Untold Night and Day

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One of the most strikingly different writers around - recommended and one I hope to see feature on the MBI. With the lights off, the interior of the auditorium seemed as though submerged in murky water. Objects, matter itself, were softly disintegrating. All identity became ambiguous, semi-opaque. Not only light and form, but sound, too." Bae Suah likes to challenge readers used to more conventional plot lines and character development. In “Untold Night and Day” identities are blurred, chronology is warped, time and space are stretched and exist in parallel to others.

This is the 7th book by 배수아 I have read (and the 9th translation by Deborah Smith, including 4 of novels by Han Kang) - see below for the list. Anyhow,’ the German-language teacher said, returning to her original reason for calling, ‘I guessed you would still be at work, and I have a favour to ask.’ You’re a young woman, Blind Owl, and a beautiful one. If he went to see you … well, it’s not unusual for one person to yearn for another. Did he buy you flowers?’ The previous year, when they’d returned to work after the summer holiday, the director asked Ayami how her break had been, and she replied that it had been very good. They acted as though they’d only just met, or didn’t know each other very well.I'm astounded by what this author has managed to do in the 4 books of hers I've read. The last one in English is called Recitation, and I will not be able to resist reading it for long. But - as the opening quote suggests - the story becomes increasingly surreal, with certain images, objects and phrases reoccuring, and characters swapping identities and changing histories. No one had come to meet her on her first visit to the audio theatre, and she hadn’t received any guidance about where she was supposed to go. She’d entered the deserted auditorium and waited until someone appeared – the director. She’d been sitting facing the entrance, but still hadn’t noticed him come in. He seemed to have materialised through a door made of light, which hovered amid the floating dust motes and shafts of sun. The director sat with Ayami on the auditorium’s second flight of stairs, conducted a brief interview, and announced that she was hired. It's 28-year-old Ayami's final day at her box-office job in Seoul's only audio theater for the blind. The theater is shutting down and Ayami's future is uncertain. Her last shift completed, Ayami walks the streets of the city with her former boss late into the night, searching for a mutual friend who is missing. Their conversations take in art, love, food, and the inaccessible country to the north.

And I DO blame this book, which I can't make any sense of. I can't tell what's real or what's not. I can't understand how what seems imagined or historical in one scene is real in another. I don't understand how the characters seem to switch places and identities and also move between real and imagined (they also seem lost and confused.) I don't understand what is meant to be a deep connection to The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, a short novel of similar tone I read earlier this year and also didn't understand. Well, there are times when I can read someone’s lips without actually being able to see them. Though I can’t understand how it happens.’

As night morphs into day, Ayami and the theatre’s director begin a loose quest to report the inexplicable disappearance of Ayami’s German-language teacher. Characters appear and disappear like spirits; Bae twists together interludes of parallel lives and doppelgangers so that images, and sometimes entire paragraphs, are reiterated word-for-word like an endless hall of mirrors folding over on to itself.

A few years later, after quitting that job, Buha and two colleagues who had left with him set up a company of their own, trading fabric with China. This new work had him coming and going between Seoul and an unheated apartment in Shanghai, but though business was good early on, five years later there was nothing for it but to let the company fold. They had little cash left after settling their debts, returning Buha to the state commonly known as penury. This was two years ago. Had it not been for a small sum of money he had inherited from his parents, his circumstances would have been dire. By then, he had almost completely forgotten about the poet woman. Perhaps because he had stopped asking himself what he dreamed of becoming.

My Book Notes

So, what sort of fairy tale do you want to write?’ the director asked, as though the question had just occurred to him. Ayami and the director walked the streets aimlessly. An ambulance siren pierced their ears, though they couldn’t see the ambulance itself. After all, as you said, we aren’t poets. Using language to convince is not our calling. If someone wants to pour earth over our faces, we can just avert our gaze and keep on as we were. Like the herders of the Altai. That actually is how we live, you know, every day.’ Some kind of sensory illusion, is it?’ The director’s voice was warm and friendly. ‘How will you get on in the future, Ayami? Do you have any plans?’

No.’ Ayami shook her head, but stopped as soon as she realised the pointlessness of such a gesture. But I … I didn’t think I’d be able to interpret so I turned it down, but she said it’s not conference interpreting so it should be fine. I told her I didn’t mind finding him somewhere to stay, helping him choose a place, et cetera.’

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By one of the boldest and most innovative voices in contemporary Korean literature, and brilliantly realized in English by International Man Booker­–winning translator Deborah Smith, Bae Suah’s hypnotic and wholly original novel asks whether more than one version of ourselves can exist at once, demonstrating the malleable nature of reality as we know it. I am emotion, she heard something inside her whisper, speaking in her stead. I am nothing but emotion. One of Picasso’s ex-girlfriends earned a living teaching French to American women in Paris,’ the director said. ‘It must be a classic step to take, one that transcends the ages.’ What starts as a quiet tale of a struggling middle class youth in Korea becomes a disorienting and surreal fable of identity, love, and art. At the intersection of Murakami and Kafka, Bae Suah occupies her own corner of contemporary literature. At times as light and charming as Banana Yoshimoto or Hiromi Kawakami, she also possesses highly literary powers comparable to Marquez. It is impossible to pin down exactly how she manages to convey rich detail, elegant economy, vivid characterization, and dream-like magic all at once.