[Bbang Baking Typewriter] Relationships in Modern Society Measured in Money

Under the Theme of "Money and Neighbors"
A Novel That Tackles Koreans' Urgent Issues
Such as Jeonse Fraud, COVID-19, and Starting a Business

I squeezed my eyes shut. I tried to think of myself as looking down at the protagonist from outside the novel. But at some point, the protagonist inside the story began to pull out the inner self I had kept hidden. A shame as if I had been stripped naked washed over me.

There are times when I look casually at a luxury outfit a friend is wearing at a gathering, yet inside I find myself scanning my own clothes from head to toe. I quietly put a "price" on a stranger at a first meeting based only on their appearance, while outwardly putting on an innocent face. The novel "I Said Goodbye" lays bare, without our realizing it, the inner thoughts with which we have drawn lines of money, class, and social status.

This work is a short story collection that captures both the changes in Korean society and the changes in the author herself. Under the theme of "money and neighbors," it deals with urgent life issues for Koreans such as real estate, jeonse fraud, COVID-19, and starting a business. Because it is so closely aligned with our daily lives, it gives the impression of reading a sociologist's reportage. The class consciousness formed according to each person's perceived economic indicators sometimes provokes self-contempt and at other times a sense of shame.

Another protagonist of this novel is "space." As in the sentence, "Many events in plays begin with 'invitation' and 'visit,' 'intrusion' and 'escape'," the characters begin their stories by visiting someone else's space. Readers too are invited to follow them into unfamiliar spaces.

The first short story, "Home Party," opens with the protagonist being invited to the home of Director Oh, a member of the "social mainstream" whose life trajectory has been completely different from her own. The moment she carefully steps into the house, she instinctively senses the "narrative sheen" created by the furniture and interior design. Those invited are kind and gentle in their conversations, yet the air of class, though seemingly loose, enwraps them densely.

This novel constantly makes us aware of what lies beneath the surface of conversations. In that process, we come face to face with the inner selves we have knowingly ignored, and we experience moments when our faces burn. This continues in the second story, "The Small House in the Forest." A couple raised in very different backgrounds reveals differing sensitivities to economic and human-rights issues, and their relationship begins to crack.

The two go on a month-long trip abroad and confront yet another set of questions. There is the subtle discomfort that arises when calling the lodging manager a "maid," and the difference in positions that naturally forms within the economic condition that "labor is cheap." Seemingly trivial questions such as how much to tip and how to address her eventually expand into weighty questions that test the attitude with which one has lived life.

Memories also surface of traveling to a country where prices were relatively low. At a massage parlor I visited to relieve fatigue, there was a moment when an employee who had just turned eighteen massaged my feet with hands not yet fully grown. As the novel puts it, memories flash by of being "at a loss in the face of the blatant class gap encountered in a foreign land."

The novel asks: "How difficult is it for one person to stand in another person's place?" In a reality where numbers convertible into money are coming to replace relationships, this question lands with even greater weight.

I Said Goodbye | Written by Kim Aeran | Munhakdongne | 320 pages | 16,800 won

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.