Tsunamic Climax in Korean Novel

Chatting at a well at night. Painting by Hyewon, circa 1805 (late Joseon period). Photo: [Public Domain] via Wikimedia.

No One Writes Back by Eun-Jin Jang

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel was recommended to me by a friend (who is of Korean descent), after discussing my enjoyment of Han Kang's The Vegetarian. The Library of Korean Literature brings modern Korean novels to an English-reading audience (much like the Japan Library). This novel was translated by Jung Yewon.

The protagonist reminds me of the main character in The Rosie Project, but this is a more serious work. The paragraphs are numbered, and I found the structure to be unusual.

I recall in high school English how we would map the trajectory of a novel's plot, from the build up to the climax and the anti-climax. This novel builds up slowly, and I recall thinking it wasn't very good. The basic story line is a seemingly autistic man in his thirties who has broken up with his girlfriend, quit his job as a postman, and travels randomly from town to town with his late grandfather's seeing-eye dog who is old and blind. 

As he meets people on his journey, the protagonist asks them for their address, he then assigns them a number (he is much better at numbers than names), and sends them a letter during his journey. He meets a woman he wishes to be rid of but he helps her sell her novels on the various subways and they stay in motels as they both travel around. He will end his journey when one of his travelling numbers writes back.

After a while, this becomes a bit tedious, but interesting in that one has to know where it is going. The lead-up to the climax is long and drawn out and in the last few pages, the climax brings a tsunami of emotion that still haunts me. I was stricken with sadness, grief, bliss (in the religious sense), and wonder.

Had I given up on the novel, I would have missed out on a wonderful story, the likes of which I have never read in Anglo literature.

I am pleased that organisations such as Japan Library and the Korean Library of Literature are bringing contemporary works from these countries to English readers. There is a long list of other contemporary Korean novels that I am sure are worth a look.

It is not so much that there is much difference in the lives of Korean towns (indeed, I often thought of similar experiences in places like Hong Kong), but the way the story unfolds. It edges towards suggestive at times, but is never lewd, it is close to grunge but not in a dark, Bukowskian (or even Carverian) way, it touches on poverty, but you never feel the characters lack anything.

The more I think about it, the lead up to the climax is all middle ground. There are no real humps or bumps, it just flows along like a three-year long journey. But when something brings the journey to an end, all is revealed in a matter of pages. 

It is like being lulled into a false sense of security that is suddenly pulled out from under you. Like a flash flood or an unexpected tsunami. This is a powerful story, and the second contemporary Korean novel I have read. There is much to be gained from reading outside of the Anglo-European tradition, and from what I have read so far, Korean literature is fast becoming a new favourite genre for me.

Raymond Carver's Grunge Iceberg

Raymond Carver. Photo by Anthony Easton [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading this collection of short stories had me thinking of two other authors: Hemingway, for his iceberg principle; and Bukowski, for his grunginess. Not like Kerouac, for there is a definite late 1960s/early 1970s feel to the characters and situations, and not quite as grungy as Bukowski, but certainly Hemingway-esque in the way the story doesn't leave you for some time after reading. I think, too, that Carver's work does to the imagination what Hemingway's iceberg principle does, but on steroids.

Hemingway left enough for the imagination, and at times I would read commentary on his work and discover something I had missed. But with Carver, I have read commentaries that envision his stories as they are written. In many, I found my imagination unresolved, wondering what happened next, what was meant, but delightfully bewildered all the same.

I knew little about Carver and chose the book because I like the Vintage Classics series. After reading, I went to The Paris Review and the Poetry Foundation to see what else I could learn about Carver. From his late interviews, he appears rather Stoic (as opposed to stoic) in his philosophy, and humble in that he worked for most of his life and only achieved fame much later.

I was also impressed by his gratitude towards his partner, fellow poet Tess Gallagher, who would read and provide feedback on Carver's work after the fourth draft. Gallagher is now in her mid-70s and has a book of poetry to be released in 2019.

I recall Scott Fitzgerald commenting that nobody wanted to read about poor people, but Carver writes about lower-middle class people who end up realising that they won't ever really get ahead. I could feel the grunge from my 1970s childhood in his stories, even though geographically I was on the other side of the world and so young.

What I like about Carver's work is that it takes me back to a time that is somewhat familiar, and much harder to glorify. Conversely, Hemingway's era was so long ago that it is all new. Carver's era has a touch of sentimentality (for me), but his subjects are such that there is less nostalgia, more "things are different now yet somehow the same".

Carver's subjects are not rags to riches or riches to rags stories; they are people striving to be more than they are and then becoming bankrupt or divorced or alcoholic or just downright strange as they do what they do. There is no real political statement in his work, rather a social commentary, stemming from his own upbringing.

These are wonderful stories and I enjoyed the way Carver makes my imagination work, even to the point of frustration. I also like that there is no way to find out what he really meant - he meant for the reader to reach their own conclusion.

This work would have made my day in high school English. Whenever we were asked what the author meant in a particular work, I would become frustrated with the teacher telling us and say something like "How are we supposed to know that. Did you ask them?" I've heard this same rot from my students! 

But there appears to be an absence of hidden meaning and morality in Carver's work. In his own words, literature is "superior amusement", and maybe with a hint of spirituality. I found the grunginess of the stories frighteningly familiar, as if all of my embarrassing failures in life had been recorded and put into a collection of short stories.

That, I believe is what Carver does best. He captures the lives of ordinary battlers and uses his experiences and the stories he has heard from others as the baseline for a work of fiction, fiction that is true enough to be real but fictional enough not to be true.

If ever there was a genre that combined Hemingway's and Bukowski's styles, then this is it. Apparently, Carver didn't like his style being referred to as "minimalist". I wonder how he would feel about "grunge iceberg"?

Alexander's Afghan Campaign: Learning History from Fiction

The marriage of Alexander the Great with Roxana of Bactria (in 327BCE), painting circa 1670-1733 by Gerard Hoet (1648-1733). Photo: [CC0] via Wikimedia.

The Afghan Campaign by Steven Pressfield

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Steven Pressfield is one of my most favourite contemporary authors of fiction. I have read Gates of Fire and Tides of War and learnt much about history as a consequence.

The Afghan Campaign is a gripping read and it doesn't end how one might want it to. I respect the ending more so than if it had been Disneyfied (even though I secretly hoped it would). 

Pressfield does not offer a political commentary on the Afghan campaign, but, as in his other works of historical fiction, places a fictional individual in the midst of history's great people (in this case, Alexander III of Macedon). The format works well and gives enough creative licence to enable a ripping story to emerge from a background of recorded history.

Pressfield's historical research is admirable. I read Gates of Fire before I began writing personal notes about every book I read. But before reading Tides of War, I finished Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. This meant that  I was able to be reminded of key events covered by Thucydides in Pressfield's account of Athens' Sicilian Campaign.

While I have not done so yet, I intend to read Robin Lane Fox's Alexander the Great soon to see how this novel stacks up. But I don't think it matters.

Pressfield is certainly brilliant, and I must admit to liking the way he has worked hard to overcome his own demons. He gives me hope that I can do the same.

I also like that Pressfield is a bit of an underdog. His work is brilliant - I enjoy his work more than Wilbur Smith's (who has also written the odd historical novel or two). But there is something more philosophical about Pressfield that grabs my attention. On his website, he has this to say:

We can’t control the level of talent we’ve been given. We have no control over the nature of our gift. What we can control is our self-motivation, our self-discipline, our self-validation, and our self-reinforcement.

In 2012, Pressfield started his own publishing house, Black Irish Books, with his agent, Shawn Coyne. I have been critical of literary entrepreneurs in the past, but Pressfield is no "spring chicken", and claims to have written for 27 years before anything he wrote was published. This counters Einstein's view that:

A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so.

Anything that goes against Einstein's view  is a winner for me. Although some suggest Einstein didn't quite mean it this way, I have heard so many others use Einstein's words (without acknowledging him) and even judgements about people based on their age, that Pressfield's example gives me some comfort. (Some studies suggest that the age peak is now much older because one couldn't even catch up with the existing literature by age 30, let alone discover new knowledge.)

So this book has it all: a gripping story from an author with a back story that defies the odds. And it is based on historical research that provides an increase in historical knowledge as a side effect. What more could one want in a novel?