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어떤 작위의 세계
완벽한 작위의 세계가 나를 기다리고 있다!
실제와 상상의 경계를 넘나들며 자신만의 독특한 세계를 구축해온 작가 정영문의 소설 『어떤 작위의 세계』. 문학ㆍ인문 웹진 '웹진문지'를 통해 2011년 1월부터 3개월간 연재되었던 것으로, 작가가 대산문화재단의 지원을 받아 2010년 봄과 여름을 샌프란시스코에서 보내며 쓴 일종의 체류기이다. 또한 지극히 사소하고 무용하며 허황된 고찰로서의 글쓰기에 대한 시도이기도 하다. 이 소설은 과거 여자 친구를 만나기 위해 샌프란시스코에 갔을 때의 기억과 그로부터 5년이 지난 후의 이야기로 이루어져 있다. 뚜렷한 플롯 없이 '나'가 샌프란시스코에 머물며 보고 듣고 겪은 것들을 풀어놓는다. 어디로 흘러갈지 짐작하기 어려운 작가의 생각이나 상상의 산물들을 곳곳에서 마주하게 된다.
실제와 상상의 경계를 넘나들며 자신만의 독특한 세계를 구축해온 작가 정영문의 소설 『어떤 작위의 세계』. 문학ㆍ인문 웹진 '웹진문지'를 통해 2011년 1월부터 3개월간 연재되었던 것으로, 작가가 대산문화재단의 지원을 받아 2010년 봄과 여름을 샌프란시스코에서 보내며 쓴 일종의 체류기이다. 또한 지극히 사소하고 무용하며 허황된 고찰로서의 글쓰기에 대한 시도이기도 하다. 이 소설은 과거 여자 친구를 만나기 위해 샌프란시스코에 갔을 때의 기억과 그로부터 5년이 지난 후의 이야기로 이루어져 있다. 뚜렷한 플롯 없이 '나'가 샌프란시스코에 머물며 보고 듣고 겪은 것들을 풀어놓는다. 어디로 흘러갈지 짐작하기 어려운 작가의 생각이나 상상의 산물들을 곳곳에서 마주하게 된다.
- GenresFiction
294 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 21, 2020
This is the 3rd book by Jung Young-Moon I've read this year. For an exhaustive analysis of his writing method check out my review of Vaseline Buddha. All 3 books have showcased the same flighty, quirky personality, but this one contains references and insights that may be construed as polemical.
I prefer when Jung maintains a more detached, disembodied standpoint. But there is still many fantastic wandering reminiscences here. I would not start with this book if you are new to the author. I have a feeling he is going to be getting more English translations soon from Deep Vellum and maybe Dalkey. He has traveled extensively and been writer in residence in variously places in America, he is also a translator into Korean. His style will not be to everyone's taste. Essentially, the book begins with his stay in San Francisco. All of the set-pieces revolve around this iconic city. He talks about seals, shooting cacti, and a hundred other mundane and eccentric topics. His fabulous imagination plays with the world around him, morphing it into a disorienting and hilarious parody of itself.
Like in Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River, the purpose of the book appears to be at times to create an anti-travelogue, or a travel account that does not recommend the city in question, but may intrigue those who have a similar blasé disregard for normal society as Jung's narrators. At times, Jung describes minorities and in this case dwarves, with fascination bordering on contempt. He does not connect with people at all, but gravitates around them, casting a critical and playful eye on their idiosyncratic qualities. This may irritate or offend some readers, but I do not believe it was his intention to make fun of other people. He does cast his narrator in an unconventional light and I can think of many examples of worse human beings than the slightly demented slacker he casts in the main role.
The book offers variety, a weird and discombobulating fantabulism, and a searing perspective on hippies and other distinctly American phenomena. He is interested in culture clashes but not in love with Korea or America in turn. The book is bold in its portrayal of life and always entertaining. It does not play nice or engage in safe discussions. Thought-provoking in the extreme, Jung Young-moon is always a supremely easy read. If you can handle his lack of focus, his endless digressions and his savage sense of humor, get busy reading his work.
I prefer when Jung maintains a more detached, disembodied standpoint. But there is still many fantastic wandering reminiscences here. I would not start with this book if you are new to the author. I have a feeling he is going to be getting more English translations soon from Deep Vellum and maybe Dalkey. He has traveled extensively and been writer in residence in variously places in America, he is also a translator into Korean. His style will not be to everyone's taste. Essentially, the book begins with his stay in San Francisco. All of the set-pieces revolve around this iconic city. He talks about seals, shooting cacti, and a hundred other mundane and eccentric topics. His fabulous imagination plays with the world around him, morphing it into a disorienting and hilarious parody of itself.
Like in Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River, the purpose of the book appears to be at times to create an anti-travelogue, or a travel account that does not recommend the city in question, but may intrigue those who have a similar blasé disregard for normal society as Jung's narrators. At times, Jung describes minorities and in this case dwarves, with fascination bordering on contempt. He does not connect with people at all, but gravitates around them, casting a critical and playful eye on their idiosyncratic qualities. This may irritate or offend some readers, but I do not believe it was his intention to make fun of other people. He does cast his narrator in an unconventional light and I can think of many examples of worse human beings than the slightly demented slacker he casts in the main role.
The book offers variety, a weird and discombobulating fantabulism, and a searing perspective on hippies and other distinctly American phenomena. He is interested in culture clashes but not in love with Korea or America in turn. The book is bold in its portrayal of life and always entertaining. It does not play nice or engage in safe discussions. Thought-provoking in the extreme, Jung Young-moon is always a supremely easy read. If you can handle his lack of focus, his endless digressions and his savage sense of humor, get busy reading his work.
October 23, 2019
Far more conventional than his prior book Vaseline Buddha, Jung Young-moon revisits some familiar themes with his expansively tangential storytelling. Diarrhea, dwarfs, suicide, and unusual things floating past appear again along with him plotting revenge on mayonnaise, kicking pebbles down hills and a tense standoff with a seven year old girl over a discarded love seat.
He'll meander for a page or two, musing on the nature of penises then tell a story of a monkey visiting the north pole or something perhaps a little more plausible like dropping fruit off the Golden Gate bridge then admit it never happened. Still, it's a bit easier to get your bearings with this one.
He'll meander for a page or two, musing on the nature of penises then tell a story of a monkey visiting the north pole or something perhaps a little more plausible like dropping fruit off the Golden Gate bridge then admit it never happened. Still, it's a bit easier to get your bearings with this one.
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February 23, 2025Yet another novel of an un-moored male traipsing through the American West, observing and musing. Nipples, he mostly just muses about. Penises, he observes in more than one chapter, and muses away:
The penis sometimes looks like a little imp, a hideous monster, or a wily beast, but never like an intelligent animal. Bizarre, freakish, and aberrant in some ways, the penis is unique among the organs of the human body in that it can change its shape by its own will or by the command of its master. It occurred to me that there has been no serious literary consideration of the penis, despite having played a crucial role in the continued existence of the human race.
Well. Thankfully that void has been filled.
I looked, as is my way, for some deeper meaning, maybe an allegory; but I think he was just musing.
Two-thirds of the way through, the author offered this parenthetical digression: (I am digressing again, but this is because I am fine with this novel heading in any direction, and because this novel has no message to convey.)
My reading pace quickened after that.
The penis sometimes looks like a little imp, a hideous monster, or a wily beast, but never like an intelligent animal. Bizarre, freakish, and aberrant in some ways, the penis is unique among the organs of the human body in that it can change its shape by its own will or by the command of its master. It occurred to me that there has been no serious literary consideration of the penis, despite having played a crucial role in the continued existence of the human race.
Well. Thankfully that void has been filled.
I looked, as is my way, for some deeper meaning, maybe an allegory; but I think he was just musing.
Two-thirds of the way through, the author offered this parenthetical digression: (I am digressing again, but this is because I am fine with this novel heading in any direction, and because this novel has no message to convey.)
My reading pace quickened after that.
April 26, 2018
Jung Young Moon’s A Contrived World (translated by Jeffrey Karvonen & Mah Eunji, electronic review copy courtesy of the publisher) is another of the writer’s semi-autobiographical books about nothing in particular, revolving around two trips he made to the west coast of the USA. During the first, he spends time with his ex-girlfriend and her new Mexican boyfriend, chilling out in the desert (if that’s possible…). The second, years later, then sees him on an extended visit to San Francisco, waiting for inspiration for a novel to strike in the midst of his random rambles.
The novel is divided into chapters in which Jung uses the world around him as material for his writing. In parts, it’s fairly descriptive, a picture of San Fran and the surrounding region, with Jung acting as a tour guide for his readers. However, these passages are often simply springboards for the writer’s imagination, with Jung taking the reader off on tangents, which (as usual) leave us wondering whether there’s actually a book here at all.
For anyone who’s already experienced Jung’s idiosyncratic style, A Contrived World will be very familiar. The writer thrives on choosing a topic and then using it as a launching pad to follow the idea in his head wherever it may take him (one of the more interesting examples of this would certainly be when he happens to see his ex’s boyfriend naked and then muses for several pages on the peculiarities of the penis). Still, he’s definitely aware of his failings:
She was clearly not having the kind of conversations we used to have with her Mexican boyfriend. It occurred to me again that she’d changed considerably, and that I hadn’t changed much at all. After all those years, I still thought mainly about nonsense, and I usually talked nonsense when I met people.
p.14 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2016)
Believe me – he’s not just being modest here…
Jung’s previous work in English, Vaseline Buddha, did mention the outside world, but for the most part was a rather abstract work. By contrast, the setting is an important part of A Contrived World, with the writer’s musings inspired by the places he visits, from the desert to forests and the city. Surprisingly, there are times when he plays with a surprisingly straight bat, and some of the descriptions could come straight from travel books – there’s something very Brysonesque about the way he introduces the Californian coastline.
Still, it’s never long before the vagueness he does so well takes centre stage, and San Francisco is the perfect setting for it:
We continued heading north and arrived in San Francisco in the middle of the night. Thick fog shrouded the city. We were unable to read the road signs, and there were no pedestrians to ask for directions. We drove around downtown for a while as though we were drifting in limbo. It felt like a hallucination from which I would never escape. (p.47)
As in Vaseline Buddha, Jung experiences frequent bouts of dizziness and ennui, often unable to rouse himself from his sombre moods, and the fog he encounters here is akin to a physical manifestation of these moods. This darker side to his writing is ever-present, and the description of his temporary home as one of the world’s suicide capitals is no coincidence.
It’s never easy trying to pull themes together in Jung’s work (like threading fog…), but there’s a definite sense of movement and drifting running throughout the book. The writer has an obsession with hoboes, vagrants and drifters (and has detailed theories on the differences between them), detailing his encounters with the homeless people in the park and delighting in telling their stories along with his own. These are people who need to keep moving, with no real attachment to their home, and the reader senses that the writer feels an affinity with them.
Perhaps more than his experiences, though, it’s the stories Jung tells, repeated and bizarre, that lend such a unique air to the book. We learn of a monkey that made it to the North Pole, the sardine-throwing teddy bear gang that accosted the poor defenceless writer, and a trip he made to throw fruit off the Golden Gate Bridge. And yet, we can never take him at his word, as he often turns around and contradicts himself (the fruit story never happened because the bridge is closed to pedestrians at night – and because he was too tired to go out anyway…). Sometimes, as in the case of a story about a hippie living off roadkill, he admits that the story’s fabricated from the start:
The following is the story I made up. (I am digressing again, but this is because I am fine with this novel heading in any direction, and because this novel has no message to convey. What I want in a novel is for new stories to emerge and break away from the original story, and eventually for all of the stories to become jumbled and confused.) (p.120)
So, what we have is an intriguing mix of minutiae and lies – making him an untrustworthy Korean Knausgaard of sorts.
While some readers may tire of his constant twists and turns, A Contrived World can be a delight to read. The translation reads nicely, and once you settle into the novel, the usual contradictions and jokes are entertaining. I do wonder, though, whether the translation is a little too smooth. Jung’s other works in English have seemed less watered down, and in this one, the sentences appear to be shorter, with more standard vocabulary choices. Interestingly enough, Jung Yewon (who translated Vaseline Buddha and some of the stories in the collection A Most Ambiguous Sunday) produced a sample translation from A Contrived World back in 2013, and there are clear differences between the two versions. I’m not going to judge whether her version of the text is better or worse than that of Karvonen and Mah, but it’s certainly different.
He’s not a writer for everyone, but I enjoyed my latest encounter with Jung, like a pleasant walk through the fog:
Like rain, fog, which is water in a different state, seems to have certain abstract properties. This is perhaps because water in all of its various forms, and all liquids, have inherent elements that are perfectly abstract. It seems to me that while one might easily grow tired of looking at concrete forms, abstract things possess something in them that prevents people from losing interest. (p.64)
And that’s the heart of his appeal, an abstract nature that keeps your interest even when you’re not entirely sure where he’s going or what he’s talking about – or whether it’s natural or contrived…
The novel is divided into chapters in which Jung uses the world around him as material for his writing. In parts, it’s fairly descriptive, a picture of San Fran and the surrounding region, with Jung acting as a tour guide for his readers. However, these passages are often simply springboards for the writer’s imagination, with Jung taking the reader off on tangents, which (as usual) leave us wondering whether there’s actually a book here at all.
For anyone who’s already experienced Jung’s idiosyncratic style, A Contrived World will be very familiar. The writer thrives on choosing a topic and then using it as a launching pad to follow the idea in his head wherever it may take him (one of the more interesting examples of this would certainly be when he happens to see his ex’s boyfriend naked and then muses for several pages on the peculiarities of the penis). Still, he’s definitely aware of his failings:
She was clearly not having the kind of conversations we used to have with her Mexican boyfriend. It occurred to me again that she’d changed considerably, and that I hadn’t changed much at all. After all those years, I still thought mainly about nonsense, and I usually talked nonsense when I met people.
p.14 (Dalkey Archive Press, 2016)
Believe me – he’s not just being modest here…
Jung’s previous work in English, Vaseline Buddha, did mention the outside world, but for the most part was a rather abstract work. By contrast, the setting is an important part of A Contrived World, with the writer’s musings inspired by the places he visits, from the desert to forests and the city. Surprisingly, there are times when he plays with a surprisingly straight bat, and some of the descriptions could come straight from travel books – there’s something very Brysonesque about the way he introduces the Californian coastline.
Still, it’s never long before the vagueness he does so well takes centre stage, and San Francisco is the perfect setting for it:
We continued heading north and arrived in San Francisco in the middle of the night. Thick fog shrouded the city. We were unable to read the road signs, and there were no pedestrians to ask for directions. We drove around downtown for a while as though we were drifting in limbo. It felt like a hallucination from which I would never escape. (p.47)
As in Vaseline Buddha, Jung experiences frequent bouts of dizziness and ennui, often unable to rouse himself from his sombre moods, and the fog he encounters here is akin to a physical manifestation of these moods. This darker side to his writing is ever-present, and the description of his temporary home as one of the world’s suicide capitals is no coincidence.
It’s never easy trying to pull themes together in Jung’s work (like threading fog…), but there’s a definite sense of movement and drifting running throughout the book. The writer has an obsession with hoboes, vagrants and drifters (and has detailed theories on the differences between them), detailing his encounters with the homeless people in the park and delighting in telling their stories along with his own. These are people who need to keep moving, with no real attachment to their home, and the reader senses that the writer feels an affinity with them.
Perhaps more than his experiences, though, it’s the stories Jung tells, repeated and bizarre, that lend such a unique air to the book. We learn of a monkey that made it to the North Pole, the sardine-throwing teddy bear gang that accosted the poor defenceless writer, and a trip he made to throw fruit off the Golden Gate Bridge. And yet, we can never take him at his word, as he often turns around and contradicts himself (the fruit story never happened because the bridge is closed to pedestrians at night – and because he was too tired to go out anyway…). Sometimes, as in the case of a story about a hippie living off roadkill, he admits that the story’s fabricated from the start:
The following is the story I made up. (I am digressing again, but this is because I am fine with this novel heading in any direction, and because this novel has no message to convey. What I want in a novel is for new stories to emerge and break away from the original story, and eventually for all of the stories to become jumbled and confused.) (p.120)
So, what we have is an intriguing mix of minutiae and lies – making him an untrustworthy Korean Knausgaard of sorts.
While some readers may tire of his constant twists and turns, A Contrived World can be a delight to read. The translation reads nicely, and once you settle into the novel, the usual contradictions and jokes are entertaining. I do wonder, though, whether the translation is a little too smooth. Jung’s other works in English have seemed less watered down, and in this one, the sentences appear to be shorter, with more standard vocabulary choices. Interestingly enough, Jung Yewon (who translated Vaseline Buddha and some of the stories in the collection A Most Ambiguous Sunday) produced a sample translation from A Contrived World back in 2013, and there are clear differences between the two versions. I’m not going to judge whether her version of the text is better or worse than that of Karvonen and Mah, but it’s certainly different.
He’s not a writer for everyone, but I enjoyed my latest encounter with Jung, like a pleasant walk through the fog:
Like rain, fog, which is water in a different state, seems to have certain abstract properties. This is perhaps because water in all of its various forms, and all liquids, have inherent elements that are perfectly abstract. It seems to me that while one might easily grow tired of looking at concrete forms, abstract things possess something in them that prevents people from losing interest. (p.64)
And that’s the heart of his appeal, an abstract nature that keeps your interest even when you’re not entirely sure where he’s going or what he’s talking about – or whether it’s natural or contrived…
May 10, 2020
I loved this so much, but don’t get your hopes up. It’s not a conventional novel. Not sure what it is, but the writing was such a delight I couldn’t stop reading. The author, or a narrator who’s also Korean, travels to San Francisco. Mostly he wanders around letting his observations launch him off into random, often wryly hilarious trains of thought, most of which he considers “trifling.” Again and again, thoughts, memories, dreams, obscure facts about raccoons, hobos, dwarfs, vengeance, the penis, Richard Brautigan, and more, until the incredibly fluid prose conjures a kind of meta-reality that feels like the real reality we actually live. Reading this is a lot like going down an Internet hole. I can’t wait to read more by this guy. Have a feeling he’s going to be a new favorite.
December 26, 2018
Another masterpiece by Jung Young Moon. This guy just writes to the tune of nirvana for me.
December 22, 2018
This author is noted for his distinctive, intensely self-observing, stream of consciousness style and preferences for specific themes including vagrants, animals (especially chickens), water and clouds. This style is very much in evidence in A Contrived World, but the book is much “straighter” than the other works of his that have been published in English translation, albeit far from totally so. It takes the form of a set of travel essays occasioned by a series of trips the speaker had made to the United States – including to LA, San Francisco, Mendocino (a large coastal sparsely populated county in northern CA often referred to as “retired hippy heaven”), and Hawaii. The author actually made such trips, and it is clear that the book is at the very least semi-autobiographical. The narrator comes across as very eccentric and curmudgeonly, but at the same time likable and highly entertaining. He is a character created by the author, but on certain topics the words he speaks seem to come directly from the author himself. On writing: “things that I do not consider fun: … conventional works of fiction, fiction that reflects the times, novels that discuss scars, consolation and healing, novels in which characters’ actions weigh more than their thoughts, grandiose novels, touching novels (…), growth novels, all-too-serious novels, novels that don’t exude an excess of self-consciousness, …” (p.64). On Korea: “I am often surprised at how uncommonly rare it is that I find anything interesting in Korea, aside from the work of a very few authors. But there is nothing surprising about this. Uninteresting people do not do interesting things. There is something like a social climate that dictates that one should not do interesting things. The number of people who are willing to engage in interesting activities is extremely small and wanting. …” (p. 165). And on a certain famed international writers’ workshop: “I felt the same as when I remembered having been troubled after the two summer months that I stayed in Iowa City three years prior, when I was so bored that I desperately hoped for a tornado, which actually came and caused damage the day after I left the city.” (p.182)
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May 19, 2016"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 an invented world designed by the author, which comments on creating a reality out of words: the illusion of fiction itself." - Jung Young-Moon
This book was reviewed in the May/August 2016 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
This book was reviewed in the May/August 2016 issue of World Literature Today magazine. Read the full review by visiting our website:
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
July 20, 2017
The writer/narrator himself makes the whole book work as his ability to over-analyse everything and to react in absurd ways to everyday situations. Particular scenes/thoughts that endure after reading are his intention/non-intention of throwing fruit from the Golden Gate Bridge so that it can return to SouthEast Asia, his erasing of the name "Valerie" that someone has written on a beach and his subsequent guilt about his meaningless act. These golden nuggets are too infrequent to keep most readers going through the entire book. Large parts are uninteresting and well, meaningless. The writer states in one of his chapters that his intended title and theme for the book was "Things I consider Fun" and that is indeed, how it reads. However, not all of these things are as fun as he himself finds them.
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November 10, 2016Not going to give this book a rating because I'm not entirely sure how to, but we read this book in my Life Writing class and had Jung Young Moon himself come into class to talk to us about this book and his writing in general. This book sits between a memoir and fiction; between the voice of a persona and an author. I'd never read this sort of ridiculous, almost seemingly meaningless book before, so trying to get through it was a struggle. But once you realize the point of the book was to be meaningless and to not have a point, it's easier to give in to the plot and voice and enjoy how ridiculous everything is. Artistry and skill can be see in how the author makes sense/structure out of the chaos.
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July 13, 2026Possibly my favorite of his, though it becomes so difficult to remember many of the movements except in their most basic form, and that seems to be Jung's intent. Here he is at his most despairing and open about his own craft:
I mean how do you argue with that?
These are completely irrefutable statements. Not subject to criticism of any kind. You can hate it, but he asks you to. You can ignore it, but he expects you to. And as the novel progresses (despite trying not to progress, but the novel is fine with its own failures), these sorts of statements begin to crystalize until the vicious ending, and we start getting more blatant and frequent artist's statements:
By the end, I had to admit that I have a soft spot for this kind of nihilism, and I'm left trying to understand why, which means that the book has operated on me as a kind of mirror, and only at my own peril do I set it aside and forget it.
I am digressing again, but this is because I am fine with this novel heading in any direction, and because this novel has no message to convey
I mean how do you argue with that?
...despite being tired and exhausted, I continued to write stories that offered no help when I was tired and exhausted.
These are completely irrefutable statements. Not subject to criticism of any kind. You can hate it, but he asks you to. You can ignore it, but he expects you to. And as the novel progresses (despite trying not to progress, but the novel is fine with its own failures), these sorts of statements begin to crystalize until the vicious ending, and we start getting more blatant and frequent artist's statements:
I dawned of me that there was one form of vengeance that I'd been acting on incessantly: revenge on fiction. I had been seeking revenge on fiction by writing fiction.
By the end, I had to admit that I have a soft spot for this kind of nihilism, and I'm left trying to understand why, which means that the book has operated on me as a kind of mirror, and only at my own peril do I set it aside and forget it.
July 15, 2025
Watch my review on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgYzj...
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews