'Intereview' with Park Wan-suh

Park Wan-suh

(Image from LTI Korea)

In a comment to yesterday's post on Shinga, an inquiry was posed as to whether Park Wan-suh was still living, and since others might also be wondering if this writer born in 1931 still lives, I am posting a link to a recent 'intereview' with the author by Shin Junebong for the autumn 2009 issue of the quarterly journal -list: Books from Korea., which is published by LTI Korea.

By the way, I write "intereview" because I made this typo yesterday in my reply to the query about Park Wan-suh and felt chagrin at the error until I realized that my newly coined word fits the sort of interview conducted -- a realization that occasioned pride . . . until a Google search found that thousands of others had already been circulating that coin for some time. Nothing new and shiny under the sun . . .

Anyway, to whet the curiosity of those who might not know of Park Wan-suh, here's how the 'intereview' opens:

The poet Ko Un and the novelist Hwang Sok-yong, often cited as candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the poet Kim Ji-ha, for whom existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre signed a petition demanding his release from prison in 1974, are leading Korean writers who enjoy a degree of recognition outside the country. But there is another Korean writer without whom the history of modern Korean literature would be incomplete, even if she is not well known outside her native country. It could be argued, in fact, that her name belongs above those of Ko, Hwang, and Kim in the roll call of modern Korean writers.The author in question is 78 year old novelist Park Wansuh, born in 1931 in Gaepung-gun, Gyeonggi-do (province), in what is now North Korea. One of the leading veterans of the Korean literary scene, Park’s achievements both as a writer of literary fiction and a popular author are remarkable.

The interviewer managed to pry out of a reluctant author the statistic that her Shinga book has sold 1.5 million copies in Korea since its publication, which is a large number for a work of fine literature, especially in a country the size of Korea.

The English translation of Who Ate Up All the Shinga?, by Yu Young-nan and Stephen J. Epstein, deserves to sell even more in America's larger book market, but we'll see how well that goes.

Return to 'Singa'

Who Ate Up All the Shinga?

Park Wan-suh

(Image from Amazon.com)

I've written about the Korean author Park Wan-suh a couple of times on this blog because I served as a referee for Yu Young-nan and Stephen Epstein's manuscript translation of Who Ate Up All the Shinga two years ago when the title was slightly different (e.g., "Singa") and thereby had the good fortune then of meeting the author for dinner.

I'm currently re-reading this 'novel' -- or so says the book cover, i.e., "An Autobiographical Novel" -- and enjoying it just as much as the first time. Except that I've been asked to write a short review for a scholarly journal, which adds a bit of anxiety to my enjoyment.

Despite the label "novel" -- used, I take it, because Ms. Park does not entirely trust her memory and considers memory, in part, an art of imagination, as Epstein remarks in the introduction (p. xii) -- the book is clearly what we'd ordinarily call "autobiography."

But the book is not ordinary. It's extraordinary. And frequently funny. I had to laugh at one anecdote about her strict Confucian grandfather, who insisted on propriety, particularly the requirement that women remain close to the home, preferably indoors, and not make a spectacle of themselves in any way that would bring ridicule on the family. One winter day when Park was still in elementary school, she was trying out her new ice skates on one of the frozen rice paddies in front of her village home -- but ineptly trembling and tumbling again and again as her friends all watched in transfixed fascination. Her grandfather happened to glimpse this spectacle through the window in their front door and, aghast, shouted an order that she be brought to him instantly:

"Don't you realize you're humiliating the entire family?" he yelled. "And a girl, at that? Don't you have any better games to play than imitating a shaman's blade dance?" (89)

As Park then writes, she herself almost laughed at the words of her old grandfather, "who didn't even know what skating was and whose limited imagination made him think of a shaman dancing on blades" (89). Park has prepared the reader well for the anecdote, having already previously described blade dancing by shamans as well as her grandfather's Confucian-honed disdain for folk religion.

I may soon be reporting more on this book and Park Wan-suh as I turn to re-read again before attempting to compose my review since writing on this blog offers brainstorming opportunities.

Where have all the singa gone?

Singa (싱아)

Aconogonum polymorphum (Ledeb.)

Nakai ex Mori [싱아]

(Image from Plant DNA Bank in Korea)

Had I not read Park Wan-suh's book, I wouldn't even know that any singa (싱아) had ever existed, but I also now wonder where the singa have all gone.

Last night, I had a chance to ask Park Wan-suh herself. Purely for the accident of my having been randomly chosen to review the English manuscript of her novel Who Ate Up All Those Singa?, I was invited to a private dinner along with the translators Yu Young-nan and Stephen J. Epstein.

I'd met Stephen before, as readers of my blog may recall, but Yu Young-nan was a new face for me. She, in fact, writing to Stephen last Friday, is the person who invited me:

If Jeffrey would like to join us on Monday night, that would be great. I can change our reservation easily. Please let me know.

At least, I think that this "Jeffrey" was me. Usually, I insist on my being the person "Jeffery," but I wasn't about to draw fine syllabic distinctions between "Jeff-rey" and "Jeff-er-y" when such might get me dis-invited:

Sorry, we were looking for a 'Jeffrey'...

For one evening, therefore, I went as "Jeffrey," pretending to be someone whom I'm not -- not too difficult, actually, since I've already spent years pretending to be something of a scholar.

And in my work as a something-of-a-scholar, I'm expected to write scholarly book reviews, such as my recent review of Park's Singa book for the Daesan Foundation:

The work is eminently readable, which I attribute to both the genius of the original author, Park Wan-suh, and the talent of the two gifted translators, Yu Young-nan and Stephen Epstein. I believe that this literary work can find a ready readership among native speakers of English. The story is very interesting.

For this hard work, I received my restaurant invitation from Young-nan:

Thanks for writing such a glowing review on Singa, which I received this morning. I'd be happy to meet you on Monday at a subway station and go to the restaurant with you.

I'll have to write more "glowing" reviews if they so easily get me dinner invitations with eminent translators and writers. But having never seen each other, Young-nan and I needed some means of recognizing who we were, so I wrote:

I'll be wearing a Muslim-appearing cap, standing about 6 feet tall, and looking very foreign.

Young-nan replied:

Look for a woman in her 50s with short gray hair.

Despite how that sounds, Young-nan looked as her name implies: Young. Youthful, slender, and energetic, she greeted me at the Gwangnaru Station, and together we hailed a taxi and rode to a prearranged spot in the Seoul suburb of Guri, where Park Wan-suh and her daughter picked us up and drove us to the restaurant near the Han River.

On the way there, I asked Young-nan how she and Stephen had gotten to know each other, and she told me that she had sought him out after reading his positive review for her translation of Park Wan-suh's novel The Naked Tree.

Incidently, if you click that link to Stephen's review, you discover that Park Wan-seo is not the only variant of Park Wan-suh's transliterated name, for The Naked Tree gives its author as Pak Wan-sô. So if you start Googling for Park, you'll need to use three different spellings. Or just go with the Korean: 박완서.

Anyway, after we had arrived and were heading along the path leading up to the riverside restaurant, I looked about at the various grasses and other plants and asked Park Wan-suh:

"Is there any singa growing here?"

"No," she told me, "I haven't seen any singa in South Korea. Around Gaeseong, there were lots of singa, but in my 50 years here in the South, I've never found any singa."

The singa stayed on my mind, even after we had sat down at the table to eat. Perhaps noticing my abstracted look during the mostly Korean discussion, Young-nan asked:

"Are you following the conversation?"

"Uh..." I hesitated, "well, actually, I was still thinking about the singa."

They laughed at my obsession.

"Since it's all missing here in South Korea," I explained, "I can't imagine what singa looks like."

So, Park explained that it has a long stalk and that one can chew that part, which tastes both sweet and sour. I tried to imagine that and wondered if it would do well as part of a salad.

At that point, Stephen arrived, along with his wife and baby daughter, and the conversation veered away from the captivating topic of the mysteriously missing singa and toward the very present but equally mysterious and captivating baby, Sonia Sylvia.

Or Sylvia Sonia. I'm not certain of which. Stephen had assured us that his daughter could speak English:

[There will be five] English speakers ... if you include Sonia, who's "daaaa" (= "cat") is definitely English.

But she remained silent about her name, refusing to tell me whether she goes by Sonia Sylvia or Sylvia Sonia. She also feigned ignorance of the singa, which remained missing even from the general conversation.

I didn't give up, though, but kept searching through the night long after the dinner was over, and as you can see from the image above, I finally -- long time passing -- found a bit of singa...