#책

●○ I think this is the first novel I’ve liked because it left me unsettled. Dam (◯) Grandfather Aunt Gu (●) Parents Noma Deoji Jinju Though my body was weary and the future looked like mush, I felt as if I held a warm ball of rice in a corner of my heart that would never spoil. (73) We filled the word “dating” and overflowed so far beyond it that the word itself was no longer visible. (76) I’m not saying we should be together to be happy. I’m saying we should be together even if we’re unhappy. (151)

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Suddenly, he must have felt as though he were strolling slowly through the stillness like a shepherd. ... From time to time, after crossing hundreds of kilometers of grassland even more deserted than the sea, he would come upon an isolated farmhouse. It looked like a boat carrying human lives, swept backward through the rolling waves of grass. Then he would tilt his plane’s wings in greeting. ch.1, p.16 ︙ The radio operator thought that somewhere in the sky a thunderstorm must be lurking, like a worm inside a fruit. ch.1, p.17 ︙ Fabien felt tired as he slowed his engine on the approach to San Julián. Everything that softens human life —houses, little cafés, trees by the roadside—grew steadily larger as he drew near. ... Even in poverty, people manage to live with a generous spirit. From now on, he wanted nothing more than to live simply, gazing through a window at an unchanging view. Even a little town like this would do. For once a person has chosen a place, they learn to love it, content with the chances life brings their way. ch.1, p.18 ︙ Now, like a night watchman, he discovers the human lives the night reveals: their calls, their anxieties. That modest star glimmering in the darkness is a solitary house. When its light goes out, the house shuts itself inside its love. Or inside its worries. It ceases to communicate with the world. Those farmers seated before a lamp at the table do not know what they long for. They do not know that their longing reaches this far into the vast night. But Fabien discovers their longing when, after flying a thousand kilometers—his plane bucking as if alive in violent turbulence, crossing ten thunderstorms like battlefields and passing through the moonlight that shines between them—he approaches each of those lights with a sense of triumph. Those farmers think their lamp illuminates only a humble table. But from eighty kilometers away, it looks like a light waved desperately out to sea by someone on a deserted island, and he is moved by its call. ch.1, p.22 ︙ How agonizing was the mournful song of the mail plane, hurled like a blind arrow into the curtain of night! ch.6, p.50 ︙ In life, only stones had been gentle with him. ch.6, p.51 ︙ Perhaps all Leroux’s greatness lay in his homely appearance, which had led him to devote his life entirely to work. ch.6, p.51 ︙ For a while, he could hear the deep resonance carried by the wind and the open air in a human voice. (?) ch.9, p.74 --> ︙ This sleeping city offered him no protection. When he rose into the sky like a young god, stirring up dust, the city’s lights would seem futile. ch.10, p.78 ︙ He smiled. ‘Soon I’ll be far, far away from this city.... There is beauty in departing at night. Pull the engine lever toward the south, and in less than ten seconds the landscape changes; you’re flying north. Then the city is nothing but a deep sea.’ ch.10, p.81 ︙ He thought of the pilot. ‘I am freeing him from fear. It is not him I have attacked. Through him, I have attacked the pressure that paralyzes a person when faced with the unknown. If I listen attentively to his story, sympathize with him, and take his adventure seriously, he will come to believe he has returned from a mysterious world—and that mystery is the source of his fear. He must descend into that dark well and climb back out able to say there is nothing there. He must descend into the very heart of night, into that dense darkness, without even a miner’s little lamp to illuminate his hands or the plane’s wings. He must put a shoulder’s breadth between himself and the unknown.’ ch.11, p.87 ︙ Rivière countered. “It is a matter of life and death for us. Every night, we lose the advantage over rail and sea transport that we gained during the day.” ch.11, p.88 ︙ In any case, everything would be decided in this deep darkness. ⋯ Between him and the sun lay a night so deep he could not escape it. ch.12, p.97 ︙ Failure makes the strong stronger. Unfortunately, though, we are gambling with human lives in a game that scarcely takes account of what events truly mean. On the surface we win or lose, gaining some paltry score. And then we find ourselves bound to that superficial defeat. ch.13, p.99 ︙ “Mrs. Fabien would like to speak with you, sir.” ‘There it is! What I feared has finally happened!’ Rivière thought. The emotional side of the drama was beginning to emerge. At first, he refused to acknowledge it. Mothers and wives do not enter operating rooms. On a ship in danger, feelings must be kept in check. They do nothing to help save anyone. ch.14, p.109 ︙ An undertaking, even the building of a single bridge, destroys individual happiness. Now Rivière could not help asking himself, ‘By what right?’ ‘The crewmen who may now disappear could have lived happily....’ He seemed to see their faces, bowed in the golden sanctuaries lit by evening lamps. By what right had he drawn them out of those sanctuaries? By what right had he taken them away from their private happiness? Wasn’t protecting that happiness the first law? Yet he, too, was destroying it. Those golden sanctuaries are fated to vanish one day like mirages. For age and death destroy that happiness more ruthlessly than Rivière himself ever could. Perhaps there is something else to save, something more enduring. Was it to save that part of humanity that Rivière did this work? If not, his actions could not be justified. ch.14, p.112 ︙ An ancient leader might have felt no pity for human suffering, but he would have felt immense pity in the face of human mortality. Not pity for the death of each individual, but pity for the human race, like sand swept away by the sea. And so, perhaps, he led his people into the mountains to erect stone pillars that the desert could not bury. ch.14, p.114 ︙ He felt he could still fight, still try his luck. There was no fate imposed from outside. But there was a fate within. It came the moment a person recognized his own weakness. Then every possible mistake swept over him like vertigo. At that very moment, through a gap in the storm above his head, a few stars glittered like bait in a deadly trap. He was certain it was a trap. Th

I had no idea it was going to be this kind of story... lol By the middle, it had taken a turn there was no coming back from. I’d never been able to get into classic literature, but I picked this up to see whether, now that I’m older, I could appreciate even a little of what makes it great. Not a bad introduction to the Classics series. Characters Monsieur Voldemar / Volodya (16) Zinaida (21) Count Malevsky Dr. Lushin Maidanov, a poet Nirmatsky, a retired officer Belovzorov, an officer

I bought this book for 3,000 won at the Student Welfare Committee’s book market last fall semester, and I’m only just getting around to reading it. With the previous books, I posted about them after I’d finished reading them. But I have a feeling I won’t finish this one unless I publicly commit to it before I start. It’s a whopping 1,100 pages. They say telling people around you makes it easier to quit smoking, right? If you see me anytime soon, ask me, “Have you finished A Pattern Language yet?” Just to be clear, I don’t smoke. This book caught my eye from the moment I saw its title on the Student Welfare Committee’s book list. It seems to break down the environments we live in into individual elements [patterns], analyze them, and then present the problems and solutions associated with each. I say “seems” because I haven’t finished the book yet. I’ve only just read the translator’s preface and the introduction, but so far it’s not far from what I expected when I bought it. Each pattern can be very broad or quite specific, so the patterns form a hierarchy. A pattern is essential to the patterns above it and is, in turn, completed by the patterns below it. By defining these individual patterns and recombining them, the author aims to present a method [language] for creating better environments for human life. The book’s approach to architecture seems remarkably similar to mathematics. The process of combining the most basic patterns into spaces we can actually use is much like deriving various propositions from a few axioms within a particular axiomatic system. As it turns out, the author studied architecture and mathematics at the University of Cambridge. Apparently, this approach has also drawn a great deal of criticism. As the translator notes in the preface, architecture must account for countless external factors beyond the goal of creating good spaces, so idealized thinking of the kind found in mathematics is of little practical use. But the translator argues that, “even if it is difficult to put into practice, this approach to design is highly meaningful because it proposed and tested a democratic, participatory design process involving the social groups who actually use a building.” I wholeheartedly agree. There’s a piece called “A Rational World” that I’ve been dragging my feet on for the past month or two. Briefly, it asks what the world would look like if we threw out customary units like seven days to a week and twelve months to a year and redefined everything in a more “common-sense” way. Of course, any attempt to put that into practice would face resistance from a society accustomed to so many conventions. But if conventions gradually change, there’s value in such an exercise—whether to suggest a better direction for that change or simply for the fun of imagining a world that worked differently. I feel that the thinking that led me to start writing that piece has something in common with the author’s. That’s a lot to say after reading just the introduction. Time to get started for real~