nanoomi

If you enjoy a sour drink, consider drinking it straight. Otherwise, mix it with your favorite sparkling water or club soda. (Tammy Quackenbush photo)

Even though we live in an age where bartenders are now called mixologists — makes them sound more scientific, doesn’t it? — many are finding inspiration in the old ways of mixing drinks by creating their own tinctures, bitters and infusions.

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A reader asks about humorous translations of Korean literature (LOL, by which I actually mean translations of Korean humorous literature, not translations that make us laugh). As I make my list of translations of this kind of literature, I note how short it is. My list is complete at only three stories, and in all three stories what comes across most is situational humor/irony and not a deeper level of conceptual humor or verbal humor:

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NOTE: This article was published in a slightly different form in 10 Magazine

If you’ve worked your way through all of Stieg Larsson and the Twilight series is beginning to become predictable (Find neck, insert teeth. Repeat as necessary)? Then it’s time to delve into Korean literature. And there is no better time than now. As few as two decades ago, translated Korean Modern fiction was a dreary procession, tramping slowly but completely over the same dusty terrain: Colonialization, the Korean War;  traumas of the political war that followed, and; the social and economic price of industrialization. A western reader, picking these books up and glancing over them, could easily be forgiven for putting them down with a shudder, and taking up less troublesome affairs like grave-robbing or self-mutilation.

For Western readers without knowledge of Korean culture and history, anything published before 1980 might seem a bit archaic and/or opaque. Having spent the first half of last century under the boot of the Japanese colonialists, and the latter half engaged either in an active or passive civil war, Korean modern literature has tended to grimness; combining the light-hearted joi-de-vivre of black-and-white Holocaust documentaries with a pronounced fratricidal tone that the Khmer Rouge would have immediately embraced. Unless you are a fan of history, or uncontrollable weeping, this is the literature to look past.

But a new wave (Hello Hallyu!) of Korean writers (and a sprinkling of evergreen perennials) has put much of that in the past, either moving on to new topics, or melding old topics to themes and stories that English readers can read and enjoy.

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The Portable Library of Korean Literature • Short Fiction • 14 • Jimoondang Publishing • Seoul

I read my first stories of Kim Yu-Jeong while concurrently reading the essay Extravagance and Authenticity by Kim Uchang. This proved an interesting set of readings as the essay and the stories focus on romantic love.

Kim Uchang’s essay follows the development of “free-love” as a new cultural artifact in Korea at the start of the 20th century. He is particularly interested (his modern politics, perhaps, showing) in demonstrating that this notion was external, initially quite artificial, and largely at the expense of women. Kim Uchang argues his points on the basis of the works of Yi Gwang-su, Kim Dong-in, Yeong Sang-seop (who wrote the critically noted and important “Three Generations”) and how they demonstrate the artificiality of the notion of romantic love Korea at the turn of the (previous) century.

This notion, of course, can be overplayed, since works as old as Yi-Saeng Peers Through the Wall clearly displayed a notion of romantic love untied from social status or the onus of social procedures. Yi-Saeng would have been written just about the time the crusades were going on just a bit to the west, so romantic love does have some pedigree in Korea dating back further than Kim Uchang discusses. And Kim Yu-jeong’s stories all seem to focus on a fairly pure ‘romantic’ love. I am too new at Korean fiction to assess if this is a function of how Kim Yu-jeong chose his subjects, or if Kim Uchang is over-simplifying. Updates, I suppose, to follow.

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