[A Sip of a Book] Reality Reloaded

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of a book in themselves, while others instantly reach the reader's heart, creating a point of connection with the book. We present excerpts of such meaningful sentences from books. - Editor's note

This is the first collection of literary criticism published by literary critic Kang Kyung-seok, who has delicately depicted the dynamic relationship between literature and reality with a keen eye and sharp writing style, 18 years after his debut. It takes Korean literature after the democratization of 1987 as a broad framework and compiles 27 essays analyzing diverse and distinctive voices that emerged in the literary field around the Sewol Ferry disaster and the Candlelight Revolution. Since the early 2000s, the perception that literature is socially useless or powerless in the face of reality has become widespread, but the author vividly reads the new movements toward reality in contemporary literature, swiftly transcending such hollow discussions.

Language ultimately points to the unfathomable depths of life without our knowing. Often, or rather, mostly, it is beyond the poet’s control. Even advertising slogans, which are essentially products of commercialism, occasionally exert a power of beauty and consolation that surpasses their roots. The magic of language is formidable. This may be the basis supporting the belief that literature contains an autonomous order it has brought about itself. The sense that literature is like opium indiscriminately consoling painful reality is also not unrelated to this. Hence, the existence of another force to check that danger becomes necessary. ‘Autonomy’ is not a spell derived from some metaphysical premise that descends at a certain moment of creation (poetry), but something occasionally achieved in the struggle against the constraints imposed by painful realities at each moment. As examined at length above, autonomy that has not properly passed through heteronomy breeds coloniality. From the section "The Formation of the Canon of National Literature and the March 1st Movement."

Facing reality means honestly confronting truths that the old world tries to conceal. This sometimes requires a process of connecting with pain, but the mission given to literature has always been less about simply resolving real pain and more about sustaining the phases of that pain as vivid experiences in the present. The power to open a life different from before, a ‘different world,’ comes precisely from there, and that is also the essence of the ‘popular’ element discussed in this essay. Faith in the ‘different world’ does not stem from blind belief in its infallibility but from the confidence to calmly endure and overcome even the errors created within it as an undeniable part of reality. All helplessness, resignation, cynicism, and hatred are merely preliminary steps to surrender. The world sinking into invisibility, which we ought to rescue, has always been here and still remains. From the section "Reloading Reality."

Reloading Reality | Author: Kang Kyung-seok | Changbi | 428 pages | 21,600 KRW

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