Found on the web

While wandering and pondering, various things I’ve come across that aren’t quite big enough for an entire post, but I think deserver notice.

• The first is a  A rather long Tumbl on Krys Lee’s The Goose Father from Krys’ excellent book Drifting House.

One of the key passages of the Tumbl:

An integral part of the story is based on the individual and self definition but in South Korea it is the “our” , the uri that defines society, “the uri, the we in which everything dissolved”. Nonetheless in this collective society, a particular loneliness breeds, one which is depicted in The Goose Father as we see Gilho struggle with the man he is, a good societal man and the man his younger self wanted to be. Also, the the irreversible isolation of split families. The general reader however can relate to the loneliness that is the plague of modern society, “loneliness made him feel like a house teetering on an eroding cliff”. –

The “Goose Father” ( 기러기 아빠), for those outside Korea, is a term for a father who stays and works in Korea to support his wife and children in another country, normally so that the children can get an education somewhere other than Korea.

• Next A really interesting article over at Melville House, What’s better for translated literature: starting a publishing house or publicizing what’s already available?  The article comes to the final, wry, proposition that the two ideas need not be mutually exclusive. The money quote is:

So at this point, everyone’s politely scrapping in comment sections and onTwitter, with a tense “I think we are ultimately on the same page but at the moment I kind of hate you” tone. And, there being no polite fray I won’t join, I’ll add my two cents here.

But the piece discusses a variety of other important points including the ‘quality vs quantity’ debate (not as one-sided) as you might think, and is worth a read.

• Finally, a short piece from Korea.net, Korean literature reaches out to int’l readers at London Book Fair, attempting to sum up the just concluded London Book Fair 2014 and Korea’s role in it. It covers no really new ground, but does have some nice photos and quotes.