Pravo na samouništenje

by Young-ha Kim, Kim Sang-hun (Prijevod), Boris Škvorc (Prijevod)

Pravo na samouništenje, kultni roman suvremene korejske književnosti, senzualan je, mračan i snolik vodič kroz Seul, grad u koji nas uvodi majstor nesvakidašnjeg zanata, Kimov bezimeni pripovjedač. Nije slikar, ali Mrtvi Marat Jacques-Louisa Davida ključ je njegova umijeća: distanciran i hladan, onima koje prepozna kao potencijalne klijente prodaje mogućnost bijega, izlaz iz banalnosti života.
U romanu kojim je Kim Young-ha osvojio publiku i kritiku diljem svijeta pod neonskim svjetlima velegrada dotaknut će se i preplesti pet sudbina: lijepe performerice Mimi, dvojice braće zaljubljene u istu djevojku, tajanstvene Se-yeon, koja spava s obojicom, ali ne pripada nijednom, te onoga koji ih sve zapisuje i prati, strpljivo nudeći jedinu utjehu – pravo na samouništenje.
Poput Ryūa Murakamija ili Breta Eastona Ellisa, jedan od najznačajnijih korejskih pisaca današnjice Kim Young-ha u Pravu na samouništenje ispisao je uzbudljivu i mračnu parabolu o suvremenom urbanom životu, snažno književno promišljanje istine, smrti, žudnje i identiteta. Ljepota i jeza, brza vožnja i očajnički seks, frivolnost umjetnosti i fantazije kojima se borimo protiv egzistencijalne dosade susreću se u ovoj prozi koja očarava i duboko uznemiruje, baš poput najuspješnijih djela suvremene korejske kinematografije.

“Noir s pikantnim egzotičnim prizvukom.” – Kirkus Review

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Asian Literature, Asia, Literary Fiction, Adult, Short Stories

152 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 1995

About the author

Kim Young-ha is the author of seven novels, including the acclaimed I Have the Right to Destroy Myself and Black Flower - and five short story collections.

He has won every major Korean literature award, and his works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Seoul, South Korea.

Reviews

[emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This website is a fresh and unique hell, and yet I adore it and use it every day.

This is for one or more of the following reasons:
- I love attention
- I'm addicted to lists and updating lists
- This is a site by and for people who love books, and that is, inherently, a good thing.

And yet there is also one thing, besides the lack of updates and the people getting angry at me every day and the John Green stans, that I do not like.

And that is the lack of differentiation between the narrator and the author when reviewing a book.

If an author who is sexist writes a book that is sexist, that is bad. That's bigotry. But if an author writes a book in which the NARRATOR is sexist, that doesn't have to be. That can be a well-done commentary.

This book, for example. If the author goes out of his way to tell you that our narrator ignored a woman's real name in order to nickname her after a sex object, you should listen to the author telling you that's how he perceives her - that he ignores her real identity in favor of her serving as a literally flat and surface level sexual figure.

And then if another female character is similar to that woman for a reason the narrator can't identify, and he also nicknames that woman after an art-based sex object, you have that in your toolbox.

See how f*cking pretentious this is? But god it is so goddamn frustrating to see people read without thinking. Isn't that why we read in the first place!?

Bottom line: I am sorry and at the same time I am not.

------------------
pre-review

i hate when i can't figure out why a book's average rating is so low. it makes me assume most people didn't get it, and i hate to be pretentious.

review to come / 3.5ish

------------------
tbr review

how am i supposed to resist a title / cover combination like that

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking over other people's reviews, I'm kind of annoyed. People point out that it is quite disturbing, graphic, and often unpleasant. And cite that as a reason for it being bad. This kind of thinking is shallow and stupid. Yes, it's not about puppies. Not everything is about puppies, guys.

It was a good book. It all tied together very nicely (though it was a little confusing for a second), and had some very insightful lines/moments. This book is translated from Korean, so I wonder if anything was lost in translation? I didn't even notice any awkard language, I think the translation went quite well.

Also, the cover art is beautiful. I want it as a poster on my wall, sans the words.

Anyway, overall this book was a quick and mentally stimulating read. Memorable and unique, though definitely a bit pretentious, especially in its reflections on art, but that was easily one of the best parts. Oh, but for the record, Young-Ha kim, thank you for the image of a chick force-feeding a guy a bottle of his own cum out of an Evian bottle.

[Carmen · Rating 1 out of 5]

TRIGGERS: SUICIDE

But it was easy to move people back in those days, like the way Anne Frank's diary touched a nerve because of the Halocaust. But now it isn't so easy. Death has become pornographic, shown live on TV. Massacres, which used to be unearthed through rumor, are quickly reported in detail via satellite.

This book, which centers on a man who goes around finding "clients" whom he then helps commit suicide, is not as interesting or as revolutionary as I thought it would be.

For one thing, the premise sounds intriguing. This guy looks for people who he thinks should kill themselves. NOT because their lives are shitty, or he thinks they have nothing to live for or something. No, he thinks the potential to be a suicide is because... Well, he thinks it is a form of psychosis. People who should kill themselves (he says) are bored with life, get no joy or meaning out of life, and are just randomly wandering through life bored. That's his whole schtick. He finds these people and encourages/convinces them to commit suicide. This makes him deeply happy and excited, because he is a psychopath, too, just a different kind of psychopath.

"Did you see him?" I asked.

Mimi nodded. "It was a great project. But he can't save me."

"Nobody can save anyone," I replied.

So.

You may think that this book will be really interesting, but it's not.

Two people are convinced to commit suicide in this book - both are women. And there's this weird sexual undertone about death and sex being connected. I didn't like it. Not only because I thought it was sick, but also because it was just very cliched and boring.

There's some really gross stuff in here. Sick stuff. I'm warning you in case you have a sensitivity to that sort of thing. For instance, one woman becomes violently sick, vomiting every time she drinks water. She can never drink water. Why? TRUST ME, YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW. I toyed with the idea of hiding it in a spoiler, but I'm just not the kind of person who gets joy out of grossing out other people - and typing it out was making me feel a bit ill, so you'll just have to read the book if you want to know.

I am actually fine with gross stuff being in a book, but I only feel this way if I feel like it is integral to the plot, or is helping the plot move forward, or is important to know so that you can understand a character. Here, I feel it is just meaningless and meant to shock you.

Sex is also portrayed in this book as a kind of boring, dull, banal act that elicits no excitement from either party and is just done out of boredom.

There's no character development, and no attachments developed for any character.

Also, Kim uses dialogue NOT as a way of having people actually talk to each other, but so that his philosophies and ideas can be spouted off in long paragraphs of what essentially amounts to the author lecturing you about life. This makes the book not so much a novel as a philosophy thesis.
...

This book is South Korean. The author is South Korean and it takes place in South Korea. I don't usually read any South Korean books, so I was interested in picking this up because I always like to expand my reading horizons.

The cover is absolutely the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen.
...

I took off my gloves when I left her apartment. I always wear gloves when I go to a client's place, to make sure my fingerprints aren't discovered. Sometimes there are clients who want sex, but I usually refuse. But if I can't, I use contraception. Not only do I want to be prepared for a possible autopsy, it's also indecent for a new life to awaken in a dead body.

Tl;dr - I feel like this book is trying to hard to "be artsy" or "be deep." I don't like books that do that. I'd rather read a novel. This only claims to be a novel, when really it's a philosophical treatise. It's just a masturbatory exercise on the part of the author, reveling in his deep thoughts and his creation of art. While he has some good ideas in here, he fails at writing dialogue, he fails at creating characters that the reader can connect with in even the smallest of ways, and his plot is neither cohesive nor gripping.

Available in Spanish as Tengo el derecho a destruirme.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, but I loved it.

It is a novella about life and living, told from the perspective a man who brings suicide to "clients" he meets, leading them to an end they are happy with and fulfilled by. But it's also a novel about the lives of people who are content to keep living even if they're incapable of loving.

Mostly, though, it's a story about living most at the moment of death.

And that is what Young-ha Kim gets in a way that so many don't -- death is life.

It is not just that death is the inevitable end of life, it is that death is life itself, and that suicide doesn't have to be an act of despair from a hollow or depressed or weak individual. It can be an embracing of life, a meeting of that ultimate moment of life on one's own terms. From Young-ha Kim's perspective, and the perspective of his nameless, faceless narrator, death/suicide is the ultimate artistic expression -- and what is art but a passionate expression of life and living?

This book is not for a wide audience, and it will fall into many hands that will revile it and many more hands that will simply not be in a place to embrace it.

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself is a piece of antagonistic art, a sort of literary Exotica, a sparing, Egoyan-esque journey through light posing as darkness, and it will someday be held responsible, I have no doubt, for the suicide of some teenager, in some middle class North American town.

But if you know you are capable of celebrating life in all its complexity, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself is a debut novel that will remind you that there are authors out there who can still feel. And this book will make you feel too.

[Niharika (severely inactive) · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I always take a close look at those who lose themselves in self-portraits. They are solitary souls, prone to introspection, who have really grappled with their existence. And they know such introspection, though painful, is secretly exhilarating. And if someone asks me the kind of question I myself might pose, I can tell he's lonely.”

Reading this book was like gazing at one of those Surrealist paintings. They have such a beautiful air of sophistication about them, but could be easily perceived as a shallow, pretentious attempt at uniqueness if made by an artist who doesn't ring a bell in your head at first glance. But the good thing is that I don't consider my tastes in either art or books to be particularly refined. If I read a book and it screams "deep stuff" to me, there's a good chance I'll end up liking it.

It's hard to summarise what this book is about. It could be about our unnamed narrator, who assists people with committing suicides as a living and seems to like fine arts as much as I do. It could also be about the woman who likes to eat Chupa Chups while having sex and becomes a client of the former at some point. It could also tell us the story of K and C, two brothers trying to win against each other in life, and falling for the said Chupa Chups Girl.

Kim Young-Ha's writing is poetic, sometimes overtly so, casually weaving the stories of a cast of widely different characters through an apparently intangible string of melancholia. The male characters are sexist to the point where they even dehumanise the women around them, assigning them names inspired from haughty seductress figures from old European paintings. The female characters are all supremely enigmatic forces of nature, haunting their companions with their alluring, scandalous pasts. But that seemed to be kind of the point the author was deliberately trying to make, so I didn't mind it a bit.

This is so random, but if you like art history, weird people doing morally questionable things while being extremely pretentious about it, and flowery writing, you might like this book too.

3.75 stars, not rounded up because I like it that way.

Pre-reading Update

...Me every time I screw up with yet another important thing.

[Chaimaa · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has potential, but the author decided to make it shitty.

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

A professional accessory to suicides narrates the story of two women entangled with two brothers. Detachment from people, existential loneliness and being unmoored in society form major themes
“It was a great project. But he can’t save me.”
Nobody can save anyone,” I replied.

I am very sure that I read this book in Dutch somewhere 16 to 18 years ago (it feels crazy to say this, almost two decades...), but since I couldn’t recall anything besides the premise of the narrator aiding suicidal people, I’ve reread it. I Have The Right To Destroy Myself is a slim book, with a stories inside stories framing. We follow C, an older brother and video artist and K, younger brother and taxi driver who relaxes by crossing the speed limit (this is all pre-Uber so his drunk passengers experiencing this are not impacting his business too much apparently).
They are vying for the attention of Judith/Se-yeon, nicknamed after the Gustav Klimt painting. In the second part of the book we meet performance artist Mimi.
The narrator doesn’t really come into focus much himself (I initially thought it was a woman, but when he has sex in Vienna I concluded differently). The overall premise of his job, and the potential complications it would bring with it, including police investigations into money transfers to random strangers just before the suicides, are not further delved into unfortunately.

A bleak work, where existential unmooring is ubiquitous. One is hard pressed to really discover much of the Korean setting in the tale, in a sense it reminded me of the globalist stories in Ghostwritten from the turn of the millennium (I am a bit confused on the actual timing of the book, we have smoking in an European museum restaurant, which made me think this was set in the 1980s, but people do have cell phones, Macs, yet also use a paper map in a foreign city), and I can understand how I forgot the characters and more details of the plot. There are impressively done individual scenes in the book, including the paint, body and hair filled performance art of Mimi and one of the brothers and Judith being stranded in a snowstorm. And the potentially true story of how a woman gets sick by drinking water is also very disturbing.

Definitely not poorly written by Kim Young-ha, if maybe a bit top heavy in terms of depictions of sex, more an expression of wanting to escape everyday life than an outcome of actual lust or romantic feelings, and slightly pretentious/on the nose in the now in how Delacroix, David and Klimt are mixed with ChuppaChups as influences.

Quotes:
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.

People who don’t know how to summarize have no dignity. Neither do people who needlessly drag on their messy lives. They who don’t know the beauty of simplification, of pruning away the unnecessary, die without ever comprehending the true meaning of life.

But I don’t encourage murder. This type of inflammatory comment is merely to weed out the kind of people I don’t want. I have no interest in one person killing another. I only want to draw out morbid desires, imprisoned deep in the unconscious. This lust, once freed, starts growing. The caller’s imagination runs free, and she soon discovers her potential.

I hide my tastes with constant talk. Uncomprehending, they shake their heads at me, because I keep dodging their expectations of who I am. But this is to be expected, as nobody really knows much about a god.

But no matter how you die, the world always stays the same.

“Doesn’t it make you tired?”
“Life is tiring. I’m used to it, anyway”

I would like to be bored for eternity

You guys seem different, but deep down, you’re identical. And people who can’t kill can’t ever truly love.

Sometimes fiction is more easily understood than true events. Reality is often pathetic.

It’s easy to have sex when you can’t really communicate

He hadn’t forgotten that the things he was attracted to were usually the very same ones that pushed him into an abyss.

All criticism of performance art starts with the fear of true beauty. People preserve beauty because of their obsession with immortality. They are slaves of dead art.

When he turned thirty, he had realized that the ability to love another is a skill.

Cruelty breeds a secret pleasure.

C thought his brother looked like a hyperrealist drawing.

[Suchona Hasnat · Rating 5 out of 5]

No matter how you die. the world always stays the same.

This is about death. It's about the nothingness of life. So it was only normal that I gave it 5 stars.
The people who read it before me said it's disturbing. It could be. I didn't feel that way. For me, sometimes it felt like looking at a painting and discovering tiny little details that weren't there just seconds ago. But on other occasions, it was a lot like looking through a train window, seeing everything run in the opposite direction but when a new scene appeared, it was all the same.
Why does nothing change, even when you set out for a faraway land?

This doesn't try to find meaning in death. It doesn't search for the mystery of life either. It just says what it has to. And somehow that was enough for me. Somehow that soothed my melancholic heart. So when I read
My life has always been an uncontrollable mess. I'm always somewhere I don't want to be. followed by I would like to be bored for eternity. , it healed the burning contradiction in me.

[RandomAnthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm willing to make the four star leap on this one, although I might change my mind after a re-read. I Have The Right To Destroy Myself reads like a Bergman film. In other words, it's slow, meditative, doesn't bother tying up every loose end, and sometimes leaves the reader working hard to create meaning.

The storyline/narrator involves a man who gets paid to advise people on how to best commit suicide. However, that angle never gets overplayed, as it might in the hand of a lesser writer, and Young-ha Kim doesn't stoop to shock. The novel seems more about art, change, and the many ways people attempt to express and satisfy their desires. At least that's what I thought. It's a slight book, only 130 pages or so, and I want to read it again. Some elements seemed to slip past me in the best way possible and a re-reading seems necessary to catch more of the book's strengths. I can see why some might see the author has some "first novel" self-consciousness, but I can more than live with that possibility.

I also appreciate the fact that Young-ha Kim is a Korean novelist who writes about his home country without ramming politics or social conditions down the reader's throat. Sometimes I feel that most popular books about foreign countries focus on the awful living conditions and political climate. I'm also resisting the urge to compare Young-ha Kim to Murakami, because I'm worried I'd do so only because both writers are Asian, but I think the comparison might have some merit in the writers' sparse, simple prose.

If you want to borrow this copy, and I know who you are, let me know, and I'll get it in the mail.

By the way, score one for the local independent bookstore. I doubt I would have ever found this book without the little recommendation card on the shelf. Neither the nearby Borders nor the local library system has a copy. So yay independent bookstore.

[Jamal · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author, painfully self-aware yet vacuous (like a high-school goth reading Rilke) almost screams in your ear, "I'm sophisticated, see? I'm writing about French art and suicide...that's what sophisticated authors write about...just ask everybody!"

There seems to be a matrix or rubric against which he measured the manuscript giving the same inauthentic feel as a foreign movie the director of which borrowed too literally from a popular movie from the States or England.

"Oh, look, everyone is wearing black and looking severe. But where's the unnecessary "bullet-ti"...oh there it is!"

It reminds me of Banana Yoshinko but without the unnerving sense of cheerfulness in her bleak realities, which is to say it fails in it's goal of...well I have no idea. In that way it's like reading a manual of a 1950's US Army field telephone you found at the Goodwill: pointless.

It was, however, effective in one aspect: the protagonist is an assassin who implicitly believes evangelically in the suicide solution (will you never cease to ruin lives, Ozzy Osbourne?!). By the end of this novel I too realized that I do, indeed, have the right to destroy myself. Unfortunately I also wanted to do so.

[Kate♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5stars

I literally finished this book in 30 minutes - if you want a quick read, this is the definition.

This story follows two brothers C and K who are both in love with the same woman, while at the same time a man is going around Seoul suggesting suicide to anyone who he deems suitable for it. This story was intriguing right from the get-go and, somehow, within 115 pages the author manages to show the brother's existing relationship and develop it according to this woman they both are in love with. I personally just wasn't a huge fan of this as I was unable to connect to the characters or really understand the point of the story.

I had to lower it's rating simply because there were so many unaswered questions and unneeded things within this book - it's only 115 pages and way too many of them were used on random sex scenes.

That being said, this book is definitely not for anyone under the age of 18 and also has a trigger warning for suicide.

[Boxhuman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like nitty-gritty. I like dark and rough, but (unfortunately) I also like well-written plots and characters to have shards of realism.

One of the good points is that the book is short; the author knew his limits. So, thank you, Mr. Kim.

However, there are some key problems, especially the women characters. Now, I might have passed this off as a cultural difference, but since the book is so heavily influenced by the U.S., I can't let it slide.

First off, we have "Judith", the insane, emo chick who has a weird obsession with lollipops (sucks on them even during sex), the North Pole (because it can't be tamed, basically), her birthday (when she wants sex, she says it's her birthday), and the obvious, sex (she likes to touch herself at random intervals). If he didn't try too hard with her, I could appreciate her desire for the North Pole, but everything she says sounds so over-the-top and cheesy. Here are some of her winning quotes and actions:

--"That was a game," Judith says, breaking the silence. The windshield is again covered in thick snowdrifts, and the inside of the car return to its pitch-black state. "When I slept with you for the first time, I mean. Remember I was eating a lollipop? I knew you were looking at me. So I decided to play a game and see whether I could win you over while I was eating candy, or afterward. I decided that if you came over to me while I was eating it, I would live with you, and if you came to me after I was done, I'd live with K. Fun, huh?"--

--"I just thought of something fun to do," she says, packing the snow into a ball, the size of a golf ball. She parts her legs, giggling. The snowball slides up inside her.--

Then, there's girl-addicted-to-coke...No, not the drug, the soda. I don't think she was ever given a name. She apparently grew up being a mannequin in bar where people would take off her clothes (each piece for a price), then she lived with this mafia guy just to sit around and eat his sperm. No joke. She was usually bitchy (yet still wanted sex with a stranger, our narrator) and had some interesting things to say:

--"When I love deeply, I vomit."--

--"You know when you feel like throwing everything up? My stomach is always full of weird things. That's when I feel the urge to have sex."--

The last girl is Mimi, who is pretty much a flighty/emo artist that paints with her hair. No, she doesn't have sex (surprising catch!) and she must not have said anything too out-there enough because I didn't write anything down, or maybe I was just too numb at that point.

The ending of the story felt forced. Basically, this is what K tells his brother, "I'm thinking of driving as fast as I possibly can today. I've always taken my foot off the gas at the last moment. But now I want to step on it to the end, until I really start flying."

His brother's response to K admitting he's going to try to commit suicide: "I can't stop you if you really want to do that." Nice brotherly love. I hated it because it was so damn passive.

I appreciate the 'right to die/choose' tones, but it could have been executed a lot more coherently and with better writing. I couldn't get into it and felt no loss for the characters. The emotional impact was more a dull thud against my heart as I closed the book and threw it on the pile to go back to the library. However, I did like the final sentence:

"Why does nothing change, even when you set out for a faraway place?"

But it doesn't salvage the book.

[Sotiria Lazaridou · Rating 4 out of 5]

THIS WAS SO WEIRD BUT SO ENTERTAINING AT THE SAME TIME!!!


너무 재미있게 읽었습니다!!

[Eliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 / 5 ❤

I don’t encourage murder. I have no interest in one person killing another. I only want to draw out morbid desires, imprisoned deep in the unconscious. This lust, once freed, starts growing. Their imaginations runs free, and they soon discover their potential … They are waiting for someone like me.

What a disturbingly interesting novel — I can’t think of a better way to sum up my thoughts. I literally flew through this one in a couple hours (it’s 120 pages, so it’s not impressive, lol), and the constant thought going through my mind was: Oh, my goodness. What is going on?

That being said, the weirdness and sometimes a little too disturbing moments were what made this novel captivating. The characters, while not memorable, were messed up and lost — like phantoms moving through life, finding pleasure through drinking, sex, and their strange imaginations.

The block quote above is originally what caught my interest — doesn’t it sound positively messed up? — but then as I started reading and hit the half-way point, I realized the novels best moment are the synopsis and the “prologue.” Most of the book is still captivating, though (then again, maybe it will stir you away, because the stories/characters are very strange and frankly feel pointless).

Overall, I’m not sure what I was supposed to get from this read, other than feeling uncomfortable and confused. I wish the ending could have been elaborated upon, but I think this is one of those books that really has no point — it feels like its main purpose is to just make you feel uneasy, which if so, it does a good job of.

[Alberto Villarreal · Rating 1 out of 5]

En la contraportada hay una texto de Los Angeles Review Books: "Sería fácil compararlo con Murakami". Debí verlo venir.

[Negar Khalili · Rating 3 out of 5]

والا من واقعاً‌ نمی‌دونم کسی در خاورمیانه چرا باید این کتاب رو بخونه، چه رسد به اینکه بشینه ترجمه‌ش هم بکنه!
کم خودمون بدبختی داریم!‌
بعد کتاب با این محتوای حساس اصلا قابلیت چاپ زیر نظر ارشاد رو هم نداره. من واقعا نمی‌دونم چرا چنین کاری کردم :))
کتاب خیلی، حتی زیادی، سیاهه. یعنی حتی در میان هزاران صحنه‌ی سکشوالی هم که داره یه جمله نیست تو خوشت بیاد. همواره معذبی از فضای سیاه کتاب.
بعد موضوع محوری هم همین‌طور که از اسم کتاب پیداست حق بر خودکشیه. که خب همین خودش واقعا حساسه!
من بعضی جاهای کتاب واقعا حالم بد بود از جزيیات و رنج جاری.
صدالبته منکر خلاقیت نویسنده نمی‌شم. هم در محتوا، هم در فرم و روایت، هم در شخصیت‌پردازی (هرچند خیلی کوتاه بود ولی از پسش بر اومده بود). ولی ببین اگه ببینمش یه سیلی می‌زنم تو صورتش :))
مزیت دیگر کتاب اینه که علی‌رغم اذیت‌هاش، خیلی روان و خوش‌خوانه و از ریتم نمی‌افته. یعنی مثلا این‌طوریه که همین‌طوری که داری صورتتو چنگ می‌زنی و در دل التماس می‌کنی نویسنده بس کنه، همچنان به خوندن ادامه می‌دی.
البته شاید من چون ترجمه کردم انقدر زجر کشیدم و اگر فقط می‌خوندم ملایم‌تر بود.

[lecturas_niponas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro distinto con una atmósfera que se siente, recreada perfectamente.
Que incluye al arte y la filosofía como ejes y riendas.
El avance de la modernidad en Corea de los 90’ y con ello la fragilidad humana.

Debatimos este libro en mi club de lectura, un libro que abre conversación desde el contexto histórico y social de Corea, la salud mental desatendida, debates morales y de arte, los vínculos sociales y sexoafectivos, el existencialismo, la identidad, entre tantos otros aspectos.

[Li · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first half read like Asian fetish porn, the second half like a nausea-inducing conversation between two undergrads about The Meaning of Art. But, you know, it had some finer moments. And I'll never look at Chupa Chups the same way again.

[Dalia Nourelden · Rating 1 out of 5]

افضل ما في الرواية بالنسبالي اسمها والغلاف وروح الانتحار والموت ، و ترجمة منار الديناري الجميلة .

برغم انى بحب الروايات الغريبة وبرغم انها جذبتني في البداية الا انها مملة ومستمتعتش بيها حتى .

٢٤ / ٦ / ٢٠٢٤

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 1 out of 5]

I find it to be too complex and artistic. I had the impression that I was reading a salvation narrative(sorry if it's triggering).

[S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting premise, with a subpar execution. It feels like the author was trying too hard, but nor the narrative nor the characters ever really get any depth, rendering an unsatisfying reading experience.

[Tô · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuốn này nhìn chung là dễ đọc, nhẹ đầu :))) Bằng chứng là tôi đã dùng nó cùng với hai viên paracetamol để giết cơn đau đầu & một buổi chiều chán ngán.
Sách như tên: theo dấu quá trình một người hủy hoại chính mình và hủy hoại kẻ khác là nội dung chủ yếu của cuốn sách này. Ở đây, chất dữ dội của “Cái chết” đã bị làm nhạt đi nhờ hai yếu tố:
- Góc quan sát: Câu chuyện được kể lại thông qua con mắt quan sát của một kẻ đóng vai trò là “người môi giới” của Thần chết. Hắn chuyên nghiệp, tinh tường, tỉnh táo, không bao giờ để cảm xúc cá nhân tác động đến sự kiện sẽ xảy ra. Rất ít các đoạn mô tả tâm lí nhân vật, chủ yếu là liệt kê biểu cảm khuôn mặt hoặc hành vi của đối tượng quan sát. “Chết” được xem như một chi tiết không đủ quan trọng để khiến bản thân nạn nhân trực tiếp, nhân chứng lẫn những nhân vật có liên quan phải sửng sốt như đáng lẽ ra họ phải thế.
Mẹ kiếp, bọn họ đều còn rất trẻ, lại còn chết bằng cách tự sát đấy!
- Chủ thể: Điểm chung của phần lớn các nhân vật trong này là họ tuy còn trẻ nhưng đã sớm bơ vơ, ở trong đời nhưng hờ hững với đời. Họ không còn nhà để về, không có nơi để thiết tha đi đến (trừ Bắc Cực?!), họ từ chối “kể về mình” (hoặc có kể nhưng kể láo) cũng như không mấy mặn mà chuyện “thấu hiểu người khác” (hoặc có nghe nhưng bán tín bán nghi). Việc hai người cùng cha cùng mẹ hay cùng sống chung dưới cùng một mái nhà hay cùng làm tình trên một chiếc giường hay cùng đi chung một chuyến du lịch hay cùng ngủ với một cô gái,… cũng không khiến họ gần nhau hơn. Họ chỉ là những cá thể riêng rẽ ở cạnh nhau, lướt qua nhau, thế thôi. Với người trẻ, không phải nỗi buồn mà chính sự cô đơn mới xúi người ta tìm đến chết. Chắc ở đâu cũng thế.
Một người có cảm giác như thế nào khi lặng ngắm một bộ tiêu bản bướm thì hẳn cũng sẽ có cảm giác tương tự khi đọc cuốn sách này. Mỗi nhân vật là một con bướm đã được số mệnh định sẵn để làm tiêu bản: Tinh xảo, hoàn chỉnh, im lìm và chết cứng lúc đẹp nhất.

[Jonfaith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such is a shame. This undernourished story is intriguing, though only a germ of a novel. Given my effusive lust for Korean cinema, I was excited to find Young-Ha Kim's debut on a remainder table for two dollars. What resulted is actually more akin to a screenplay than any plumbing of the darkened corridors of the mind. The suicide assistant would be a perfect role for Lee Byung-hun: shit, he's played variations on the role a number of times. That said, this clumsy collision of art, death and ennui didn't move me.

Ruminating on this a for a spell, I still love the section abroad much more than the snowstorm scene. Being dulled by vehicular speed, sex and stimulus, the characters look for the elegant departure.

[César Carranza · Rating 3 out of 5]

El libro va sobre un hombre que tiene un trabajo extraño, convence a las personas (o trata) de un suicidio, el texto es uno de sus "trabajos". Me pareció bueno, sobre todo por la brevedad, creo no había más que decir. No es mucho el estilo de las cosas que leo, los personajes son seres atormentados por el vacío, no hay dios, no hay nada, entonces se ven enrollados en situaciones que me recuerdan a jóvenes deprimidos y hartos de todo, sin tener un astio que los lleve a nada más que al movimiento errático. Me parece una lectura que puede ser muy impactante siendo joven, a mí no se...

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew this novel was going to uncover the themes of death and suicide, but I was quite surprised by the author's flair in capturing the sense of death for the characters as something both romantic and mysteriously desirous. That somehow, we are urged by this desire to destroy ourselves in order to uncover something that seems unreachable, far, far away...and that in itself is beautiful.

This novel isn't about the acceptance of death and suicide, but the underlying notions of what it means to be perfectly captured, to emulate beauty and the susceptibility of human nature, carnal desires from which we are never truly freed, and the intriguing desire to be immortalized, such like that of art which has, and will continue to be, captured throughout history.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this was available at the library and had some award stars on it. I did not realize how short it was (just over 100 pages: novella-length) or that it would feel so much like a short story collection, rather than a novel. That said, it would have been 5 star if it was a more in-depth and fully developed book. It is quite mystical; I believe the main character/narrator is not, in fact a human but the god-of-suicide; some fantastical being that feeds on death.

The story is brief and translated (so it is hard to know how much of the language to attribute to Kim and how much to attribute to the translator). I complain that it feels slightly under-developed and also have to grudgingly respect Kim's conciseness and ability to bring in so many interesting themes (what is the origin of sexual attraction? what makes good art? can we ever be represented by another? how do we trust? what is the purpose of humanity?). I just wish he had explored them a bit more.

Rather than a plot driven story, this is more a character piece around depression, angst and frustration; the ways that some things can save us while others leave us just as lost as we were originally.

I'll end with some of my favorite quotes:
"Sometimes C wishes there were a reason for everything....But no matter how you die, the world always stays the same."

"Those who come out ahead in the end are a different breed."

"people who can't kill can't every truly love"

"I didn't like it when guys took off a piece of paper, leering, but then I wold wish someone would take off all the pieces. I was sad when there was stil paper stuck to my body after we clsoed. Iw as the sum of ragged scraps of paper, and I was sitting there, a mannequin with pieces of paper that couldn't be converted into money."

"He cherished the time he spent waiting for someone to show up. During that time, he wasn't obligated to do anything. He could read a book or people watch. This was the only time he didn't suffer from a sense of debt to himself. He was free from the compulsion to be productive. On the other hand, making someone wait is unpleasant. Being late makes you impatient and servile."

"There are two types of beauty, seductive and self-protective."

"primitive man started to create art because of a fear hidden deeply within the human soul. The mere existence of a white blank wall is terrifying. That's why children scribble on walls and scrath the surface of new, shiny cars with knives. Frightened of an empty room without any furniture and paintings, people fill it up and refill it again. A late-night phone call, where you only hear the caller breatingh, brings insomnia with its emptiness, its absence of conversation."

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eu dou muita atenção à média, aqui no Goodreads, para comprar livros; mas, não lhe dou atenção alguma para não os comprar. E o resultado é este...
Não posso dizer que estou decepcionada porque, na verdade, não tinha grandes expectativas sobre este livro. Tinha somente alguma curiosidade para conhecer um autor sul coreano e porque achei o tema interessante: eutanásia e morte assistida.

O narrador é um especialista do suicídio. Ajuda aqueles que estão fartos de viver a encontrarem a melhor forma de se libertarem. Tem escritório montado e anúncio de jornal para o ajudar a encontrar clientela. Bastam-lhe dois trabalhos por ano para garantir a sua subsistência.
Entretanto, faz "formação profissional", viajando, lendo muito, estudando para aumentar a sua cultura geral por forma a angariar, compreender e ajudar os seus clientes, aos quais apresenta um catálogo para que escolham a melhor forma de se livrarem da sua penosa vida: enforcamento, afogamento, envenenamento, esfaqueamento,...

As outras personagens:
os gémeos K (viciado em velocidade com a qual se estimula sexualmente) e C que têm sexo com Judite, a qual está sempre, mas sempre, a comer chupa-chupas...;
uma chinesa que não pode beber água por lhe trazer recordações de outra bebida...;
Mimi, uma artista que não se deixa filmar porque tem medo de se ver a si mesma...
Algumas destas criaturas, obviamente, são clientes do profissional da morte.

Com este enredo e estas personagens até podia ser um romance, dramático ou cómico, interessante não fosse a narrativa ser tão aborrecida; diálogos longos e sem sentido; descrições de obras de arte interessantes mas a despropósito,...

Não desisti. Li tudo mas, confesso que, pela rama.
Tão cedo não leio nada de coreanos. Vão-se matar...

[Gastón · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nunca sabemos quién es el narrador. Tampoco sabemos cómo se llama o dónde vive. Lo único que sabemos es que escribe y lo hace como anexo a su “trabajo”. Según él se dedica a ayudar a la gente y como gran recompensa recibe historias que le permiten escribir. Busca desesperado durante meses cruzarse con alguien que lo ayude en su bloqueo y es ahí donde esta novela crece. Hay dos historias paralelas: la del narrador y lo que él escribe. Todo se conecta y tiene su grado de ficción. Dice “A veces, la ficción es más persuasiva que la realidad” y logramos entender por qué sus diálogos se transforman en un intercambio de puntos de vista.
Tengo derecho a destruirme de Kim Young-Ha es una novela profunda y compleja, de un muy marcado occidentalismo para alguien que vive en Corea del Sur. Mezcla arte, música y filosofía para darle el toque nihilista dentro de un mundo circundado por la muerte. Como si el narrador fuese Marat y nosotros, lectores, Carlota Corday esperando a matarlo.

[lauraღ · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are only two ways to be a god: through creation or murder.

It's always something of a joy, to pick up a book on a complete whim and end up really liking it. This is weird and disturbing, but really beautifully written and constructed. It follows two brothers, the woman they both love, and a shadowy narrator who tells their story, wreathed in death. It's about death and art and performance and suicide. I feel like if this had been written in any other genre, like mystery or horror or god forbid, thriller, I would have found it distasteful. But this was a perfect balance. The writing was really striking, and I loved how the author tied in various works of art and media.

Upsetting, but good. Wouldn't recommend for everyone.

Content warnings: suicide, assisted suicide.

[Meaghan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked this book on the basis of its title. Big mistake! It's one of those artsy-fartsy novels with no plot. All the characters did was have sex and kill themselves. This was just breathtakingly awful. I'm glad it was short.