Like, dude.. totally sweet

Is when you go to the bookstore to try to find another Korean Lit book and the swine are out of it.

As you head down the aisle to hit your fiancee in the head for dragging you to a bookstore on a Sunday ....

... you see a brand new work from an author you love, who you assumed was dead.

So you buy it.

And despite a suspiciously limp beginning, it's good!

That's like, dude.. totally sweet!

Lost Weekend?

Nah...

Headed down to the Mike McStay benefit, which raised about 1.5 million won. Yvonne and I crashed at the usual yeogwan and shopped for books in the morning.

Normally I'm lukewarm about the bookshopping thing, but I'm working on an article. So I used Yvonne's 2-chun purchases as an excuse to snap photos like crazy. That pic on the right is the "upstairs" storage area of a bookstore in the Jung-A market. The books hide two doors which lead to even more..

well

books...

Then up to Seoul where I napped as Yvonne went (more) book shopping.

Later, we went into Itaewon and actually had fun (well, 2 beers worth for me, two cokes worth for Y) at a bar that was splendid.. except for Young Soldier X whose drug intake, crazy Cartmann reflective shades, and habit of busting into weird air-guitar poses did not add up, at all, to how annoying he was when he spilled someone else's beer and then did some kind of spastic dance in the puddles.

Morons.

As it turns out?

They are everywhere. (I just saw one in the mirror while I was shaving)

Sunday we went hunting for bookstores in Dongdaemun and after a bit of palaver, found the goldmine.

Yvonne went mad.. and I snapped pictures for the article.

Then lunch at a place we never would have stopped in, but as Yvonne pointed at the picture of Sam Gye Tang on the window, the ajumma came running out and started yapping at us in Korean. But all restaurant Korean, so I got it. She pulled us in, basically, by force of will. A good marketing approach as we had been desultorily wandering down the street apparently doomed to end up at Lotteria or Mickey D's.

As we had our Galbi Tang we watched her work the street.

Ajumma had skills... her best catch was three Ajeoshi who were wandering the street looking for food.

First time they passed she just got a bit of a word in.

Second time she flat stopped them with her flow. They sort of hovered in front of the joint for 5 minutes and then slowly walked off, with one of the three in vocal dissent.

finally, they came back down the street (the original direction they had come) and the guy who had been hectoring them, as shepherd, and the ajumma as chorus....

they found food Jesus.

Yvonne and I laughed our asses off at the positive personality this ajumma projected.

We'll be back.

The food was plentiful, not great, but the ajumma made the place rock.

Various pictures of varied importance...

This bad boy was at the Ginseng Museum in Geumsan and it is possible I posted it before? But I found it on the camera card and had to try it just one more time...

Then there is this excellent drinking establishment of which, unknown to them, I am already a member!

Finally... with the paper-writing season almost over (the papers all need to be done by the end of this month so, ready or not, here they come) I can now turn to the delicious new books I've snagged on book-buying expeditions with the OAF.

There are only a few bookstores in South Central that sell any kind of used books in English, but I think the only people who visit these stores are the OAF, TMS, and me. So there's some good stuff. For whatever reason I'm all excited about reading again.

HOLY CRAP!

Just received a rather outstanding (but tentative, in Seoul, Korean language training built in, and the possible promise of another degree) job offer that would increase my stay in Korea.

Which I don't mind terribly, if there's plenty of vacation time to visit the two friends and 2.5 family members I still love. ;-p

OAF is down with it...

Korea, love it or leave it

Exclamation point to end that sentence, or question mark?

Heh, a nice calm weekend with the OAF erased by this mental turmoil...

Bookshopping

Last weekend I went bookshopping with the OAF. We turned the corner and the outside of the bookstore looked like this



You attempt to go inside only to discover that the bookstore itself looks like this:


And that's not counting the upstairs storage rooms (in the same building, but separate) with the books pouring out the doors. If you look closely you will see the books outside are all tied in packets with ribbons. I am assuming that this so they can be pulled in and out of the storefront (and the storage upstairs) easily.

Out of all those books, probably 50 in English, and I bought two of them.

And So it begins...

Sure.. it doesn't look like much (and actually isn't), but it is the first scrawlings on the paper for Kuala Lumpur.

Gave the kiddies a big writing assignment and got bored.

With two pages of scribblings down, I feel well-started here.

;-)

Got my copy of “Land of Exile” today from Acta Korean and I am about halfway plowed through it. The title gives the contents away, though I would also say that if this book were to get a subtitle it would be “And Collaboration.”

The “exiles” are all internal in the sense that no one is being sent to Japan or Manchuria (so far) and, in fact, some of the characters have created their own exilic states whilst still firmly planted in their traditional homes. The collaborations are also various, but so far there is at least one collaborator in each short story (and one brilliantly realized ‘career’ collaborator in Chun Kangyong’s Kapitan Ri). The stories also largely share the Korean fictional love of cycles.

But as I read the book, and the cover claims it is “the” anthology of Korean translated stories, I began to wonder if anyone in Korea could write a story that wasn’t about exile and/or collaboration? I quickly realized how idiotic/backwards that question was – “hey, over here! The white guy wants a different kind of story!” The question I should have asked myself was “how freaking big has the Japanese occupation, the civil war, and the split of the country (and the essentially dual occupation that followed) been to have had this enduring effect?”

I’m trying to think of anything comparable in a European state and coming up blank.

You probably need a small country and you probably need homogenous people. But you most certainly need something that has an impact that (quite literally) sweeps back and forth across an entire country and tears every physical and social structure to pieces. The Civil War in the US? Not so much. You could pretty much avoid that out in the Northwest and in the end the country still was what the country had been. The plague in Europe? Arguable for size of impact, maybe, but not physical destruction and psychic tearing, I think – If anyone knows of something suggesting the plague had long-term destructive effects on the socio-political layout of any European country

This gets to many thing . The “rudeness” towards strangers is beyond Confucian – but it is a sensible way to act when anyone you don’t know could be a collaborator. The relative xenophobia of Korea is also an obvious result. Even the local building style – without any pretense of permanence – seems a logical outcome of such a shattering history. I wonder how far this analysis could be pressed?

It’s like if the 49ers had ever lost a Super Bowl, but like.. almost twice that big!

And who is to blame?

Cho Sehui notes that one brilliance of industrial capitalism is that it is difficult to point a finger. You can identify the crack-head, but not the systematic murderer...

“They … Who can be more specific than that? One of their characteristics is that until the day they die they won’t assume responsibility for a single thing. They all have plausible alibis. … It’s also a scheme to develop you gentlemen and your successors as human capital. Gentlemen, we are not the ends, you and I. Rather, we’ve become the means without realizing it.”

Books that never should have been writ..

Well.. more properly, headlines, for articles in the "Book Review" section of the Chronicle, which ensure I will never read the book in question..

A Bumpkin Blossoms as an Artist: A Young Girl Comes of Age as a Carpetmaker's Apprentice in 17th Century Iran

This is so clunky it is almost unbelievable. How can you throw so many idiot tropes together in one header?

If Bumpkin Blossoms are contagious in the slightest, or drive out native blossoms, I.. uh.. I hate them.

Then there is the young girl "blossoming" thing which is either cliche or right offa that porn site I was just on.

Related - the phrase "A Young Girl Comes of Age" should be retired to the "downy-blossomed cheeks" home for cliches that expired in the early Victorian Age.

The "artist" thing? Be one, don't talk about it.

Is the "Carpetmaker's Apprentice" anything like the "Sorcerer's Apprentice." More importantly, does the carpet match the drapes?

If I wanted to read about 17th Century Iran I would kill myself because I obviously had nothing better to do than enter eternity.

Perhaps the author deserves better. She did title her book "The Blood of Flowers." That's a title which gives me confidence that eating vegetables, a lot like eating meat, must be murder.

It would certainly make my veggie burger taste a bit better.

Compare that stupidity to this header on Salon for a book that is just as likely a stooopid chick-flic in print..

Lovesick girls in 17th century China wrestling for control of their destinies

Love, sickness, and hot Chinese wrasslin chicks... which one would you read?