서울에서 책읽기 6: Paul Yoon 의 단편에서

The Best American Short Stories 2006 에는 20편의 단편이 실려 있다.

시리즈 에디터 Katrina Kenison 이 2005년도에 300여 간행물에 발표된

3000여 단편을 읽고 선정한 120편의 단편 중에서 에디터 Ann Patchett 가

다시 가려뽑은 것들이다. 맨 앞에 놓인 단편이 한인계 미국 작가 Paul

Yoon 의 "Once the Shore" 이다 (그 까닭은 아래 인용글에).

우연히 이 책에서 Paul Yoon 의 첫 발표작을 읽게 되었는데, 그의 첫

소설(중편) Snow Hunter 를 작년엔가 읽은 것도 역시 우연이었다.

방에 걸린 조그만 그림 -- 유화거나 수채화거나 -- 같은 느낌의 소설들이

있다. 지금 내게 떠오르는 그런 소설이 Snow Hunters 와 George Eliot 의

Silas Marner 이다. 두 소설의 이미지가 내게는 어떤 면에서 딞았다는

건데, 다른 독자에게는 어떨지 모르겠다.

BASS 06 의 Foreword 와 Introduction 에서 몇 구절과, 읽기 시작하면서

금방 Paul Yoon 의 문체와 그 매력이 느껴지던, "Once the Shore" 의

시작하는 부분 아주 조금을 적어본다.

Katrina Kenison, Foreword 에서:

One evening a writer friend arrived with Hemingway under her arm, and after the dishes were cleared she put her glasses on and turned to "Big Two-Hearted River." "The river was there," she read, and we leaned in closer around the table.... Half an hour later, the final words hanging in the air, we knew that we'd just experienced something lovely and profound -- the power of stories to lift us up and out of our everyday lives and deposit us on distant shores, and then to return us, startled, enriched, and changed somehow, to our own familiar surroundings.

In the same way, the best stories I've read over these years have seemed to require nearly as much as of me, the reader, as of the writer, a kind of passionate engagement that challenges not only my intellect but my humanity. Reading, reading actively, strengthens the soul.

The best stories were often hard to find, but they were always easy to spot.

Ann Patchett, Introduction 에서:

I've been reading a lot of short stories lately, and the very large majority of them have been shockingly good. They are better than the novels I've been reading. They are more daring, more artful, and more original.

I believe it is human nature to try and persuade others that our most passionately held beliefs are true so that they too can know the joy of our deepest convictions.

By reversing the alphabet, Paul Yoon's beautiful story once the Shore," which is the first story he published and the first story I picked for this collection, floated effortlessly up to the front.

Paul Yoon 의 단편 'once the Shore," 시작 부분:

On this partcular evening the woman told the waiter about her husband's hair: parted on his right and combed finely so that each strand shone like amber from the shower he took prior to meeting her for their evening walks. "There was a time," the woman said, "when he bathed for me and me alone." She knew his hair -- its length, smell, and color -- long before she knew the rest of him.... When she opened the door it was what she noticed first. And in the heat of the remaining sun, she swore you could see a curtain of mist rising from the peak of his thin head.

At this she laughed quietly and almost at once grew silent and looked out toward the distant hills and the coast where, long after sunset, the East China Sea lay undulant, its surface of silver reflections folding over one another like the linking of fingers.

Paul Yoon 의 첫 소설 "Snow Hunters" 표지: