추가 적립 안내

In the fast-paced, high-urban landscape of Seoul, C and K are brothers who have fallen in love with the same woman?Se-yeon?who tears at both of them as they all try desperately to find real connection in an atomized world. A spectral, nameless narrator haunts the edges of their lives as he tells of his work helping the lost and hurting find escape through suicide. Dreamlike and beautiful, the South Korea brought forth in this novel is cinematic in its urgency and its reflection of contemporary life everywhere?far beyond the boundaries of the Korean peninsula. Recalling the emotional tension of Milan Kundera and the existential anguish of Bret Easton Ellis, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself achieves its author’s greatest wish?to show Korean literature as part of an international tradition. Young-ha Kim is a young master, the leading literary voice of his generation.

Excerpt

part i the death of marat

I’M LOOKING at Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 oil painting, The Death of Marat, printed in an art book. The Jacobin revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat lies murdered in his bath. His head is wrapped in a towel, like a turban, and his hand, draped alongside the tub, holds a pen. Marat has expired?bloodied?nestled between the colors of white and green. The work exudes calm and quiet. You can almost hear a requiem. The fatal knife lies abandoned at the bottom of the canvas.

I’ve already tried to make a copy of this painting several times. The most difficult part is Marat’s expression; he always comes out looking too sedate. In David’s Marat, you can see neither the dejection of a young revolutionary in the wake of a sudden attack nor the relief of a man who has escaped life’s suffering. His Marat is peaceful but pained, filled with hatred but also with understanding. Through a dead man’s expression David manages to realize all of our conflicting innermost emotions. Seeing this painting for the first time, your eyes initially rest on Marat’s face. But his face doesn’t tell you anything, so your gaze moves in one of two directions: either toward the hand clutching the letter or the hand hanging limply outside of the tub. Even in death, he has kept hold of the letter and the pen. Marat was killed by a woman who had written him earlier, as he was drafting a reply to her letter. The pen Marat grips into death injects tension into the calm and serenity of the scene. We should all emulate David. An artist’spassion shouldn’t create passion. An artist’s supreme virtue is to be detached and cold.

Marat’s assassin, Charlotte Corday, lost her life at the guillotine. A young Girondin, Corday decided that Marat must be eliminated. It was July 13, 1793; she was twenty-five years old. Arrested immediately after the incident, Corday was beheaded four days later, on July 17.

Robespierre’s reign of terror was set in motion after Marat’s death. David understood the Jacobins’ aesthetic imperative: A revolution cannot progress without the fuel of terror. With time that relationship inverts: The revolution presses forward for the sake of terror. Like an artist, the man creating terror should be detached, cold-blooded. He must keep in mind that the energy of the terror he releases can consume him. Robespierre died at the guillotine.

A nameless narrator leads us into the stark urban landscape of Seoul and the emotional desolation of its inhabitants. He believes life is only creation and destruction; he helps the lost and hurting find escape through peaceful, graceful suicide. C and K are brothers who have fallen in love with the same womanSe-yeonwho tears at both of them as they all try desperately to find real connection in an atomized world. As these stories interweave, they reveal a startling, riveting portrait of contemporary life in Korea and beyond. With existential drama and harrowing human relation- ships, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself offers a careful and absorbing view of a little-explored setting in Asian literature. Young-ha Kim is a young master, the leading literary voice of his generation.