#litbc book club

[antonhur]

I translated Sang Young Park's LOVE IN THE BIG CITY into English and got nominated for an International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award for it.

Ask me anything.

#litbc book club #love in the big city #literary translation

[lurkingshan]

Love in the Big City Book Club Meta Round Up

Already so many great essays and we’re just getting started! If you haven’t had the chance to read and share everyone’s thoughts, here is your weekly round up. Any additional essays that post after today will be added to the list next week, and I'll add on a new section for each part every week as we progress.

So let's see what our book clubbers had to say!

Background

AMA with Anton Hur, LITBC Translator

Translator’s note by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Part 1

Blueberries and Cigarettes: Universalities and Differences when reading Love in the Big City by @brifrischu

Jaehee: a good distraction–until she wasn’t by @serfergs

LITBC: Jaehee, and why she matters so much to me by @starryalpacasstuff

LitBC Part 1 – Timeline by @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 1 by @fiction-is-queer

Love in the Big City: Reflections on Part 1 by @becomingabeing

Love in the Big City Part 1 Check in by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City, Part 1 by @emotionallychargedtowel

Love in the Big City Part 1: Jaehee by @sorry-bonebag

Love in the Big City Part 1: On Friendship by @lurkingshan

Love in the Big City Part 1: Reliable and Unreliable Narration by @twig-tea

On expectations by @hyeoni-comb

Part I: The unacknowledged relationship by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Two Friends Diverged in Emotional Sincerity: Reflections on Love in the Big City–Part 1 by @wen-kexing-apologist

Young’s world is small and private by @colourme-feral

Part 2

Finding Familiarity Despite Cultural Differences: Love in the Big City Part 2 by @fiction-is-queer

Hyung’s internalized homophobia and hatred for the US by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

libtc part 2 by @hyeoni-comb

LitBC Part 2: A bit of rockfish, taste the universe by @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City - A bite of rockfish, tase the universe by @littleragondin

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 2 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City: Part 2 by @wen-kexing-apologist

Love in the Big City: Reflections on Part 2 by @becomingabeing

Love in the Big City Part 2: Emotional Distance by @twig-tea

Love in the Big City Part 2 Check In by @bengiyo 

Love in the Big City The Playlist by @brifrischu

On Parents and Apologies Never Received by @lurkingshan

Part II: Historical Context and Hyung’s Background by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City (Part II) by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Part 3

LITBC Part Three: Now Introducing, Kylie by @wen-kexing-apologist

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 3 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City Part 3 Check In by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City Part 3: Kylie Recontextualizes Everything by @twig-tea

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader 2 by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Love In The Big City Part 3: Words and Miscellaneous Context by @doyou000me

On Gyu-ho, the Mundanity of Great Love, and the Destructive Nature of Shame by @lurkingshan

Part 3: No Disappointment Without Expectations by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City (Part III) by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Part 4

Adaptation Concerns by @doyou000me

Anticipating the LITBC Adaptations by @lurkingshan

Depictions of physical intimacy by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings 

LitBC - The Structure of Change @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 4 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City Part 4 Check In by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City Part 4: Having Trouble Letting Go by @twig-tea

Love in the Big City: Part Four- Regret, Rain, Love, and Loss by @wen-kexing-apologist

the story | relationships + Young by @hyeoni-comb

Young and Imperfect Character Growth by @lurkingshan

Young asking himself meaningful questions by @hyeoni-comb

And that's all for now, folks! Thanks to everyone who participated; it was such a fun experience discussing this book with you. Excited to get the chance to talk more about this story with all of you when the adaptations arrive later this year.

#litbc book club #love in the big city #korean bl

[doyou000me]

"아 씨, 개쫄안" Jesus, what the fuck.

Guys, I did a thing.

I emailed the translator, Anton Hur.

I asked him about the meaning of "Ah sii, gaejjolahn " which we've had much discussion about in the words and context post. And I got an answer!

---

Hi Linda,

This is Jeju satoori, not standard Seoul.

Here is how it appears in Korean:

To break down "아 씨, 개쫄안":

아: Oh

씨: short for 씨발 or "fuck" etc.

개쫄안: this is a composite of 개 which is a coarse way to emphasize something (개씨발, using the word before) and it's a conjugation of the verb 쫄다 which is a very colloquial way of saying "be surprised" or "to retract into oneself"

The conjugation is interesting: ~ㄴ so instead of "개쫄았잖아" or "개쫄았어" it's "개쫄안". This is, apparently, a conjugation that exists in Jeju satoori, but not in standard Seoul:

from: https://m.blog.naver.com/sigongedu/223116790405?isInf=true

I guess if I "translated" it it would be something like, "Jesus what the fuck" or somesuch, but they have a whole conversation about Jeju satoori right after so I thought it would be cute to just leave it transliterated.

Not everything needs to be translated and not everything needs to be understood perfectly. —A

---

So we were on the right track, friends! Especially @lurkingshan's friend was right there on the finish line!

#litbc book club #jumping up and down in excitement #he actually took the time to answer!

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

So apparently the only version of Love in The Big City to have the original Translator's Note at the end (or at least the only English language version, other language version may have other translators' notes at the end) is the one published by Titled Axis?

That strikes me as a pity and, luckily it seems like Anton Hur agreed with me because here it is, online for all to read:

https://lithub.com/to-all-the-gays-of-seoul-on-translating-sang-young-park/

Reading about why Anton decided to take up translating Park Sang Young into English (and the effort he went to to achieve his goal) was really something and I think their sense of share space and experience explains just why Anton's translations of Park Sang Young are on a whole other level.

"I translated him because no one had told this story before, and it was my story. No writer had ever inhabited the same place at the same time as me, breathing the same air and thinking the same thoughts."

#litbc #litbc book club #please can they work together again #please please please #park sang young has 2 other books out and I'm desperate to read them both 😭

[archiveofmystuff]

Jin Ho-eun for W Korea magazine: on filming Love in the Big City

Actor Jin Ho-eun was part of a feature on a few young male Korean actors for the magazine W Korea. For one part of the interview he talked about filming Love in the Big City.

Here is the feature. Below is a screenshot of the relevant part of the article. **DISCLAIMER** This is just through autotranslation on the webpage, it is not an official translation nor a fan translation and could very easily contain some errors. I don't know Korean so I can't vouch for its accuracy lol.

He does confirm he's playing Gyu-ho, which we already knew but I'm not sure if it had been "officially" confirmed by the production or him/his team. He's been posting regularly on his instagram about filming Love in the Big City, so between that and this interview he seems really excited!

He seemingly calls it a queer drama so it's safe to assume it's not going to be "straightwashed" as some people evidently feared. I never really had any doubt about that since I heard the author was involved and also bc....what story is there without it being gay...but some people on other social medias (cough tik tok cough) seemed worried it would be turned into a "bromance" (again not sure how that would be possible), so there you go. Obviously doesn't necessarily confirm they'll depict everything that was in the book, but still! A queer drama with fairly established actors and apparently pretty good budget! From Korea! That's a pretty big deal imo.

Also, I didn't realize he was only 23! He's younger than Gyu-ho in the book but Kdramas (based on my slightly limited experience) don't shy away from having younger actors play slightly older characters so I don't think anyone should assume they're like aging down the characters or anything. Nam Yoon-su is 26 and obviously the book basically spans the main character's entire 20s into his early 30s so it makes sense to choose people kind of in the middle!

Have some pics from the shoot of our future Gyu-ho!

#love in the big city #litbc book club #jin hoeun

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Rose Reads Love In The Big City

Part I

So as I finished reading Part I and went to look at the questions that @bengiyo provided , I felt that I couldn’t really talk about this chapter from any other place than my own experience. I usually have a hard time writing from a non personal view point which is why I don’t write that much on here. But I wanted to be part of this event and it felt disingenuous to not write from a personal place. With that said.

I moved to London when I was 24 with one of my best friends. Let’s call him P. We shared a flat for almost 4 years. And our lives were not that different from Young and Jaehee. The major difference here was that I was single for all that time and didn’t sleep with anyone. I was ace but didn’t call it that at the time.

But I saw a lot of ourselves in this chapter. When we weren’t working and he wasn’t getting laid, we would spend most of our time together. We would talk about the boy du jour, and why I hated him, except when I didn’t and in that case P was the one that didn’t like him. We would visit gay clubs after work and I was drunk by 8pm and by that time, he had a companion for the rest of the night so I would go home. Of course I would wake up at some point when he staggered back home alone or not. If alone we would talk about the night, and if not alone I would save the conversations till morning. Except for the few times when I was actually still awake and would quickly be put in charge of brewing coffee and providing food to soak up all the alcohol.

This went on for almost 4 years. He had some longer relationships, and by that I mean, maybe six months, and I abstained from all that. Although in the beginning P was relentless about my need to meet someone and get laid, eventually he got the message that that wasn’t me.

We also smoked way too much, drank way too much and I had way too much fun with his sex life. I got very familiar with the local clinic where he would get tested and got to laugh about his poor life choices when something didn’t go well.

One of the my clearest memories of that time was one time where he had a boyfriend, going on like 3 months, the one I liked and apparently he didn’t, and he brought another guy home, and after he left, I was being a judgemental bitch just has P gets a message from a former hook up saying he needs to get tested. My immediate reply was – instant karma. Obviously every time I made a joke about him being a slut I could always expect one in return asking when would I join the convent.

All this to say I saw a lot of myself and P in Part I. However, I ended up relating more to Young than to Jaehee which is interesting but makes perfect sense.

So now for the questions. I don’t think I can answer one at a time so I’ll just go through questions 1, 3 and 4 for now.

Well most things stuck out to me just because I could so clearly picture it in my head almost as a memory. The whole dynamic felt very familiar to me. Just like Young and Jaehee, we were each other’s home. The one we always returned too.

I read the fight the same way as the author did in a way. I saw it as a betrayal. But I don’t think it was about outing him, as he himself is not sure about that. It was the first time that Jaehee put someone else before Young. She told the fiancé the truth, because in that moment he was more important than Young. And that was what felt like a betrayal. Because although they shared their bodies with a number of different people, and even momentary feelings, emotionally Young had an expectation that he came first.

And now tying it with the fourth question. Me and P never had any sort of problems regarding optics. Perhaps this is a cultural nuance that I miss.

But as I was reading it, I kept waiting for the break. For when one of them was no longer happy with this arrangement. This is not to say that there needs to be a break. But in my experience, there was a break. First in the form of long distance when I returned home. We would talk everyday and have video chats more than once a week at first. Eventually the distance in geography translated into a distance in the relationship. However whenever he came back home and we were together there was still a semblance of what we shared before.

But eventually the real break came in the form of a new relationship. Eventually he met someone, and now they’ve been together for years and that person and I never really got along. There was no hostility and it’s not that I didn’t like him. We just didn’t mesh.

After they’d been together for a while, he started having a problem with our relationship. Mostly with the fact that I was an influence in his life, and for some reason he thought that meant that his influence was diminished. And apparently I was a bad influence. I will not speak to that because it really doesn’t matter.

So P made a choice. And he chose his boyfriend. I haven’t talked to P in almost two years. Because as much as we wanted to believe that our relationship was important, and bro’s before hoes and all that crap, the reality is that in this amatonormativity we live in, there really isn’t any space for that. Sharing your life with someone that doesn’t involve romance has an expiration date. And more often than not, eventually you will find a “real” partner and that will not leave space for anyone else.

And the thing is normally this would happen just like in the novel. I, the woman, would be the one that would “move on”, perhaps get married and have no space for any other significant relationship in my life.

Because it’s what’s expected. Eventually you will find your “actual” person and be normal. Move in together, get married and whatever you had with someone else was youth inspired and not for the long haul. Because who would be happy with that? I mean, Jaehee certainly didn’t seem like she was ready to get married any time soon, and although I can only guess at some of the pressures she was feeling in the context of her culture, it’s not like that doesn’t translate to my own.

Me and P never had anyone look at us weird because of our closeness. Not my family or his, or any of our friends. The only person that had a problem with that was his last partner. And of course P made the natural choice. Because let’s be real. At the end of the day, who would actually choose a friend over a relationship? I mean, I would but I’m not what anyone would call “normal” and that is just one of the many reasons why.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen with Young and Jaehee. I haven’t read past the first part. I hope they find their way to each other. But that ending – “that Jaehee didn’t live here anymore” hit me like a ton of bricks.

Thanks to @twig-tea for being my editor.

#litbc book club #love in the big city #korean bl #rose reads

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Love in the Big City: Part Four- Regret, Rain, Love, and Loss

Well, it’s official. Love in the Big City, Part Four may have been short but it cemented itself as my favorite portion of the book. I asked @antonhur when he was so graciously answering questions what his favorite scene in the book was, and I can see why he said when they were lying in the rain in Bangkok; Late Rainy Season Vacation indeed. When I first started this book, I was talking with a few mutuals like @bengiyo and @lurkingshan wondering how I would feel about Young by the end of this book, because I was not a huge fan of his character in Part One. But I have very much enjoyed seeing his progress across these parts. I said already in my post about Part One that my biggest struggle with Young and the thing I think primarily contributes to the change in his friendship with Jaehee is that he cannot be serious, he cannot, does not allow himself to feel. And in Part Four, he’s finally admitting to it. 

“I was too late to put things back the way they’d been” “That is how my memories of him are preserved under glass, safe and pristine, forever apart from me” “I’ve no choice but to stand at arm’s length”

Part Four is my favorite part of this novel because Part Four is full of ghosts. Not only the ghost of Gyu-ho, but the ghost of all that came before. The rooftop party with Gyu-ho where he got plastered on whatever alcohol he could, where now he sits and drinks champagne, a ghost of both his relationship and the way he spent his college years. Going through Habibi’s wallet, a ghost of when he snuck a look at Hyung’s secrets all those years before. The text messages Young saw on Habibi’s phone about a family member with cancer, a ghost of his mother’s own diagnosis. Habibi himself, getting unexpectedly deep for only a moment before forcing the conversation away from anything real, a ghost of Young himself, and all the times he just could not bring himself to be open and honest with the people around him. 

Just like learning about the HIV diagnosis recontextualizes everything that came before it (see a wonderful essay about that by @twig-tea here) ending this book with the admission that his only wish a year ago was for Gyu-ho recontextualizes my understanding of how aware Young was about his own modus operandi. I operated under a much different assumption that Young didn’t know what he had until it was gone, that Young was not aware of how far his fears ran, of how distant he had made himself. I assumed Part Four was where Young starts to realize himself the way he’d behaved in the past and how that contributed to the downfall of his relationship to Gyu-ho. But now I think he knew it all along and he just didn’t trust us enough to say it until the end. Because I’m not quite sure even by the end of this book Young trusts us enough to be completely honest. 

I talked in my post for Part Three about HIV treatments and prevention methods, and mentioned Truvada, (generic name: emtricitabine-tenofovir) which is a pre-exposure prophylaxis medication that can be taken to prevent someone without HIV from getting HIV should they have an exposure. I mentioned there that at the time of Young’s relationship with Gyu-ho, Truvada was not available on the market in South Korea. But as it turns out, Teno-Em (tenofovir-emtricitibine), a generic PrEP medication, was available in Bangkok by 2015. In Part Four, Young describes going to a pharmacy and getting a generic medication, and he writes the errand in such a way as to make the whole thing seem shady. And maybe it was. But maybe he was just afraid, and that fear colored his own perceptions of what was going down: 

My expectation had been that the place would be hidden away in some seedy alley, but it was right there on the main street. The interior was almost the same as any other pharmacy. I showed the pharmacist a picture of the generic version of what I needed. The pharmacist, if he really was a pharmacist, took out a bottle of pills and explained to us, in English, how they worked. He said that taking just one a day at a set time was enough to perfectly prevent the disease. He really said the word “perfectly.” How could he be so confident? He added that taking two of the pills before risky intercourse and then a pill every twenty-four hours for two more doses was enough to prevent transmission. 

The facts are these: the pharmacy was on a main street, the pharmacy looked like a pharmacy, the pharmacist was able to explain how the medication worked, and the pill regimen for prevention was accurate to the pill regimen for PrEP. 

Could they have still been shady? Sure. But I think it is far more likely that Young and his historically terrible experiences with medicine have colored his perception of healthcare and placed doubt in his head over the legitimacy of this medication. Which, learning that Young and Gyu-ho have unprotected sex in Bangkok, makes me wonder if Young’s doubts about the pharmacy added another reason for him to let Gyu-ho go to Shanghai alone, if the meds they got in Bangkok weren’t real, if they didn’t work, then he likely gave Gyu-ho HV. 

Young talked about stains in this part, about permanency- the soy sauce on the mattress, the crack in the toilet and he talked about fleeting things- immediately losing the shape of Habibi’s face when he stepped outside the door, the lantern burning up and turning to ash with all the dreams, all the wishes Young had, or just the one. Regret seems to hold a permanent place in Young’s spirit, as does loss. Love is something I think he thought did not exist, or if it did then it was fleeting. He loved Jaehee and lost her, his first boyfriend died, the obsession he had over Hyung could only be described as dickmatized. But when he gave away Gyu-ho’s love, when he let Gyu-ho go to Shanghai alone, it was one of the few times in the entire novel we saw Young grieve. He fully collapsed under the weight of it all, barely leaving bed, not having the energy to maintain his typical routines, trying to root out the memories of Gyu-ho in his head by writing him out, and killing him over and over and over again. 

I find myself stuck, thinking about what is perhaps my favorite line in the book: 

“Sometimes his very existence to me is the existence of love itself”

Gyu-ho’s existence is Young’s idea of love; to kill Gyu-ho, to remove him from existence is to kill Young’s idea of love. “The made-up Gyu-ho in my writing got hurt or died many times, and is always resurrected, as if love saves his life- whereas the real Gyu-ho lives and breathes and keeps moving on.” Young’s regret is a permanency in his life, just as his love for Gyu-ho is a permanency. All he wished for was Gyu-ho, but Young’s inability to be honest, deeply, emotionally honest, all the fear, all the emptiness, all the pain got in the way. I am not a person who minds a melancholy end, regret, remorse, grief, love. These are all a part of life. The only thing I hope is that one day Young can lay down in the pouring rain and feel peace the way Gyu-ho did that day in Bangkok.

#litbc #litbc book club #love in the big city #love in the big city book club #very much looking forward to seeing these television adaptations #thank you to shan and ben for the brilliant idea to have a book club #it has been so much fun participating in this event!

[twig-tea]

Love in the Big City Part 3: Kylie Recontextualizes Everything

I have waffled all week about what to write about this chapter. There have been some great essays about HIV and the stigma in Korea by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings here, as well as how antiretrovirals and pre-exposure prophylactics work and when they were available from @wen-kexing-apologist here. This context was all critical to understand everything Young doesn’t talk about in this section of the book. 

I’ve been stuck on so many parts of this section of the book. The way stigma holds people back from care, from maintenance, from life-saving treatment and knowledge, from understanding their condition and preventing them unnecessarily from living a full life, which @doyou000me had me thinking about with their comments about Young’s coping mechanisms of minimization and emotional distance that possibly worked in conjunction with the Korean government healthcare policies and social stigma to keep Young from being informed about his own condition. The way Young holds himself back from happiness, and how it’s so heartbreaking to watch him open up to it slowly in this section and then, as @my-rose-tinted-glasses wrote , he let the shame and self-loathing take control again. The way this relationship feels so real; @lurkingshan wrote so eloquently on how this section describes the details of a relationship as it started to settle. The relationship with Hyung was entirely ephemeral, in the liminal period of time between when Young was visiting his mother in hospital and before everything opened again for the day. There is so much that Young and Hyung never talked about–more than was obvious in chapter 2, because he never told Hyung about Kylie. In contrast, as @bengiyo pointed out, his relationship with Gyu-Ho started with honesty and was rooted in the physical presence of their apartment, which as a beautiful metaphor was grounded and improved slowly over time through the work they put into it but was also too small for them. 

I keep thinking about how Part 3 is bookended by Young disappointing Gyu-Ho with his absence. How he leaves him at the airport both times, thinking he’s doing Gyu-Ho a favour actually–he characterizes Gyu-Ho’s trip to Japan without him as much more fun, and he imagines Gyu-Ho’s future in Singapore will be better. In both cases, Gyu-Ho was only going because of Young, because Young wanted to, and Young planned it. But our narrator cannot get past seeing himself as something that brings Gyu-Ho down, and so he sabotages his own future. I feel for Gyu-Ho, being shepherded onto a plane alone when he was envisioning his future with the man he loved. It must have been devastating to be pushed away. 

This is not related to anything but I just love the detail of Young’s split lip and how he tastes blood when he kisses Gyu-Ho while drunk at the club and not yet knowing his name, and then panics, and we as readers don’t yet know why. Brilliant storytelling. 

I can’t stop thinking about how this reveal recontextualizes everything in parts 1 and 2. How the “incident that earned me a medical discharge” means Kylie was already in Young’s life as he took the engineering student he was seeing with him to get an STD check; as he was screamed at by an ex who prophesied that Young would get sick from being promiscuous and called him a ‘dirty rag that could never be cleaned’, which Young took with stoicism. I loved @bengiyo ‘s observation in his post linked above that Kylie’s presence likely coloured his reaction to Jaehee outing him to her fiance. 

Kylie was present as he watched his coffee be stolen by Hyung, when he thought about introducing Hyung to his mother, while he was wrestling with how Hyung (and, I think the narration makes clear, how he) was ashamed at how Young couldn’t ‘pass’ and was ‘obviously gay’, when he choked Hyung in his mother’s kitchen and it was seeing his tears on Hyung’s face that made Young let go. Kylie was part of him when he drank pesticide and tried to die, while he sat by his mother’s sickbed and had her head in his lap in the park, when he said “disease can turn anyone into a completely different person”, when he said he would “hope that she would die without having known.” 

Mostly, my brain keeps getting stuck on how familiar Young is to me. His choices, his self-loathing, his refusal to take anything seriously because at his core he’s terrified of facing what his reality means. And that fear ironically gets in the way of him understanding that his reality is not as scary as he thinks it is. He functions like he has to be alone, and so much of that comes from his internalized homophobia and his HIV diagnosis. He’s been told he’s dirty, something to be cleaned but irreparable, by so many people in different ways through his life. The man he claims as his greatest love barely even liked him as a person, and didn’t fully know him. I think that’s why he was able to feel more fully with Hyung, because in a way that relationship felt safer..Gyu-Ho, the person who knew all of him, and who wanted to build a life together with that complete and full knowledge of him, must have been terrifying, and I’m not surprised it felt easier to push him away than to fight for their future together. But it breaks my heart. 

There’s something rattling in my head about the T-aras that I don’t really know how to get out onto the page. In this chapter it’s revealed that the T-aras have been around the whole time, but they weren’t mentioned in parts 1 and 2. I think the fact that Young’s life feels more rounded, filled in with other people, and rich, than in parts 1 and 2 speaks to his emotional state in this part, as well as to how his time with Gyu-Ho wasn’t obsession but was more grounded in the mundane and the everyday. The T-aras themselves feel like familiar friends. Like with Hyung and JaeHee (at first), Young is drawn to people who he can remain emotionally distant from and who remain emotionally distant from him. People who will buy the story of “ruptured disc” for why he left military service early. People who joke about being poz and won’t ask questions and who hear the news about his new boyfriend as an ‘in’ to their favourite club. People who don’t take things seriously (or in Hyung’s case take things so seriously that Young can’t take him seriously). I was so glad to find out they existed because up to this point Young felt so isolated most of the time, with his world circling around one obsession in each part. But he had the T-aras the whole time; I’m choosing to read this as he just didn’t hold their importance to him in the same way in parts 1 and 2. As was already clear in the narrative but this makes even more obvious, Young’s isolation is not only self-inflicted but it’s in some ways a lie he tells himself to feel safer. He has friends, he just refuses to acknowledge their presence or importance, or to let them in to be more important, because he is so braced for being rejected for core parts of him that cannot be excised.

#litbc book club #love in the big city #sorry i'm so late with this one #this got more florid than i like to be #this Part had me way too in my feelings

[bengiyo]

LITBC Part 4 Check In

I’ve been mulling over this book for the entire week, and even as I sit here to get my thoughts down I am still fighting back an intense melancholy that grips me. I know Young. I have loved Young. He is a beloved friend. He is a pain in the ass. He is someone I will always miss. He is someone I wish I could have been closer to. I am still thinking about that balloon.

I think what I’m happiest about is that Young seems to genuinely regret failing with Gyu-ho. I like that most of our time thinking about Gyu-ho is not spent on the mean things he wrote in his fictionalized version of Gyu-ho in his stories, and instead we’re hit constantly with small memories of their time together. There’s a passage from this section that continues to linger with me:

“Using all kinds of other methods to create Gyu-ho and write him as other characters, I’ve tried to show the relationship we had and the time we spent together as complete as they were, but the more I try, the further I get from him and the emotions I had back then. My efforts become something fainter and more distanced from the truth.”

I can’t stop thinking about the sadness of grief and what it means when we no longer have someone around. They stop being a person who interacts with us and shapes us, and they become only this memory in us, and the quirks left behind. It makes me sad because truly most relationships fail. A lot of us are going to have many loves, and a lot of them won’t work out. I love that Young is so bad about all of his relationships and we can see where he messed up with Gyu-ho. I hope that the next time I fall for someone I do a better job at recognizing what he needs.

I hope that all the other queers reading this book were able to find parts of Young they could connect to, and I hope that listening to his stories helps them.

I will be chatting about this book with others, and I hope Young’s sass comes through for them. He’s been one of the most engaging narrators I’ve gotten to read in a while. I love listening to him talk and the way he thinks. I just know he would get on my nerves in person, and I couldn’t deal with him all the time, but I do love him.

As for the adaptation, I am really looking forward to the sequence when Young and Hyung meet up with Hyung’s fake activist friends, and also the scene where he tries to strangle that man. I think I’m also really looking forward to the final scene where Young sort of collapses on a random porch in Bangkok. I feel like that shot is going to be incredible.

This book club has been a great experience. I want to thank all of you for sharing so much of yourselves and your experiences over the last month. I appreciate how everyone has taken to the spirit of the book club and kept up with the reading and adding on to everyone else’s posts. I can’t wait to react to the show and movies with you all, and I hope we find another good book in the future.

#Ben reads #love in the big city #litbc book club

[starryalpacasstuff]

LITBC: Jaehee, and why she matters so much to me

Ok, I don't have a lot of time, so this is going to be messy, apologies in advance

When you're queer and living in a country that is generally homophobic, the default expectation one has is for people to be homophobic, hence Young's shock when Jaehee doesn't seem surprised or disgusted when she finds him kissing a guy. The two of them bond quickly due to their mutual status as social piranhas, and I can't stop thinking about why Jaehee matters so much. To be honest, Jaehee is everything one could want from a straight friend in a conservative country. Not only is she completely fine with Young being gay, I want to stress how important it is that Young can talk to her about his flings and one night stands openly. In asian society, it's typical for queerness to be something that people know about but never acknowledge, and for openly discussing it to be taboo. I've had experiences where friends that know I'm queer simply don't acknowledge the fact, choosing to act as though I'd never come out to them. That's the standard for 'acceptance' in asian society; tolerance. People don't stop associating with you, they simply act as though your queerness doesn't exist (and get visibility uncomfortable when you bring it up). That's why Jaehee is so important. Jaehee talks with Young about sex, his flings, and sizes up his dates from behind a coffee shop counter. She doesn't treat Young's queerness as something she has to tolerate and ignore.

It's not to say that Jaehee is the perfect ally. She still doesn't fully understand Young's queerness, and she outs him to her fiance, saying that he's basically a girl because he likes men (there's a whole host of issues to unpack with that, but as much as i'd like to, I don't have the time). But it remains a fact of the matter that Jaehee is incredibly progressive by asian standards, for the simple reason that she doesn't treat queerness as a hush-hush topic. And, I think, that's part of the reason that Jaehee outing him to her fiancé hurt Young so much. Young says it himself, his anger and feeling of betrayal was funny if he thought about it, because he'd never really cared about being outed before. He says it himself, the only explanation that he has is, "Because she was Jaehee". He says that he wasn't used to feeling betrayed because he expected so little of others. But his situation with Jaehee was different because Jaehee was different, and unlike the others, he'd come to expect her to understand him, to stand with him no matter what. Because Jaehee wasn't like the others, so Jaehee shouldn't have done what others would have. It hurt him when he realized that Jaehee was choosing to fit fit into society's expectation of her over him.

But that's something I can relate to so much; expecting people to understand you, especially those you hold close, until reality hits. Mistaking tolerance for acceptance, acceptance for understanding. I mentioned that the default expectation for I have when meeting people is that they will be homophobic, and I learned that through finding out, over and over again, that people I held close to me simply did not accept me, or understand me. And even if you do your best to not care about it, once you've figured it out, the crack in the relationship only widens with time, because you simply can't bring yourself to think of the person the same way as before. And that's what happened with Young and Jaehee. Because Jaehee accepted Young, he expected her to stand with him no matter what. But she didn't, and that's what hurt him. Jaehee accepted Young, yes. But she also chose to fit in with society's expectations over him, which ultimately caused the two to drift apart.

To me, Jaehee is a bittersweet character. She's loud and unapologetic, and she accepts Young in a way that seems almost too good to be true; because it sort of is. Because she also represents how people in asian societies have a long way to go before they understand queerness, and how queer people lose friendships because of it, which is something I know painfully well.

#i know i know i'm late to the party #ive been extremely busy #im sure theres a lot more to talk about in this area but i don't have the time to sit down and think about it #anyways i didn't see a lot of people talking about how amazing it is that jaehee accepts young so easily and openly #so i decided to throw together this to give my two cents #litbc book club #litbc #love in the big city #jaehee

[antonhur]

Bonus content! Sang Young Park and me at the British Centre for Literary Translation right after the LITBC UK tour last year. Yes, he's much taller than I am lol

#litbc book club #love in the big city #actually everyone is taller than i am

[lurkingshan]

Love in the Big City: Book Club Schedule

Okay, besties, here we go! Turns out a lot of you are into this nerd project so we will in fact be doing a little tumblr book club for LITBC! Here's how it will work:

We will begin on Sunday, February 4, and discuss a different section of the book each week.

On Sundays, @bengiyo will post a list of discussion questions for whatever part we're reading that week. You can use these as prompts for thinking, actually write and post responses to them, or just ignore them and do your own thing.

We will all write or share whatever we like during the week, using the hashtag [#litbc book club]. Everything from simple reaction commentary to full on essays is welcome. It's also fine not to post anything yourself if that's not your thing, you can participate by reading and sharing other people's posts.

Each following Sunday, I will post a roundup of everything people wrote during the week so we'll have them all collated in one place, and Ben will then post the next round of discussion questions.

This means we are going to be on the following schedule for reading and discussing:

Part 1: Sun, February 4 to Sat, February 10

Part 2: Sun, February 11 to Sat, February 17

Part 3: Sun, February 18 to Sat, February 24

Part 4: Sun, February 25 to Sat, March 2

With the final round up posted on Sunday, March 3. Of course, this is Not That Serious and if you fall behind you should still join in whenever you can and I will add your posts in later! Also, please note for your own planning that Part 2 of the novel is the longest, nearly double the length of the other parts.

For those who asked about where to acquire the book, the good news is it's very popular and generally easy to find translated in English. A lot of libraries carry it, and you can also find it at local bookstores, on Everand, on bookshop.org, and of course, Amazon.

For those who are seeing this for the first time and wondering what the heck I'm on about: go here for background on why we're doing this book club ahead of a couple upcoming drama and film adaptations. And if you want to be tagged into future posts please comment in tags or replies so we can add you to the list! We will also use the tag [#litbc book club] for all posts related to this going forward, so you can just track that tag if you prefer. [Note: if you want to be tagged please check your settings to see if other blogs are allowed to tag you. If you asked to be tagged on the first post and you're not in the list below, it's because tumblr wouldn't allow me to do it.]

Tagging here those who have signed up so far: @alwaysthepessimist @belladonna-and-the-sweetpeas @blalltheway @brifrischu @colourme-feral @dekaydk @dramacraycray @emotionallychargedtowel @fiction-is-queer @hakusupernova @hyeoni-comb @infinitelyprecious @littleragondin @literally-a-five-headed-dragon @loveable-sea-lemon @my-rose-tinted-glasses @neuroticbookworm @poetry-protest-pornography @profiterole-reads @serfergs @so-much-yet-to-learn @starryalpacasstuff @stuffnonsenseandotherthings @sunshinechay @thewayofsubtext @troubled-mind @twig-tea @waitmyturtles @wen-kexing-apologist

Excited to get started with y’all in a few weeks!

#litbc book club #love in the big city #korean bl

[doyou000me]

Adaptation Concerns

I found out about Love In The Big City through this book club, so the very first thing I knew about it was that it is going to be adapted into a movie and a series. Throughout my reading, one question has therefore been a constant presence in the back of my mind: how are they going to adapt this? 

Already after reading Part I, I had concerns and wrote in my notes that “This seems to be the part they'll make the movie adaptation of which raises the question of if they'll be able to keep it as raw and unfiltered or if they'll romanticise it.” This is after reading part I, before we got into the truly heavy stuff. 

When this week’s reading questions popped up, I realised that my concerns for how the adaptations will be done are clouding my expectations for both the movie and the series. Don’t get me wrong - I am very much looking forwards to seeing the movie and the series, to see how they handle the source material and to get to discuss it with you all, but when @bengiyo asks “What parts of the book are you most anticipating in the forthcoming adaptations?” I can’t think of anything. I can't think of a single thing, because what I am anticipating is disappointment. 

Now, maybe I’m just tired and cranky and pessimistic. Maybe I’ve just been let down by one BL series too many in the past few months. I am feeling like a party pooper, but after receiving an ask on the subject from @archiveofmystuff (and this is your answer to that ask, btw), I realised I’m not the only one thinking of these things. I am honestly concerned about how the movie and the series will handle the source material, and the more I think about it, the more concerned I get. The reasons are many, so let me break it down a bit, starting with a couple of things that concern both adaptations and then delving into the movie adaptation and the series adaptation separately.  

[putting the rest under the break because it's long and also spoilers]

Heavy (Taboo) Themes 

As we’ve discussed in several posts in the past few weeks, the book handles a lot of really heavy themes. There is homophobia, terminal illness, attempted suicide, stigma and discrimination and HIV - and that’s just me rattling off the first few things that come to mind. All of these topics are not just complicated, but also sensitive. Some of them have been handled in Korean series and movies before (terminal illness and suicide, for example), some have not. Not that I can claim to have complete knowledge of what happens in Korean series and movies, but I have never seen themes such as HIV and the stigma and discrimination around it. 

Would a mainstream Korean audience be ready for a movie/series depicting such themes? Coming from an outside perspective looking in, I do not think so. As we’ve discussed in part III (for example in this post by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings) many of these topics are still seen as taboo in Korea. I am therefore very concerned about how they’ll tackle these subjects in the adaptations - if they’ll tackle them at all. Korean series do not have a pristine past when it comes to representation of queer characters. Seeing that the author himself is the screenwriter for the series adaptation gives me some hope, but not enough to assuage my worries. They might make a fantastic job of it. They might make an honest attempt and fumble it. They might remove parts. I do not know, and all I can do is wait and watch the movie and series when they come out. But they are going to have to tread very carefully, and they are going to have to be very aware of what decisions they make in the adaptations. 

Mainstream Reception

How the movie and series are going to be received by the mainstream audience is another worry of mine. Especially because they (the producers, writers, directors, investors and everyone else involved in making these adaptations) have to be aware that, to some extent, these adaptations are going to be viewed by a larger mainstream audience. Why? First off, the source material is a prize-winning novel that has gained some attention. This alone could lead to a wider interest among the general audience. However, what really makes me think the movie and series adaptations are going to go mainstream is the choice of actors. 

The movie is headed by Kim Go Eun. She’s got several main roles under her belt, perhaps most notably in the incredibly popular series Goblin from 2016 but she has also been the leading actress of several major productions since. Long story short: she’s famous. In the movie adaptation she’ll be playing Jaehee. With her, she’ll have Steve Noh who’ll be playing “her gay best friend” and Kang Ha Neul (I haven’t found who Kang will be playing, but my assumption is that he’ll be Jaehee’s boyfriend). Neither Noh nor Kang are newbies, and they’ve both been in large productions before. 

The series seems to have Nam Yoon Su playing the main role of Young, and Nam isn’t a new face either. He gained recognition in the Korean series Extracurricular in 2020, and has since been busy. Alongside Nam there are several familiar faces, such as Lee Se Hee, Jin Ho Eun and Kwon Hyuk (who, interestingly, was also in the Korean BL series The New Employee). As with the movie adaptation, none of these actors and actresses are newbies - they are more or less known faces. 

My point? Adding known actors and actresses to a movie and/or series production is going to bring interest from a larger mainstream audience. This brings me back to the previous point about the heavy themes in the source material - will a mainstream audience be ready for a movie/series with such themes? Will actors and actresses of some level of fame be willing to put that fame on the line, with the risk that the movie/series could be badly received because of the general view of such taboo themes? Will the production be willing to take the risk, or will they cater to that mainstream audience and aim to create a more palatable product? Again, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. 

The Movie Adaptation

The movie is going to be an adaptation based on part I with Jaehee, which initially seems like a wise choice. There’s a lot going on in the book, potentially too much to do it all justice in one movie, so to choose one part of the book seems like a good idea. The focus, however, concerns me. 

As mentioned above, Kim Go Eun who’ll be playing Jaehee in the movie adaptation is potentially the most famous person out of all the actors involved in these two adaptations. Kang Ha Neul who (I think) will play the husband-to-be is also quite famous, while Steve Noh appears to be slightly less so (please do contradict me if I’m wrong, this is based on my own impressions from watching series as well as the MyDramaList profiles). What does this tell me? The money and fame is invested into the straight characters of the story. 

And the synopsis? 

“The movie depicts the love and separation of the free-spirited young generation, the free-spirited Jae Hee and her gay best friend Heung Soo who share a house together.”

Am I just being picky, or is Jaehee introduced as the front and centre of the film? 

My concern here, based on the choice of actors and various synopsis that I’ve read, is that they’re going to straighten out the movie. They’re going to make Jaehee the main character, which is going to make for a heteronormative story with traditional values. My pessimism is telling me that we’re getting “lost young woman living with her gay friend (le gasp!) finally settles down with a proper young man and finds happiness in marriage”. Young (in the movie renamed Heung Soo, another clue that they’re going to be changing things) is going to get sidelined and left behind, and while that is the theme and tragic end of part I in the book, it’s going to be proof that the gays don’t deserve to be happy and in love in the movie. This, for me, would be the worst case scenario and all the alarm bells in my head are going off and I do hope I am wrong. 

Please, I beg, surprise me. 

The Series Adaptation 

As earlier mentioned, the series adaptation has the authors as the screenwriter, which is very promising! As mentioned above, the risks with famous actors and a mainstream audience applies here as well, but I want to address two additional concerns: genre expectations and narrative structure. 

Genre expectations I am curious to see how they’re going to market the series adaptation. Korea has been putting out more and more BL series lately, no doubt catching on to the success of Thai BL series the last few years and wanting to cash in on the popularity, so they might decide to market Love In The Big City the series as a BL, which would come with certain expectations from the audience. Regardless of the marketing, large parts of the audience will not have read the book before seeing the series, and there’s the risk that they’ll approach it as one would a normal BL series. That is, I suspect they’re going to expect romance, BL-style kisses/sex scenes and a happy ending. 

That is not Love In The Big City.

There is romance, yes, but it is tragic romance. It doesn’t work out. Young does not get to skip happily into the sunset with his partner - not to mention that there are several partners and failed relationships, which does not happen in the world of BL. And the sex? Most BL-fans will likely expect a sweet/passionate kiss, some will hope for an expertly composed bed scene of deep sighs and romantic lighting, intimate touches and blissed out expressions transitioning to some cuddling and pillow talk. Now, I’m not trying to throw shade, but that’s not how sex is depicted in the book. 

In the book? 

“We’d gone at it a little too hard - there was bleeding.” (134) 

Yeah. Not happening in your regular BL-series. 

As I thought already after reading part I, this book is unfiltered. It is raw. It is real. There is no romanticisation to be had. And I am worried that the production will choose to filter it to cater to the expectations of the audience, or the audience will react negatively to the rawness of it and reject it. Again, I hope I’m wrong. 

Narrative structure  Judging from this post that @my-rose-tinted-glasses put up, they’re going to cover the whole book in the series adaptation. As already mentioned, that’s a lot to cover, but this is a series and so they have more time to cover more ground. 

But the book is not written as one story, it is deliberately written in four parts that are connected but not structured as a single narrative. I have been reading it as parts of the author’s own life, or at least more or less inspired by the author’s own life. They’re bits of reality put on paper, written as looks into a life lived. While some editing and adding has surely been done, the parts are not structured with the clear narrative arc and conclusion that stories tend to have - because it’s not a fictional story. 

I think the book is better for it. I appreciate how real it is. But how will they carry it over into a series? Will they follow the book closely and let the eight episodes correspond to the four parts? Or will they weave it together into one cohesive story with a narrative beginning, middle and end? If they change it, it’ll be at the risk of losing some of the real rawness of the book. If they don’t change it, it’ll again risk alienating a large portion of the viewers. 

I obviously do not know what they’re going to do with these adaptations. With what I know of the audiences - both the larger mainstream audience in Korea and the more specific BL-invested audience - I think that large portions of the audience will be unable to appreciate Love In The Big City, so I believe that the production will choose to make changes in the adaptations. What those changes will be and what the final product will look like, only time will tell. In my worst moments, I've been convinced they're going to pick out the “good parts” and piece together a perfectly generic romance, offencive in its inoffensiveness, all smooth where the book is crinkled with the raw complexity of real experiences. As I’ve said before: I hope I’m wrong. 

Final thoughts lifted from my notes: 

I am equal parts overjoyed that they're really investing in these adaptations and worried that they'll scrub it clean. 

They're either going to create a generic romance that's not worthy of the name, or they're going to make history. 

#litbc book club #movie adaptation #series adaptation #i do hope i'm wrong #please do tell me i'm just being pessimistic

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader

Note 1: What's in a Name?

Names play a big role in Part 3 of Love in the Big City, in no small part because Part 3 is the section which gives its own name, "Love in the Big City", to the book itself.

Immediately this marks Part 3 out as important, as the potential birthplace of this whole story, as the potential reason Young picked up his pen to spill his whole story to the world, as the potential reason the fictional Love in the Big City exists in the first place.

Something in this section is important, something in this section holds weight, something in this section holds the heart of the book in its hands.

And that something is Gyu-Ho.

Gyu-Ho and the love Young finally found with him in the big city of Seoul.

And here we have another name. Gyu-Ho is the second named character in the book, with the first being Jae-Hee, and that certainly doesn't read as a coincidence.

It could be argued that Gyu-Ho and Jae-Hee are the only 2 named characters because they are the only ones in the story who aren't smothered in some form of guilt or self-loathing, the only ones who are openly themselves but, for me, that doesn't quite fit (the T-ara's are given nicknames and it certainly seems like they are more openly themselves than anyone else in the book). Instead to me, feels like a sign of significance, a sign of just how important they were to the Young that is written about and how important they still are to the Young that did the writing.

Everyone else is either replaceable (Young's flings and acquaintances) or the source of a relationship that brought pain he'd rather leave behind (Eomma and Hyung). But Jae-Hee was the first person in who he found a home and Gyu-Ho was the second, and in naming them he affords them more significance than he affords himself in his own story. These are the two people who shaped him for the better, so they deserve to be acknowledged as such.

Note 1.5: You

Alongside the fact that Gyu-Ho one of the only named characters in the book, there is another reason I think his character is the impetus for the entire story that came before and that is the moments when Young doesn't call him by his name but instead calls him... you.

The majority of Love in the Big City is written in the first person with Young occasionally addressing us, the reader, directly as he comments on the events of his life. The tone is conversational and intimate, as one would address a friend or a diary.

And then, at the start of Part 3 something slips.

The "you" Young is addressing isn't us, the reader, any more. It's Gyu-Ho:

"But you, your sideburns curved into your beard...." p 133.

"Your tongue, which was as warm as your gaze...." p 133.

"Yes. to tell you the truth now, after all that has happened since. I wasn't that drunk that night." p. 133.

The tone changes from conversational to reverent, from lightly personal to intimate, from wryly removed to loaded with shared history. It doesn't happen every time, it doesn't happen consistently, but it happens and, quite frankly, I love it.

"Ah, this is who Young is writing for."

That's what those moments felt like to me, like Young had slipped as he revisited moments loaded with emotions and they had spilled onto the page, no longer a story for faceless readers but a love letter to a lost love, an attempt to speak to him once more.

It's one of the most loaded writing decisions I've come across in quite some time and the layers it adds to the section, to the book are amazing for something so seemingly inconsequentially small.

So what's in a name? A whole damn lot, but there's even more in that small word you.

#litbc book club #litbc #love in the big city #This was not what I planned to write but it's what I ended up with #I am very passionate about the word you now #there are other notes I made for this section but I'll share those later

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Two Friends Diverged in Emotional Sincerity: Reflections on Love in the Big City- Part 1

After a very busy week I have finally managed to catch up on the reading schedule and finished Part 1 of Love in the Big City. Thanks @bengiyo for the discussion questions because I have a lot of disparate thoughts that I don’t think I can really condense in to something articulate, so I’ll start with these.  

I guess I will start by saying that I am curious where my relationship to Young will go because I am not in love with his character so far, and to be honest, I love that. Coming from the BL world, we have too many perfect characters, or those that have a single flaw. It is fascinating to me how having access to Young’s private thoughts is really a major contributor to how I am feeling about his character. He is incredibly flaws, Jaehee is incredibly flawed, but they are human characters in a way a lot of the queer characters I have been engaging with lately are not. And Young and Jaehee’s flaws speak to each other. 

@doyou000me, @my-rose-tinted-glasses, and others called the relationship between Jaehee and Young a queer platonic relationship and I wholeheartedly agree. I am in a QPR right now, I cannot imagine what my future looks like without my QPR but there is part of me that knows this cannot last forever. My friend and I live together, we support each other through everything, we tell each other too much, the thought of being far away is odd. But they have a partner now, who I love dearly and who I am so happy they are with, but it has changed the way we interact with each other, because now they have someone else to spend time with and I’m still left alone trying to figure out how to nurture the other real-life friendships I have. I love that I have my QPR because of how legible it makes the relationship between Jaehee and Young to me. I get where they are coming from, I understand how important that relationship is to both of them. I see the small ways they care for one another. 

But life is all about change, and that relationship cannot continue the way it once did. I think that change truly starts around the time of Jaehee’s pregnancy and subsequent abortion. Something I think Jaehee and Young have in common is their strength of character. Even if who they are changes over time they know who they are, they might not like who they are but they know themselves. I am thinking here about Jaehee and Young’s experiences with healthcare, and my own experiences working in healthcare. The way Young is treated face to face with some respect or politeness, and then overhears the prejudice and homophobia that is ingrained in these providers. And he tries to blow it off, he uses his laughter like armor until K, who does not have the same hang ups comes to his defense, shows him that it is okay to feel angry, reads the clinic the riot act. Jaehee does not get the same treatment. Like Young she goes in to her appointment alone, but where Young was harmed passively through an overheard comment, Jaehee is berated, actively, intentionally, in her face for half an hour until she can do nothing but scream. Scream in the face of shame, scream in the face of societal expectations and conservative values, scream for herself because she has no one there to scream for her. Even the nurse, who agrees with her in private that the doctor is being ridiculous and rude and that he was way out of line does not say a word about it when Jaehee is being actively harmed. 

Jaehee and Young make their jokes, and with that I understand an unspoken arrangement between the two to never take anything seriously. We can see it in the way Young processes, or rather doesn’t process his emotions. How in the face of homophobia his instincts are to blow it off with a laugh. How in the face of misogyny and slut shaming Jaehee swipes their stupid fucking uterus model on the way out the door. How they joke about the Fellowship of the Abortion. How Young just so casually in the middle of a sentence references his suicidality and then never speaks of it again. But this unspoken rule between them is what I think is their undoing. 

Because Jaehee gets an abortion, and suddenly things are serious. Suddenly Jaehee is quiet and in intense amounts of pain. Suddenly Jaehee is not responding to Young’s jokes. Suddenly Jaehee is asking Young if he really, truly wants to know the pain she is in…and he says no. And I am not quite convinced that their relationship can be the same after that. Because after her abortion, Jaehee starts to get serious, she gets good grades, she looks for a job, she starts a serious relationship that is important enough to her that she wants Young to meet him. 

And it has me thinking about the fact that Young and K had been together for about as long as Jaehee and her boyfriend had when Young gets the invitation, but Young can’t call K his boyfriend, Young can’t fathom introducing K to a stranger, Young can’t bring himself to really even believe he is in a relationship because he refuses to emotionally connect the way he would really need to for a relationship to last. And the longer Jaehee is in the relationship with her boyfriend, the more serious she gets, she stops partying as hard, you can see these little steps she is taking towards a more calm and mild life. And I’m not sure Young knows what to do with that knowledge. But he doesn’t have to worry about it for long because Jaehee outs him, and he feels betrayed, and he runs. 

Because running is easier than staying and talking through what he is feeling. Running, ghosting, dumping is easier than having to admit his pain, his sadness, his fears. Again, Young’s detachment from his emotions and his nonchalance about his life experiences means he just gives us these brief, off-handed mentions of the shit that he has been through. I do not think Young had any intention of being out in college, but he stood up for Jaehee, his cohort figured it out, and he spent the rest of his college career a social outcast for it. He went in to his military service knowing what could happen to him if people realized he was gay, and so he put himself back in the closet for it. These are things he mentions essentially in passing, and he never really talks about the way those impacted him. But Young knows the punishment for being gay and Jaehee opens a doorway to potential active physical and emotional harm when she tells her boyfriend the truth about Jieun. 

I think I have seen a lot of conversation around the outing, the way that it shows Young that Jaehee is shifting her alignment away from him and towards her boyfriend. Young says he doesn’t understand why he is angry, because all Jaehee had done was tell the truth. But for queer people, the truth can be dangerous and Young does not know Jaehee’s boyfriend like that. We saw from the clinic Jaehee can’t lie to protect herself, and we see from this moment that Jaehee can’t lie to protect Young either. That feels earth shattering to me to someone who used Jaehee’s name as a safety blanket during his time in national service. That feels earth shattering to me to someone who already lost his safety once because of Jaehee. 

But there was something I haven’t really seen anything mentioned about something that definitely hit me hard in what she said:

“-so oppa he’s basically like a girl.”

Jaehee came home and told Young about it. Now, I guess I can’t know for sure that she recounted verbatim what she told her boyfriend. But let’s assume for a moment she did. I fucking hate this line. I know the queer community will frequently feminize their language, gay men referring to each other as girl, using she/her pronouns for each other, etc. but this is different. Young is a gay man he suffers for being a gay man and to see Jaehee’s, I guess, internal perception of Young as “basically a girl” just rubs me the wrong fucking way. 

Especially because I liked what @lurkingshan (and I think others) said about Young and Jaehee bucking tradition in a lot of ways. They were living together as a man and a woman, and their relationship was queer platonic, and that was going against the grain. But, Jaehee still has options to reintegrate herself into the expectations of society, where Young cannot. Jaehee can be wild in her youth, and she can become tamed, and that can be a personal choice or could be from pressure. My impression is that Jaehee changed her outlook on life after she got her abortion, becoming more serious and that Young was just not ready to move past brushing off or otherwise pushing away the serious shit. Not even after K dies. That is, until Jaehee gets married. Until Jaehee voices her fears about the wild parts of her ruining the safety and security she has built in her life. Until Jaehee has literally made a commitment to embrace love, to accept a genuine emotion and she leaves Young in the dust right at the same time he finally lets his emotions stay for a bit.

#love in the big city #litbc #love in the big city book club #litbc book club

[twig-tea]

Love in the Big City Part 2: Emotional Distance

One of @bengiyo's great discussion questions for this section was about effective distance, and I thought this was so interesting because Young's narrative style seems to already be doing that for us. Besides the clearly distancing tactic of not giving Hyung a name, Young's unreliable narration around his own emotions that I talked about in my post for Part 1 seems to be holding true for this second Part--Young is dissociated from a lot what he's feeling and barely describes it to us; often he doesn't even name it, and he mentions that he often doesn't understand what he's feeling. I could not get over the fact that Young says outright that in order to better understand his own emotional reactions he enrolled in a Philosophy of Emotions course.

PHILOSOPHY! OF! EMOTIONS!

The most intellectualizing, distancing course you could take to help you 'understand' without actually experiencing any emotion. And so when he meets Hyung in this course, he recognizes something in Hyung. Like @wen-kexing-apologist mentioned, Young sees himself in Hyung and that seems to be (at least the initial) attraction.

@hyeoni-comb wrote here about how Young and Hyung were using one another in their loneliness, that Young's relationship with Hyung was reminiscent of his relationship with his mother in that none of these characters were comfortable being vulnerable with one other. @my-rose-tinted-glasses also mentioned Young's contempt for these two characters; it struck me reading these posts how both Hyung and Young's mother were a part of something that excluded/judged Young for who he was, and that resulted in real or imagined surveillance of them that caused them to hide truths about themselves in public in order to not lose their statuses in their groups, which Young judged them for. Young is already so much an outsider that he judges anyone for their in-group behaviours, even though he then does the same thing with Hyung and his own mother. The traits in other people that upset us the most tend to be ones we refuse to see in ourselves.

At the same time I sympathize strongly with the hurt that Young experienced at the hands of these characters. One of the shittiest feelings is having sex with someone who is ashamed of wanting to have sex with you, and knowing that whatever your feeling is doomed because the other person can't let themselves feel it back. When Young found those browser windows my heart plummeted for him. It must have felt like such a betrayal, in the way that his mother hospitalizing him must have felt like a similar betrayal. Both of those moments were a realization that these people he loved thought there was something fundamentally 'wrong' with him (and in the case of Hyung, with himself too).

But I think what my biggest takeaway was with regard to the way this section was written was how it highlighted the loneliness of Young, picking up from something @bengiyo pointed out in his Part 1 post. @profiterole-reads pointed out how Jaehee's absence in this part stood out to them. What stood out to me in her absence was how alone Young was with his mother's illness. In the flashbacks to five years ago, his relationship with Hyung was in the dark, in the evenings, stolen time outside of hospital visiting hours, outside daylight. It seemed clear, to me, that this thing they had in common--a mother hospitalized and ashamed of the reason why--was something that connected them but also not something they shared with one another in a meaningful way. But five years later the situation is even worse; Young's mother is back in hospital, but he doesn't even have the break/distraction that Hyung had provided. And both times he clearly doesn't have Jaehee either. She's recently married, so it makes some sense she would not be readily available necessarily, but we don't find out if Young ever even just complained about having to go to the hospital to her. It makes sense that since Jaehee was absent from his life during this period five years ago that he wouldn't be thinking about or remembering her this second time either, since the repetition is clearly causing him to reminisce. And I couldn't help thinking, what would this part of his life had been like if Jaehee were still actively in it? It sounded like the stories he was writing were the kind he used to tell Jaehee about either when he got home or in the morning after--Would he have gotten as into writing if he had still had that outlet in his life?

I had to wonder, too, if Hyung sent him the manuscript because his mother also was still/once again in hospital. Were they both experiencing this repeat experience of five years ago at the same time?

#litbc book club #love in the big city #typed so that i can stop thinking it