You can't understand something you haven't observed for years. She nodded. You understood some words only hearing it many times. You saw some things only after looking at it many times. Most things were like that. Especially things that remained for a long time in her heart. It was the same when she was looking for materials. Blowfish were alien to her, something she's never handled. Observing something for a long time was the first step toward comprehension. She'd learned that at the beginning of her art career.
Melancholy, introspective, and thoughtful, but also confusing and painfully slow reading. It's a mysterious force that pulled me through to the end of Blowfish, by Kyung-Ran Jo. Quite possibly I need to observe it for a much longer time to comprehend it. Kind of a love story, as two (nameless) lonely, haunted people connect.
She wasn't used to feeling the need to buy something; it made her uncomfortable. A bamboo cutting board, a tea set, leather shoes and a bag, a dinosaur robot with sensors, a hefty notebook she picked up and put down sever times, a feather pen. An object's initial power was in the way it drew out possessiveness. A feeling that began with ordinary desire. She had been thinking about the power inherent in objects, and a part of her thoughts had been devoted to the special objects at the center of her work. "Not now," she murmured, then realized that everything was hurtling toward the end, despite what she told herself.
The main protagonist is planning her own death, by poisonous blowfish. While her intention is clear, her motivation is less so — maybe fate or art. Although she is a celebrated sculptor, death is more central to her character than art, and philosophical reflections on art are reserved for her friends and colleagues.
Most of the works explored daily life and personal emotions, avoiding the question of What is sculpture? and What roles do objets d'art have? Some works were dramatic, others were lighthearted. At this moment in time, an artist's inspiration and philosophy seemed more relevant than grappling with the essence of sculpture. These works interrogated the boundary between what was sculpture and what was not. Saim had long been interested in the boundary between painting and sculpture, in how the divide between three-dimensionality and two-dimensionality was becoming fuzzier, and how that gave rise to experimentation and exploration.
The supporting protagonist's story is told in alternating chapters. (This format was initially confusing for me, as the characters do not have distinct voices.) He is an architect.
Forget about perfectly straight red bricks; when morning light fell on buildings built with warped or damaged bricks, it was almost overwhelming to witness their powerful beauty and dynamic character. A house whose bent, cracked, missing, twisted, and protruding parts looked all the more striking and glorious in the sun. Standing there in his brother's suit, he stacked red bricks in his mind, one by one.
Sculptors and architects have a special relationship with space, and what transpires within or moves through any given space has its own volume, density. I wanted more from this book than it offered. Neither character carries much weight (maybe that's the point? learning to occupy space?). I did not care if the sculptor lived or died; I did not care if the architect found meaning, or love.
Still, he needed to say what he felt. He needed to tell her that love was three-dimensional, that the volume of this three-dimensional thing was difficult to figure out. He heard creaking at the bottom of the stairs. Why did he only now feel the need to tell Sinae these things? Quiet footsteps crossed the hallway. He remembered her silhouette, the woman who had seemed to limp with every step. He heard his door open. He squeezed his eyes shut. He began thinking about the eighteen ways of calculating the volume of a three-dimensional object.
Kyung-Ran Jo in conversation (The Korea Society)
Review (Korean Literature Now)
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