Jung Yewon

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.… (plus d'informations)