"Beasts of A Little Land" | "너는 모른다"

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Juhea Kim, "Beasts of A Little Land: A Novel" (2021)

 

Bethanne Patrick Reviews Juhea Kim's "Beasts of A Little Land"

 

NPR Weekend All Things Considered interview: Juhea Kim

 

미국의 젊은 한인 작가 Juhea Kim의 데뷰작으로 'The Yasnaya Polyana Literary Award for Foreign Literature' 를 수상했다. 'Prologue: 1917년 The Hunter (평안도) 사냥꾼'에서 시작해서 'Epilogue: 1965년 The Seawoman (제주도) 해녀"로 끝나는 이 소설을, 읽기 시작하면서는  Min Jin Lee의 "Pachinko"를 떠올렸는데, 다 읽고 나니 Vasily Grossman의 "Life and Fate"가 생각난다. 수상작답다.

 

아래는 책에서:

 

   There were countless cafés in Seoul, and each had its own following. The businessmen and pro-Japanese wealthy went to Café Vienna; the Nationalists went to Café Terrace; the Communists went to the Yellow Horse; the students and the artists went to Café Gitane; and the Japanese went to their own cafés, run by the Japanese. But everyone who was known in society went to Café Seahorn, which was owned by a young bourgeois poet.

[....]

   "So what does the name mean? Seahorn," Lotus asked him, awash in her first taste of whiskey.

[....]

   "It's the sound of ships. When I was a student, I once traveled to Busan on my own. I lived in a boardinghouse near the harbor for a month, just reading and writing from morning until nightfall. After dark, I would light a candle to keep going, and it was possible to believe that there was nothing in the world except myself and my books. It felt like my room was the cabin of a ship, somewhere out in the middle of the ocean. And every afternoon between three and four P.M., there would be the sound of the ships at the dock. The big ship would go, BOO---BOOOO ... and the smaller ones would answer, Doo---doooo ... Those ship horns made me happier than I'd ever felt in my life. (pp. 243-245)

 

The world feels like an oil painting rather than a photograph, and the dreamers are forever seeing hidden colors where others just see the top shade. (p. 275)

 

She cried with abandon, with determination. She cried like a woman who needed to dissolve in order to be remade. (p. 353)

 

She'd always been this way, candid and kind --- he remembered with a rush of fondness. (p. 378)

 

   The book isn't meant to declare the triumph of one ideology or country over another, but to reflect and uphold our shared humanity. Suffering knows no borders, and all people deserve and yearn for peace. (in Acknowledgments, p. 403)

 

 

 

 

 

정이현, "너는 모른다" (2009)

 

엉뚱하게도 표현했구나 싶던 한 구절이 생각난다: "결코 외톨이인 줄 모르는 외톨이. 빛 없는 선반 위에 따로 보관된 통조림처럼 안전하고 유일한 개체."

 

 

("Beasts of A Little Land"는 본문이 399쪽이고 "너는 모른다"는 486쪽이다. 어느 소설이 '더' 장편일까? 읽은 느낌으론, 내용의 영향도 있겠지만, "Beasts"다. 단어수로 따져보니 역시 그렇다.  대강 계산해보니, "너는 모른다"는 단어밀도(쪽당 단어 수)를 "Beasts"와 같게 하면 310쪽이 되고, 반대로, "너는"의 단어밀도에 맞춘 "Beast"는 620쪽이 된다.)