh and Charles Montgomery for getting the show on the road.
When you add this kind of event to the great things the Literature Translation Institute of Korea has been doing recently, you can see that this is an exciting time for Korean literature in translation. If any of this sounds like your kind of thing, why not get on board? I'm sure 2015 is going to be just as big as this year has been, with lots of exciting events in store - stay tuned for details ;)
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 :)
