Recitation

Hello Gentle Reader

There is a continual plethora of Korean fiction being translated and published in the past few years. This would make the market saturated. Everywhere one would look (that is if they are looking) there is some Korean novel or short story. Dalkey Archive Press for example has a complete Korean Library series. Sadly every novel or short story collection published in the series, has the same design, meaning it’s difficult to separate title from title by photo alone, and you must rely on summaries to get a feel for the work. Despite this flooded market, riddled with drift wood translations among other flotsam and jetsam books—two authors appear to have surfaced above the rest. Those two writers are: Hang Kang and Bae Suah.

Most readers know Hang Kang as the Man Booker International Prize winning author of “The Vegetarian.” The novel was praised as a psychological profile of human cruelty, personal and family relationship breakdown, as well as asking pointed and poignant questions regarding shame, empathy, and the failure to understand our fellow human beings and their motivations. The judges for the Man Booker International Prize praised the novel for being original and powerful, and the award would boost sales of the novel. From there on then, Hang Kang became a well-known and established Korean author in the English language literary scene; whereupon two further novels have been translated: “Human Acts,” and “The White Book.” Both are noted for their emotional resonance.

If Hang Kang is noted for her novels which tackle personal and familial breakdowns; as well as their emotionally powerful sequences, which come as revelations to the reader, than Bae Suah is her contrary counterpart. Bae Suah’s work comes across as: nihilistic, masochistic, degrading, postmodern, fragmented and intellectually motivated. Her novels break down the conventional constructs and perceptions regarding time, memory, and novelistic format. She embraces postmodern literary techniques, but only superficially, Bae Suah borrows the tropes of postmodern and personalizes them into her own style. In her previously reviewed novel “A Greater Music,” time becomes a fragmented and disjointed series of puddles and ponds, whose only connection is the altered perspective they have of the same sky—or in this case memory. How those memories are remembered is not always chronological. Her characters are noted for being adrift, aimless, and aloof; they act as if they are merely spectators to their own lives, where they only react to the situations they are in, rather than actively participating in them. For this Bae Suah breaks down societal barriers, where she explores, probes, and exposes every rotting facet, feature, and façade of contemporary Korean society. For lack of respect and convention of Korean societal norms, Bae Suah has often been heavily criticized. These criticism have only bolstered her to international recognition, where readers are quick and keen to read the works of what they perceive to be a postmodern anarchist Korean writer; the kind of writer who writes about men becoming victims of domestic abuse, unsettling the reader by the use of unfamiliar and ever changing shifts of perspective. Her disregard for social taboos and niceties, her unconventional style, and her psychological profiles of otherwise unfortunate characters make Bae Suah, a tantalizing writer for the rebellious reader.

Despite her recognition and continual translations, Bae Suah, has not been so well received for literary awards in translation. Her first novel to be seriously considered for a prize was: “Nowhere to Be Found,” for the Best Translated Book Award, in two-thousand and sixteen, where it was included on the longlist. However, the novel never made it much farther than that. Yet, from there on out Bae Suah’s work found a greater audience. It is reported to have shown Suah’s literary sensibilities had already taken hold, whereupon she would craft a narrative, tone, characters, only to shatter them entirely part way through, and from there analyze the broken pieces individually bit by bit, taking note of the jagged edges, the serrated capabilities, and their newly deformed nature.

Bae Suah’s more mature work has completely abandoned the typical tropes of fiction, she has done away with characterization, identity, narrative, linear timelines, and stories. Instead Bae Suah combined the fictional novel and essay to create a strange genre all her own, one which superficially borrowed elements of the novel like characters, but only made them dance and sing or talk like puppets, where they would discuss her philosophical digressions, dissertations, and thoughts. “A Greater Music,” would best be described as the transitional work, which displays this maturation of Bae Suah’s writing style and themes. “A Greater Music,” (as previously reviewed) playfully displayed time; often warping it and changing the events recollected or the perspective of the events to offer a more unique portrait of the events or questioning the validity and authenticity of the events. It also offered abrupt and open commentary on topics ranging from music, to literature, to language—often reminiscent of an essay, and not typical philosophical discussions housed between characters. Yet, the novel maintained the basic scaffolding of a novel: it had a narrative, characters, a story, and action—how it was told however, remained unconventional and postmodern in nature. “Recitation,” however, fully disregards the comfortable and conventional structural bases of a novel, and instead creates a bewildering novel all her own, and often called a: “a-fictional,” piece of literature.

“Recitation,” is a complex cognitive experience. The novel is loosely based around Kyung-hee a recitation actress who lives an aimless vagabond existence. The novel traces her loose relationships with a myriad of other characters, who in turn offer their stories, experiences, and thoughts to the fragmentary narrative of the novel. This, however, is as far as the novel goes in regards to plot or narrative. The novel itself is an exploration of identity, memory, travel, language, and geographical boundaries, and the idea of home. As the contrapuntal melodies begin to fight for greater solo acts, the voice of Kyung-hee becomes more distant and faded, it slips further and further into immaterial; as other stories take hold, as other narratives come into play, and the identities of every voice and character begin to merge and blend within each other—it is then, one wonders if Kyung-hee existed at all; or if she was merely the medium and conductor of the stories of others. The vessel in which contained their lives, their thoughts, their voices, and only then recited them offering their only chance to scream they lived and that they existed.

If one were to look at the term ‘globalized,’ as a form of literature, “Recitation,” would be considered required reading. Unlike Haruki Murakami who takes elements of Japanese culture and American pop culture, and poorly pastiches them together, to create lightweight modernized suburban novels—“Recitation,” by Bae Suah recounts the aimlessness and geographical breakdown of the world into a state of statelessness and almost homelessness, as people are more inclined to identify as a member of the ‘Human Tribe,’ then one restricted to country or city. This is perfectly made clear, when people identity more with corporate imagery and slogans then they do with their own flags or national anthems. A Starbucks is a greater symbol of ‘home,’ then say a flag or city. The novel explores the idea of a increasingly globalized world and its shift towards an urban cosmopolitan perspective. In a world currently in arms over borders, geography, and nationalist and isolationistic policies, the thought-provoking questions of “Recitation,” are more relevant today than ever. 

“Recitation,” is not for a lazy reader; Bae Suah has written a novel (in the loosest definition of the term) where the reader is expected to show and be ready for work. The prose is lyrical but never ostentatious, there is a simple elegance offered to the novels approach to its themes and questions. Thankfully language and style are never presented as roadblocks or blockades to the work itself. However, work still must be done, one must be attentive to the stories presented, the themes explored, the ever changing chorus of speakers who recite their stories, and then contradict themselves or argue against points or opinions made earlier. This, my dear Gentle Reader, is where I failed when reading Bae Suah’s “Recitation.” I often haphazardly picked up the novel when time was allocated or capable of being spared to read it. This generally means at work, when a co-worker was busy playing on their phone, or when I could not sleep and would sit in bed reading. More often than not though, my time had to be devoted to other activities; mainly course work. On those grounds the magic and profound possibilities of Bae Suah’s novel were often missed on me, as more often than not, I would attempt to recollect or remember a certain speaker who all of a sudden began to speak, or try to reconnect the strings of relationships and connections already established in the past. In the end, Gentle Reader, I was left scrambling to reconnect with the novels previously recited material and discussions then keeping up with the pace already set by Bae Suah. Yet, it’s still a worthy novel, one which I will enjoy to come back to a later date, when I can allocate it greater attention and consideration that present circumstances do not allow.

“Recitation,” solidifies as perhaps one of the most unique writers currently at work on the international stage, whose presence will hopefully only continue to grow. Bae Suah’s postmodernist voice is more authentic, as it explores and argues about the elitist urban cosmopolitan world which is a product of globalization, she humorously showcases the reality of corporate loyalty and identification versus nationalistic ones, and explores the ever increased blurring lines of language and travel, as well as the deceptive allure and clarity of memory. If there ever was a writer more keen and skeptical about the contemporary world it is Bae Suah, who puts the older and outdated American postmodernist to shame, with her relevancy and understanding of the times, and ability to see where they are taking the human race.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

M. Mary