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Michael Norris on Under the Volcano

Dongg!

화장실  이야기...  a sweet example of Korean comics culture.

Chinatown by Oh Jung-hee

From the book description of Oh Jung-hee's Chinatown:

Oh Jung Hee deserves major credit for the success of women fiction writers in Korea today. Since her debut in 1968, she has produced a body of short fiction that renders in unsparing detail the effects of a rapidly modernizing society on family life. Her command of language, facility with dialogue, and use of stream-of-consciousness narrative have yielded some of the most memorable stories in modern Korean literature, and her works in translation have earned her comparisons with such accomplished writers as England's Virginia Woolf, America's Joyce Carol Oates, and Canada's Alice Munro. The stories included here represent her work from three decades. "Chinatown" is a coming-of-age story set in the port city of Incheon. 

"Wayfarer" is a poignant account of a woman betrayed by her family and society. "The Release" portrays a mother and daughter united by tragedy.


This is a slim volume published as part of Jipmoondang Publishing's Portable Library of Korean Literature (the books are still selling for 5,000 won -- around a $5 -- a bargain). Each book that I've read in this series is worth reading, and some titles, such as those by Oh, Yun Heun-gil ["장마,", "The Rainy Season"] and Chae Yoon ["의색 눈 사람", "The Grey Snowman"], are particular favourites.


The Oh collection is noteworthy on another level: the comparison with Munro is unsurprising -- one hears the phrase "one of the world's best short story writers" applied to Munro so often that it has taken on the quality of a received idea. Oh, by contrast, remains relatively unknown. But who is in fact the better writer? Oh, like many Koreans from the mid-20th Century, is capable of evoking a depth of feeling I have not experienced from the work of many writers. Is she perhaps underrated? 

The Business Legislature

Republicans call for massive cuts to military spending ... just kidding.

Noteworthy

Catherine of TNQ on deadline-prompted correspondence.

Pre-True Crime

Levi Asher's interesting account of meeting Daniel Malakov, whose murder has been written about by Janet Malcolm in IPHEGENIA IN FOREST HILLS: ANATOMY OF A MURDER.

Upping the E

Bud Parr on Treesaver.

Noteworthy

Dan Green on the (ongoing) MFA-ication of literary production.

LitLove on John Thompson's MERCHANTS OF CULTURE

Support Bradley Manning

Manning is the whistleblower who revealed classified military information on the waging of the war in Iraq. This information included clear evidence of war crimes.

Manning contravened US military law. He also was acting in keeping with the Nuremburg laws; laws that were enshrined at the end of World War Two after the sacrifice of millions of Allied soldiers and civilians. He is currently being held in extraordinary circumstances in the brig, and, effectively, tortured. He is being denied a fair trail.

Blestions

Corey Redekop on  ROOM, by Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donaghue. I haven't read ROOM myself, though I came across a Korean translation of it on a front-of-store table at a bookstore in Seoul. While I have "gi-cho Hanguka" and managed to divine from the front flap that Donaghue is being marketed internationally simply as Irish, not hyphetated Canadian, I was not able to read passages from the novel itself with fluency. However, I did flip through it, and what struck me about it was that it was comprised of page after page of dialogue. It resembles, in other words, a script. This isn't the first time in recent years I've come across a book like this. Which raises the question, are script-novels now acceptable? Is the novel in the process of changing?

Japan and the Nuclear Crisis

Breaking news from the New York Times. It's worth noting that shortly after the tsunami hit and it was clear there had been damage to Fukushima Daichi plant, CNN's Asian desk chief Stan Grant was strongly suggesting there was nothing to worry about. The nuclear angle of this story has been as much about premature assumptions as it has been about the unfolding tragedy.

TOKYO — Amid widening alarm in the United States and elsewhere about Japan’s nuclear crisis, military fire trucks began spraying cooling water on spent fuel rods at the country’s stricken nuclear power station late Thursday after earlier efforts to cool the rods failed, Japanese officials said.

The development came as the authorities reached for ever more desperate and unconventional methods to cool damaged reactors, deploying helicopters and water cannons in a race to prevent perilous overheating in the spent rods of the No. 3 reactor.

Moments before the military began spraying, police officers in water cannon trucks were forced back by high levels of radiation in the same area. The police had been trying to get within 50 yards of the reactor, one of six at the plant.

The five specially fitted military trucks sprayed water for an hour but the full impact of the tactic was not immediately clear.

The Japanese efforts focused on a different part of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, 140 miles northeast of here, from the reactor — No. 4. — depicted in Washington on Wednesday as presenting a far bleaker threat than the Japanese government had offered.

read the rest here.

Truth Marathon

More experiments with GIMP.