A hundred battles, a hundred losses

This month I begin with Ch'ae Man-Shik's short story "A Ready-Made Life" translated by Kim Chong-un and Bruce Fulton. It was first published in 1934 in the journal Shindonga. As for the writer, he is a novelist, an essayist, and a critic, often considered a satirist. His works are widely known.

As for the short story itself, I came across it as a follower of ktlit.com. A website dedicated to the translation and dissemination of Korean literature.

The story itself immediately opens with an interview. P is an unemployed, educated man being interviewed and denied by K. The context of the drama is within the early 20th century, the dawn of modernization, after the rise of intellectuals and a propagation of education, post-Japanese Imperial Period, during the evident domination of Japan over Korea. Now, from the rejection given to P proceeds a dejected summation of his living situation, the harsh condition in which he is forced to live, eating sparingly, not being able to pay his room rent, leading a meagerly existence, etc. I add that the description and the existential manner in which the character recounts his surroundings and his life has a touch of Dostoyevsky. P is also a divorced man with a son. Although his son does not live with him at the opening of the story, it is made clear that due to his family's inability to continue to care for him, they will be sending P's son over to him in Seoul. Yet they do not know that P is hardly able to support himself as he has not found a job.

Japanese woodblock print, The First Sino-Japanese War. Japan in Korea.
Source: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Wada-Haruki/2934

In the trajectory of the story there are very few characters presented, the two introduced after P, are also unemployed and hopeless, friends of the protagonist. Both have likewise been educated and are intellectual men. The dejection of all the characters is poignantly felt. And the irony is that being educated and an intellectual is a void endeavor leading to unemployment. The stark line between the country as a passing farming nation, and moving unto becoming modernized is evident. The job market is saturated, yet those that have been educated cannot make themselves nor even know how to go about retroceding and forming part of the farming population. The educated intellectuals are displaced.

"Ready-made commodities turned shopworn."

The story can be divided in two seamless parts, the first if the already described rejection during the interview and the description of P's existence, then, P's confrontation with a prostitute.

Drunk and in a bar, P and both of his friends go to a brothel. There P is thrown, by his two friends, towards a young prostitute. He panics and runs out when she is willing to sell her integrity, her sex, for a beggarly price. This leads to a digression on the worth of integrity, in which P spends a considerable time debating.

The story ends in an ambiguous manner. It is clear P does not want his son to be educated and fall into the same trap he himself fell and therefor, what becomes of P as he takes in his son is left open-ended.

Why do I recommend this short story by Ch'ae Man-Shik? Because the themes, albeit during a time that has passed, are still relevant today. The tone of P's hopelessness, the use of education during unstable economic times, the value of a person's integrity in regards to money, are all still current. How much is integrity and virtue worth?

"You can't put your heart into work if your stomach is empty." 

The story itself can be found here, in PDF form. It is well worth a read. 

Hard Times

Now, I must rewind a bit and digress... I have recently been reminded of the gem that is Hard Times; I made a post reviewing it a few weeks ago.
Why I love this Dickens' piece:
It is a book that aside from all its defects, stands as a testament of the human condition. In the age we live in, but I wager at gesticulating that it has always been only now it is manifested more pronounced, everything is determined by time. Time is money. Numbers. How much can be gained. Profit and loss. Calculation and hard facts is king.

But what about imagination, what about verse, rhyme, creativity, the beauty of brush strokes on a canvas. Don't get me wrong I am not saying this has disappeared, but I am saying its appreciation has morphed into a different concept. Now, art is money. 

This book is a defense for the arts and humanities, all the studies that cannnot be condensed into a scientific or mathematical equation.

Poetry and prose, in this case, is an idle art, one that is enjoyed internally, it has no objective benefits be it for the edification of the soul. One enjoys this pastime when there is nothing to do; it doesn't require from us anything concrete, no precision, just a moment, and that moments can transform into a space where the concept of time and its passage disappears.

It is evident in the ever present surge of art, that the "arts" are a human necessity. It allows us to escape, to dream, to believe. And precisely this is what Hard Times proposes and in my opinion achieves. In this book we see two opposing spectrum, and these two ideas and beliefs play out in this book until the end. From its' pages I deduce that Charles Dickens was opposed to the stifling of the arts and it is this that shines brightly in this book: the point he conveys and case he places before the reader.

So, read, explore and learn, there is nothing more entertaining than to let the imagination soar.


Hard Times by Natalia L Forty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

A Dickensian excursion: Hard Times

A week ago, before reading Geisha a Life, I finished reading Hard Times, a Charles Dickens creation. I found the book to be educational and incisive and very good, albeit with a few acceptable flaws. Admittedly, it wasn’t up to par with his other works: Great Expectations, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities,  etc., but more than a work of prose, this books' intention is conveying a message, one that Mr. Dickens felt needed to be portrayed. 

In this book it was more important to him to get his point across than weave an intricate work of literature. It isn't filled with action, most of its pages are dedicated to character formation and exposure and this enables the reader to understand in depth how the writer, Charles Dickens, feels about the subject that underlines the entire book: the upbringing in a utilitarian mentality and the effect of the industrialization on the human psyche.  

One comes across two archetypes, those that abide by and are surrounded by the FACTS of the utilitarian mentality, prevalent during Dickens' time, and those that are the total opposite, mostly comprised of the working class. These two clash and change as the plot progresses, giving the reader a delightfully educational look into a topic that was and continues to hold relevancy in this day and age. 

What I felt deficient in this work is the extremes; the characters are defined in a such a way that the two archetypes described above contrast vividly leaving very little room for the evolution of the characters. Louisa undergoes changes but doesn't fully live up to her potential of breaking free from the prevalent mentality. One reason for this could be that Dickens wanted to highlight the lasting effects of being brought up in such a harsh and cold environment; as opposed to Sissy, Cecilia Jupe, who remains forever a simple woman and goes to live a life full of happiness and warmth.

Of course, me being a 21st century woman I cannot fully relate to Sissy nor Louisa, they both have qualities that shine and vice versa but I disagree with some of the aspects in their portrayal.

Nontheless, read the book, it is a good read.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. The Modern Library ed. New York: Random House, 2001. Print. 
325 pages