A Contrived World by Jung Young-Moon

Abstract

Christos Ikonomou. Something Will Happen, You’ll See. Trans. Karen Emmerich. Brooklyn. Archipelago Books. 2016. 250 pages. Christos Ikonomou’s award-winning second collection, Something Will Happen, You’ll See, is a thoughtful glimpse into the flawed and sometimes-comic existence of the working-class men and women living at the periphery of Greece’s capital. In the opening tale, “Come On Ellie, Feed the Pig,” a woman molds halva into the likeness of an estranged lover and proceeds to eat him. In “Placard and Broomstick ,” a grocery clerk mourns the death of his childhood friend, carrying a blank sign through the streets in protest because he’s “filled with an incredible emptiness.” An unemployed dockworker in “For Poor People” watches a strange woman paint an expression of a choking face onto a bollard , where a rope is tied from a boat like a noose. In the closing story, “Piece By Piece They’re Taking My World Away,” a couple spends their final days in an old house as the unique stones of its foundation are looted by neighbors and the government moves to expropriate the property. This collection is a kind of Dubliners for the postcrisis generation and a lament for the marginalized inhabitants of neighborhoods around the shipping district of Piraeus. Ikonomou succeeds at immersing the reader, through a panoramic streamof -consciousness method of narration, into fifteen lives where “pain and fear come later, when the wound cools.” Characters are increasingly preoccupied with memories or daydreams even as hardship envelops them. An undefinable dread lingers and builds steadily over the course of the book, leaving you feeling that the worst hasn’t even started yet, despite occasional glimpses of hope or closure. Where there’s fault to be found with the book, it’s most noticeable in occasionally rigid efforts at Faulknerian tangents where the sentences struggle to find their footing at the expense of flow, though it’s unclear if that’s on Ikonomou or the limits of the translation. Still, the collection mostly shines, particularly in its clever symbolism and living characters. Ikonomou is an author of substance as much as style, and Something Will Happen, You’ll See is a stunning, if somewhat bleak, sketch of a country in flux. Michael Kazepis Portland, Oregon Jung Young-Moon. A Contrived World. Trans. Jeffrey Karvonen & Mah Eunji. Victoria, Texas. Dalkey Archive Press. 2016. 163 pages. A writer once told me that each work of fiction teaches you how to read its world. The novel A Contrived World is at once a world and no world. Based on the writer Jung Young-Moon’s real-life visit to California , it follows the narrator through actual experiences. A plot summary of A Contrived World, however, reveals nothing about the novel. The word “contrived” immediately telescopes to readers that they are entering Carlos Labbé Loquela Trans. Will Vanderhyden Open Letter Alternating narratives construct this mystery novel that also comments on writing itself and its power to transport and comfort but also deceive. Experimenting in genres and perspectives, the clear and crisp prose retains the ability to send the reader on philosophical journeys in fantasy cities and to illuminate small human interactions. Alexander Kluge 30 April 1945 Trans. Wieland Hoban Seagull Books Those familiar with this particular date in history might feel as if they already know the story of the day Hitler committed suicide, but Kluge weaves a tale of all the events large and small that occurred concurrently. From the momentous political occasions to small tragedies, the examination of one single day demonstrates compellingly how the effects of war radiate out from the big players. Nota Bene WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 93 an invented world designed by the author, which comments on creating a reality out of words: the illusion of fiction itself. The narrative follows a sensibility more than a plot line; a simple plot gives way to thought, wonder, and wordplay. In one such early scene, the protagonist is with his girlfriend after sex, talking “about nothing in particular” and “rolling a few pebbles down a slope.” This leads him to wryly consider the origins of his peculiar habit of rolling pebbles and childhood memories of rolling such pebbles down...