Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River

by Young-moon Jung, Jung Yewon (Translator)

In his inimitable, recursive, meditative style that reads like a comedic zen koan but contains universes, Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River recounts Korean cult writer's Jung Young Moon’s time spent at an artist’s and writers residency in small-town Texas. In an attempt to understand what a “true Texan should know,” the author reflects on his outsider experiences in this most unique of places, learning to two-step, musing on cowboy hats and cowboy churches, blending his observations with a meditative rumination on the history of Texas and the events that shaped the state, from the first settlers to Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. All the while, the author is asking what a novel is and must be, while accompanied by a fictional cast of seven samurai who the author invents and carries with him, silent companions in a pantomime of existential theater. Jung blends fact with imagination, humor with reflection, and meaning with meaninglessness, as his meanderings become an absorbing, engaging, quintessential novel of ideas.

Genres: Fiction, Asia, Literature, Novels, Asian Literature, Literary Fiction, Novella

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 5, 2019

About the author

정영문

Novelist, short-story writer, translator, playwright, and teacher, Jung Young-moon was born in Hamyang, South Korea, in 1965. He graduated from Seoul National University with a degree in psychology. He made his literary debut in 1996 when his novel A Man Who Barely Exists. He has also translated more than forty English books into Korean.

Reviews

[L.S. Popovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the style I became thoroughly familiar with via Vaseline Buddha, Jung Young Moon continues in his winding way to transcribe his random thoughts, which are mostly confined within the expansive borders of Texas in Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River. From chili beans to antique stores, Jung approaches the state's quirky attributes from an outsider's perspective. Unlike in V. B. The narrator says he is Korean, establishes that he is visiting America, but again, Korea as a culture hardly enters into the picture of this book. The outsider perspective is useful for Jung because it gives him the proper level of detachment to approach his subject matter and lends what he describes an aura of wonder. The humor is often unexpected and occasionally drawn out into such dizzying and disorienting conjectures that his serpentine sentences are likely to seduce you into rushing through this short novel and missing some of the undercurrent of psychological unrest which permeates the narration. The main character's relationships with other people are pretty vague but his goal seems to be less geared toward human affairs and is more of a scientific examination of nature and human thought.

Truly, it is difficult to say what this book is about. The process of thought. The inherent meaninglessness of most thoughts, the cyclic force certain modes of thought can have. In the end, it is really only an entertaining, quirky mess of random tableaux. His writing ability is one of the most deceptive in modern literature. What seems irrelevant has unexplainable staying power through the use of skewed perspective. I would have liked to see more commentary on Eastern society or perhaps more context on why the narrator was spending time in Texas. It seemed like he just ended up there somehow. Similar to the parts of Vaseline Buddha taking place throughout Europe, there is no rhyme or reason to his wandering, but he stays in the same state in this novel, and Texas appears alternately like a barren wasteland, a frontier, and a grim analogue to the human mind. Its borders stretch out to encompass far more than one would expect, and yet he relishes the tiny insects, the bushes and the bric-a-brac of American culture he encounters as much as the cosmic horror he perceives around him. I wonder if Jung can get any looser than this with his other books, which I will certainly read.

[NPC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exuberant, wistful, wonderful...

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

A yogi and a cowboy, that was all. When it occurred to me that I’d received only two job offers of sorts in my life, and that they were to be a yogi and to be a cowboy, it seemed that something was terribly wrong with my life, but I thought there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to think of something in common or a point of contact between a yogi and a cowboy, but nothing came to mind, and so I put a fiction writer between the two, but still it seemed that there was nothing in common and no point of contact among them.

How shall I begin — and how can I compare him to a more famous (in the Anglosphere) Korean writer without throwing shade on the other one(s)? Why does this sound like BoJack Horseman trying to pen a Shakespearean sonnet? Okay, I won’t go feral in this review — I won't compare him to other Korean writers. Anyway I hate the term ‘favourite (insert any country) writer’, because there are so many countries so ultimately what’s even the point of stating that? Wouldn’t seem like an effective compliment even. All I'm saying is that — if Virginia Woolf had a secret ‘godchild’ who later grew up to indulge in close correspondence with Beckett and Moshfegh? I would not question it at all if one were to tell me that that kid grew up to be Jung Young-Moon. I was also browsing Woolf's books (in translation) online earlier today, and I realised that (unsurprisingly) Jung Young-Moon has actually translated some of Woolf’s books into Korean. The silly little brain cells inside my head went all Bacchaic as fuck.

And having read Jung's book after having just finished Jon Fosse's A Shining felt like such a 'natural progression'. I described Josse’s as absurdist-theatre-translated-to-prose. This is a little less so, but there are similarities in terms of the movement and progression of the narrative. No distinctive ‘role’ (or at least it doesn’t feel that way in a conventional sense/comparison) of a narrator. No substantial plot, heavy on style and structure — make it stream-of-consciousness on acid. This is the literary cocktail of Jung’s book. It's so cleverly done, and I'm so fizzed up with innocuous envy. Halfway through, I knew I didn't want the book to end, but I know it will, it always does, doesn't it.

‘But if you have been feeling down for the past year for no clear reason you may curse the waterfall in words that aren’t too harsh, or throw tomatoes at it.’

Haven’t got much to say about the translation work because it's Jung Yewon, which means I automatically love. But also it just felt so seamless that I didn't even have to think about it when I was reading the text. It's always such a pleasure to experience collaborative writings produced by writers and translators I already love. It just feels so 'magical' (for the lack of a better term, excuse me). Another example of something like this would be Bora Chung and Anton Hur. They just work so madly well together, and I can't wait for the next project of theirs to be published.

Confessedly, I prefer his short story collection, A Most Ambiguous Sunday and Other Stories just a little bit more than this, but I’m not quite sure why. So many unforgettable bits, that. From the pungent, nauseating smell of the overload of melon candies, to the 'flavourless' kisses (in which one of the participants dissociated in the middle of it all and was literally thinking like what the fuck is even the point of this). Who even writes like that (a compliment, no less)?! Might be a wild statement, but I think Jung Young-Moon might be one of my favourite writers of all-time, top ten, surely.

Later, I somehow ended up going to a cowboy church—that is, a church that cowboys attended—with N, who likewise had never been to a cowboy church. The pastor, dressed in cowboy garb from head to toe, repeated throughout his sermon that life as a cowboy was an extremely blessed life, and, in his last prayer, he pronounced a blessing on the cowboys who’d come to church that day, and who were extremely blessed already, and on cowboys who hadn’t been able to come to church, and on healthy cowboys, and on sick cowboys, and on dead cowboys, and on living cowboys, and on cowboys who’d found their way in the Lord, and on stray lamb cowboys, who hadn’t yet found their way —

Awful cover, and not-the-greatest title for a book (even though Jung had said that the decision was inspired by Akira Kurosawa), but still — what a massive pleasure it was to read this book. Sure, I was confessedly a bit envious (which I think only adds to the genuinity of my huge admiration for his work), and/but tremendously grateful for the experience. That was a bit cringe-ey, but I don't know how I can authenticate my feelings any further (before it ricochets off looking like gross flattery), but in any case this book is a 10 out of 10, without a single breath of doubt. And I don't even like cowboys, for fuck's sake!

'My novels, in fact, do not come with a theme, plot or storyline, considered essential in a novel, but I think novels can do without them, and the more they do without them, the better. Only a handful of people today write formally experimental novels, intentionally doing away with themes, plots or storylines. It seems that novels have reverted and retreated to conventional novels since the days of Samuel Beckett and Richard Brautigan, authors I admire the most. — There’s no need to stick to rules, and the only thing that matters is how whimsical and ingenuous a thought you can come up with. But coming up with a whimsical, ingenuous story requires considerable time and effort, and the process can be quite demanding and stressful. — I am especially pleased when I’m able to incorporate as much humour as possible into my work — humour has always been essential for me ever since I started writing, and I am satisfied that my own distinctive humour has grown and expanded with time. While writing Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River, I often found myself laughing like a lunatic.

In Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River, I even wrote about the plot itself, to show that plot is quite dispensable in novels, contrary to what people think.
Novels can do without them, and the more they do without them, the better —' — from an interview in which the interviewer is also Jung Yewon (translator of this book)

To conclude, here is a thicc excerpt from Jung’s book which I am fully convinced is a well luscious, unbridled ode (albeit ever so indirectly) to those humble little beans :

'Perhaps the person who made tofu—known to have been made for the first time during the Han dynasty of China—also had ambivalent feelings about beans. Perhaps he knew that beans were good for your body, and thought he should eat a lot of beans, and yet he didn’t like eating beans in their natural form, and so he sighed whenever he simply had to look at cooked beans, little and round and yellow, different from the kind that went in chilli. And so perhaps he thought that he should find a way to eat beans so that it almost wouldn’t occur to you that you were eating them, even though you were, and that, to do so, he should rid them of their natural form and make them look no longer like beans; and that the easiest way to make this happen was to grind them up; and—having realised this fact with difficulty after thinking about beans for a long time—he finally went ahead and did so; and in doing so, he discovered that ground-up beans somehow curdled and took on the form of tofu, thus giving birth to tofu, without realising how it would change the lives of many people.

I told my friends in Texas that, in Korea in the past, going to prison was referred to as “going off to eat rice with beans,” and that tofu was given to eat before anything else to someone who was released from prison, which my friends found fascinating. I didn’t know how the tradition began, and I was sure that it began with good intent, and yet giving tofu before anything else to someone who was released from prison, who’d eaten beans in prison until he got sick of them, could bring to his mind, at once, all the bad things he’d gone through in prison, which brought him no good memory to begin with. Perhaps the person who first came up with the idea had made his friend who’d been released from prison eat tofu as a practical joke, and the friend, who’d wanted to eat anything but beans, felt upset, thinking that again he’d eaten something made with beans, which reminded him at once of all the bad things he’d gone through in prison; and yet the tofu—which he ate after having eaten beans until he was sick of them—was so good that, after he ate it, all his ill feelings were dispelled, which didn’t necessarily make him feel that only good things lay in his future, but he did feel that some good things lay in his future, along with some bad things, or at least that not only bad things were in his future. And he and the other man talked about this, and they told people about it, and then word spread among people, and people began to feed tofu to people who were released from prison, which, unexpectedly, became quite popular as a trend, and so everyone released from prison wanted tofu, and some of them didn’t even know why they wanted tofu, but they felt they’d been truly released from prison only once they’d eaten tofu, and they felt, too, that anything would do, so long as it wasn’t food served in prison—and so feeding tofu to someone who was released from prison took root as a sort of distinct cultural tradition. My friends in Texas said that at present no one they knew was in prison, but if someone did go to prison and was released, they’d feed him tofu.'

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full-disclosure: I enjoy writing that’s quirky and rambling as long as it jettisons pretension and brings in some whimsicality. This book by Jung Young Moon plays into that wheelhouse. If you’re expecting a novel with a story arc and character development, you may not like what you find. Personally, I wouldn’t call this a novel (though the author does,) but it’s one of those books that defies neat categorization. I’d call it creative nonfiction, and – more specifically – an “essay of essays,” which is to distinguish it from an essay collection. [Comparing it to fiction, it would be more like a novel-in-short stories than a collection of stories.] The author’s own words about how the book was composed are more insightful than my own, he called it, “… a mixture of stream of consciousness technique, the paralysis of consciousness technique, and the derangement of consciousness technique…” [As far as I know, the latter two are his own designations.]

Saying the book is rambling (and “pointless” in the best sense of that word) isn’t to suggest that the book lacks a theme. It’s a Korean’s take on things Texan after having spent a substantial amount of time there. But that Korean take on Texas is given an added twist into interesting territory by this particular Korean’s off-beat worldview. So, while many writer’s have considered the psychology, motives, and possible conspiratorial links of Jack Ruby (the assassin of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald), Jung focuses on the issue of Ruby leaving his dogs in the car while he went to shoot Oswald. The author discusses the book as though it – like the sit-com “Seinfeld” – is about nothing, but I think it’s more about a chain of somethings turned on their heads and viewed through a fun-house mirror.

While the Seven Samurai are referenced in the title and are discussed at various points throughout the book, it’s more as a reminiscence than a throughline. That is, if one is expecting any great insight into Akira Kurosawa’s masterwork – either its story or as a film – that’s not how Jung uses the reference. He does talk in detail about cowboys and cowboy-ness. That may seem like a rough segue, but film fans may see a connection. Kurosawa’s film was famously the basis for the Western, “The Magnificent Seven.” I think there’s a connection in the broad appeal of machismo that both samurai cinema and Texas draw upon. [But maybe it was just some sweet alliteration for use in the title.]

I enjoyed this book immensely and would highly recommend it – except for readers who require order or who insist a book make a point. It’s humorous by way of strange lines of thinking and an alien outlook on a singular culture.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one gets an extra star for originality and being like no other book I've read before. It's experimental in the most silly and delightful and inconsequential way. Here is how the author describes it himself, (this is an excerpt from within the book)

I told them it was a novel written by someone who didn’t know much about Texas because he didn’t know about Texas, a novel that didn’t really have much to say, a halfhearted attempt to come up with of a series of groundless hypotheses, a mixture of the stream of consciousness technique, the paralysis of consciousness technique, and the derangement of consciousness technique, a novel that even a passing dog would laugh at, and after I said these things they rang true and my friends seemed perplexed, and I said the novel was going to be a disastrous failure to be mocked by everyone to which we toasted. But there was an advantage to writing with failure in mind, which was to say that failing to write a failure wouldn’t really be a failure, so the fear of failure wouldn’t weigh you down as heavily as you wrote.

and later:

The only thing that concerned me was finding out how long and until when I could go on saying things like this that were pure nonsense and that kept going off on a tangent and that had nothing to say and that, furthermore, made no difference whether they said anything or not and in the end were irrelevant, and you could say that I’m writing this in order to find that out (and also to find out how many repetitions of words and phrases I could use, which naturally bring pleasure to people who understand the pleasure they bring and don’t to people who don’t understand them). There were too many fictions that made an attempt to say something and too few that intentionally said something that may be irrelevant, and as for me I thought that there was a need to think that there was a need to think that there was a need to say things that may be irrelevant, and to think that there was a need to think that there was no need to say other things, and what I wanted to say was things that kept going off on a tangent forever if only that were possible.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The only thing that concerned me was finding out how long and until when I could go on saying things like this that were pure nonsense and that kept going off on a tangent and that had nothing to say and that, furthermore, made no difference whether they said anything or not and in the end were irrelevant, and you could say that I'm writing this in order to find that out (and also to find out how many repetitions of words and phrases I could use, which naturally bring pleasure to people to understand the pleasure they bring and don't to people who don't understand them). There were too many fictions that made an attempt to say something and too few that intentionally said something that may be irrelevant, and as for me I thought that there was a need to think that there was a need to think that there was a need to say things that may be irrelevant, and to think that there was a need to think that there was no need to say other things, and what I wanted to say was things that kept going off on a tangent forever if only that were possible."

That's basically the mission statement of this novel and it will probably give you a good idea if this is the type of novel you'd like or dislike. I personally liked a lot of it, but found that my enjoyment depended upon the irrelevant subject currently being gone off on tangent, and that I'm not the type of person who enjoys reading words just for the sake of reading words, that I enjoy reading about frozen waterfalls and the people who climb them and about the first cat sent to space, but that my enjoyment in reading about a building that Bonnie and Clyde may have once been in or about the size of a particular cowboy's hat was significantly less.

[Alan M · Rating 5 out of 5]

'It's winter now, and I'm in Texas, and I'm writing this, a story about Texas, but at the same time, a story that deviates from being a story about Texas, a story that does, indeed, go back to being a story about Texas, something that I'm writing in the name of a novel but something that is perhaps unnameable.'

So begins this delightfully quirky 'novel' by Korean writer Jung Young Moon, inspired by his time spent as writer-in-residence in the US state. This opening sentence will pretty much decide whether you are going to take to this or not, for what we have is a meandering stream (as a deliberately chosen metaphor) of ideas and thoughts, mostly - but not all - on a Texan theme. Here we roam from Benjamin Franklin to the Kennedy assassination, and our author's fixation on the fact that Jack Ruby took his two dogs with him in his car when he went to kill Lee Harvey Oswald; from thoughts on Félicette, the first cat in space, to Bonnie and Clyde; from what makes a genuine chili to the life of a cowboy. There are tangents, and tangents beyond that, but somehow it all makes sense, if you just go with the flow.

It also becomes a meditation on the act of writing, of what it means to write a novel (that may or may not be a novel, in fact). And then there are the seven samurai, whom our author sees in his mind, fighting with each other, then being swept away in a river, only to emerge again at some unforeseen point to do it all again. In a book where meaning is elusive, metaphors are everywhere, and thoughts twist in the wind, these little guys somehow make total sense:

'The seven samurai seemed to be telling me to write something akin to them fighting each other for no reason or motive, or like them getting swept away in a river, something that was almost nothing about something that was almost nothing.'

This is the kind of book that will delight some, but frustrate the hell out of others, who may well condemn it to the 'wtf?' pile. It is brilliantly bonkers, totally impossible to summarise, but will make you think about how we view the world, about how experience is purely a subjective thing, and that the human mind, and mankind in general, is actually quite astonishing in all its complexities. As the book itself ends, thinking about a Russian ex-ballerina roller-skating to 'The Owl and the Pussycat', it is 'like utter nonsense, but wonderful for that very reason.' Genuinely fantastic, I have to give it 5 stars just because.

[Kari · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is partially non-fiction stream of consciousness ramblings about the more unlikable elements of Texas by a hip Korean writer that somehow finds himself as artist in residence in Corsicana Texas?!? With its purposely repetitious phrases and intentional run-ons, this book feels like a sarcastic, or at least an uninspired, assignment he had to turn in to get his rent reimbursed. I am truly sorry I didn't like it. I had heard some good things about this author.

[Edward Sanchez · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is along the lines of personal memoire with a little bit of fiction rolled in. I read it for a book club group and I agree with one member who said they can see why the author wrote this book in this manner seeing as they were staying in Corsicana, TX. I feel like I should have stopped when the author admitted that he was possibly writing a bad book toward the beginning.

[Micaela Lacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The never-ending chili with or without beans debate; Texas and tangents; Bonnie, Clyde, and hot chocolate. These musings, and seven samurai in a river, all flow naturally and hilariously in Moon’s small stream of consciousness book — more or less about an outsider in Texas.

[Hannah B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Randomly picked this out at the austin library’s “recycled reads” bookstore and really enjoyed it!!! Weird little stream of consciousness book by a Korean author while he lived in a small town outside of Dallas for an artist retreat. Musings on Texas punctuated by existential digressions, loved it

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

good thoughts about Texas

[Kostas Kanellopoulos · Rating 2 out of 5]

A failed Georges Perec wannabe

[Szetaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

nice musings

[brokebookmountain]

yea dnf at 60%

this was way way way too overdone. like bitch at first it was fun, but i definitely can't handle this shit omfg like he just goes on and on and on and on....and like that's the point and i hate it

this is for the literature girlies who love well-written passages that go nowhere at all...i'm sure yall exist

[Rebecca H.]

This short novel rambles and jumps from thought to thought, following the narrator’s mind wherever it wants to go. The premise is that the narrator—who is sort of Jung Young Moon but sort of not, since this is a novel—has traveled to Texas from his native Korea. He stays with friends and rambles around small towns and farms thinking about everything Texas signifies. His meditations range far and wide and include extended riffs on presidential assassinations, cowboy hats, churches, and much more. The narrator also considers what a novel is, what plot is, and what the point of writing is. He considers what the point of anything is. The book is a delightful adventure into the corners of one companionable, entertaining person’s mind.

https://bookriot.com/2019/11/15/indie...

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jung Young Moon is still one of my favorite authors, but maybe I had too high of expectations for this newly translated novel, as it transplants his sensibilities to the dusty plains of Texas, which is just too intriguing to deny. It's still great, but it wouldn't be the first or even second book by him that I would hand someone.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

S Korean wins award for writers residency in Corsicana, TX - writes book about it. Sounds interesting. It wasn't. How many times did I consider stopping reading this? But, it is small, short and reads quickly. Especially when you browse over most of the text very quickly.
Uses the same "quirky" literary game over and over again - "is, maybe could be instead, or a combination of the two, or the original, or something else totally different" over and over again.
Unh, if you like Brautigan, you might like this. Which is essentially superficially thoughtful, insightful, and "philosophical" stream of conscious ramblings. I don't know, maybe 20-something stoners would find it "deep". "Wow, man!" And bringing up for a sentence or two writing theory does not make it worthwhile.
No, I will not be reading anything else by him.

[Lucas Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fun, unexpected read. A Korean writer exploring an extended stay in Texas through a sort of stream-of-consciousness narrative. There are lots of diversions, anecdotes, and nuggets of Texas history. It is experimental feeling, but still very readable and light. There were moments that reminding me of Richard Brautigan, but the voice was unique and engage even when writing in a very flat affect (maybe partial the translation?). Anyway, this was fun and I'll be seeking out more from this author.

[Jae Kwon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did he just pull this off? How. There is no plot. Yet there is. Staring right at me. I don’t know what that plot is, but I know I just read something of a novel, with a plot, of a Korean visitor in Texas.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two short passages from Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River:


D and N, who knew I’d begun working on a new novel, asked me what the novel was about and I told them it was a novel written by someone who didn’t know much about Texas because he didn’t know about Texas, a novel that didn’t really have much to say, a halfhearted attempt to come up with a series of groundless hypotheses, a mixture of the stream of consciousness technique, the paralysis of consciousness technique, and the derangement of consciousness technique, a novel that even a passing dog would laugh at, and after I said these things they rang true and my friends seemed perplexed, and I said the novel was going to be a disastrous failure to be mocked by everyone to which we toasted. But there was an advantage to writing with failure in mind, which was to say that failing to write a failure wouldn’t really be a failure, so the fear of failure wouldn’t weigh you down as heavily as you wrote.

*

He said that among modern philosophers were people who were making a sort of wager about who could say something more nonsensical, by saying something nonsensical in such an abstruse way that people couldn’t see that it was nonsensical, and he too had a remarkable way of saying nonsensical things.

[Nadina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was bizarre to say the least, and, as many have said, while there is no clear plot there also is a plot. The whole novel definitely had a progression from beginning to end. I feel like what drew me to really enjoy this book, what made unable to put it down, was the fact in some ways the meandering of the story, the repitition, the tangents the author went off on were relatable to my mind that also goes off on tangents and is constantly meandering and repeating. This is a book that reflects my active mind, even if the thoughts reflected in the book are quite different.
I do wish that the seven samurai had come into the story earlier and been more a part of it, but it also feels like their introduction and their role was given the exact right amount of attention.
This is a book of contradictions to say the least, but I think well worth the read if you are open-minded and realize it may not be structured like a traditional novel nor have a traditional plot or flow.
It was a good book, and it is something I would be quite likely to recommend to others.

[Lee Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this, overall -- the approach, the stability (for such an associative stretch of writing it's not all over the place), the flow, the imaginative foundation in reality, the degree to which it made me want to write something like it, or read aloud from it to wife and cats, just generally its comfortable peculiarity, like totally acceptable avant-garde-ness not at all interested in shocking the bourgie.

Recommended to me a few months ago as something I might really like, got to it this week. For the first thirty-pages or so, I wondered if the translation was maybe a little off (could use like two dozen more commas throughout to clarify phrases i had to read like three times to figure out what was meant). But then there was a page about writing this intentionally irrelevant book that reminded me of when I edited Eyeshot.net and in the summer would post "nothing" for a few weeks, updating the "nothing" page every other day or so with more text about "nothing," although of course producing something: http://eyeshot.net/nothing.html or http://www.eyeshot.net/nothing1.html. After that page, from then on, it was on.

Will read more Young-moon Jung this summer.

[Francisco Moreno · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book started strong and ended strong. I was drawn to Moon's streams of thought more when they were connecting facts and nurturing my mind in obscure ways. In the middle of the book he would talk about random things and draw them out which I had diffiuclty keeping up with. The end was interesting. I liked when he would write out thoughts, like the potential future of being a cowboy and imagining his life as a cowboy, even though the reality is that he wont. I liked this because he humors thinking about alternative realities. I've had many conversations with people when an alternative reality is presented to me and I don't humor it because I don't want to go astray from my path. But what happens if you do? Nevertheless, this book was a good read for making one think in more abstract ways.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosh.

It has been years and I've attempted to read similar works but it seems like stream of consciousness ramblings of male writers are really not for me.

The book for me is a selfish monologue of a writer who has no idea what to write so he just jotted down whatever fleeted by his thoughts. I couldn't find the humor (is it a gender thing because usually male readers like this kind of novels) and couldn't see the point, if there was any. Maybe the highlight was the struggle of a writer but who cares, seriously? Every writer struggles, and they write meaningful works anyway.

At least I soldiered on and finish the book, unlike works by Pessoa and Villa-Matas.

[Carter Mize · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate what Jung is doing here, leaning into the absurd and pointless, but Seven Samurai was simply not a very enjoyable read to me.

Jung follows rabbit trails of thought enthusiastically and sheepishly in a stream of consciousness kind of manner, which tends to end up repetitive and tedious for the reader. You end up asking "what's the point?" - and that very well may be the point.

Regardless, I don't like reading books that get tedious enough that I'm tempted to count how many pages are left.
Jung, I respect your creativity and willingness to follow through with Seven Samurai. As a Texan myself, I hope you had a good time in our state.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It starts off strong, and the author’s humor and stream of conscience style was engaging and had me laughing out loud in places. And I think people from Texas, like me, will enjoy some of the sections way more than the average reader. Somewhere in the middle, though, I just stopped caring about it and some of the metal rambles, whether focused and purposeful or not, and it took me a very long time to want to finish. This one just ran out of stream for me. I would recommend it to people who enjoy experimental writing, psychology, and/or humorous books even they lack traditional plots.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deceptively simple book that burrows into your mind until, without meaning to, you're thinking like the author: circular imaginings of digressions, constantly qualified, until you both are and are not on every side of an issue or viewpoint. I was reminded of Stein, who is difficult to read until you realize you have to let go of your comprehension and analytics and just let it wash over you.

A very funny and poetic sort, Young Moon trusts his talents and knows he can talk about whatever he finds in North Texas. The particulars are interchangable; the journey is the destination.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is his second book I’ve read, Vaseline Buddha being the first, and his stream of consciousness writing is always interesting due to his odd view of the world.

Having met him I cannot imagine him actually speaking loud enough to that drunk cowboy in the bar with music playing. Also, I love that he points out how Texans refer to all soda as “Coke” regardless of brand/flavor.

Even if you prefer story arch and character development you should give him a try.

[Katy Nimmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

A stream of consciousness, contrarian treat. Reflections from a South Korean writer living in Corsicana (south of Dallas) on freedom and choice, existential reasoning, and Texas. Like nothing I've read before.