Donna Tartt의 "The Goldfinch"

Didn't like it.

Phil Klay의 'Redepolyment' 중

We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose, and we called it Operation Scooby. I'm a dog person, so I thought about that a lot.
First time was instinct. I hear O'Leary go, "Jesus," and there's a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way he'd lap up water from a bowl. It wasn't American blood, but still, there's that dog, lapping it up. And that's the last straw, I guess, and then it's open season on dogs.

I had at least thought there would be nobility in war. I know it exists. There are so many stories, and some of them have to be true. But I see normal men, trying to do good, beaten down by horror, by their inability to quell their own rages, by their masculine posturing and their so-called hardness, their desire to be tougher, and therefore crueler, than their circumstance.
And yet, I have this sense that this place holier then back home. Gluttonous, fat, oversexed, overconsuming, materialist home, where we're too lazy to see our own faults. At least here, Rodriguez has the decency to worry about hell.

As a young priest, I'd had a father scream at me once. I was working in a hospital. He'd lost his son. (skip)
Doctors repeatedly asked the father to authorize last-ditch attempts to keep his child breathing. Naturally, he did. So they proceeded to stab his son with needles, perform emergency surgery. Torture his child in front of him and at his request in a hopeless effort to continue a tiny, doomed life for a few minutes more. At the end, they were left with a very small and terribly battered corpse.
And then I came along, after the chemotherapy, after the bankrupting bills and the deterioration of his and his wife's careers, after the months of hoping and despair, after every possible medical violation had denied his child grace even in death. And I dared suggest some good had come of it? It was unbearable. It was disgusting. It was lie.

There was a human warmth to the paper.

it's because he thinks his suffering justifies making you suffer. If his story about his beating is true, it means the Marines who beat him think their suffering justifies making him suffer.

"It's not whether it happened or not. You don't talk about some of the shit that happened. We lived in a place that was totally different from anything those hippies in that audience could possibly understand. All those jerks who think they're so good 'cause they've never had to go out on a street in Ramadi and weigh your life against the lives of the people in the building you're taking fire from. You can't describe it to someone who wasn't there, you can hardly remember how it was yourself because it makes so little sense. And to act like somebody could live and fight for months in that shit and not go insane, well, that's what's really crazy. And then Alex is gonna go and act like a big hero, telling everybody how bad we were. We weren't bad. I wanted to shoot every Iraqi I saw, every day. And I never did.


- 전쟁에 관한 소설, 그것도 얼마되지 않은, 혹은 현재도 진행중인 전쟁에 관한 소설. National Book Award를 받은 이 소설을 차에 가지고 다니며 질기게도 오랫동안 읽었다. 얼마나 이해할 수 있을까? 직접 경험하지 않았지만 뉴스와 소셜미디어에서 지겹도록 들은 그 전쟁에 대해서 알 만큼 안다고 섣불리 생각하지는 않았을까 막연한 죄책감이 든다.

이 책은 여러가지 이유로 전쟁에 참여하게 된 사람들의 다각적 시각으로 쓰여졌다. 그러나 누구의 시각이든 좋은 의도에서의 전쟁의 참여이건, 막연한 동경이건, 실질적 이유이건 간에 민간인으로서 이해하기 힘든 그 곳에서의 경험은 모든 참전군인들을 또 다른 현실인 군대 밖에서의 삶으로부터 alienate 시킨다. 그리고 또한 참전한 사람들의 관점과 경험의 폭에 따라 모두 다른 전쟁을 경험하게 되는 것이다. 그러나 그것은 중요한가? 전쟁에서 군인들의 생각이 중요한가? 체스판의 말에 불과한 참전 군인들의 생각이 과연 중요한가? 그들이 느끼는 분노, 절망, 죄책감은 중요한가?  각각의 화자의 감정에 가 닿기에는 나는 너무도 멀리 떨어져 있다. 적지에서 식어가는 아이의 몸을 적외선 카메라로 바라보는 것은 피흘리는 죽음을 눈 앞에서 보는 것과는 다를 것이다. 그러나 나는 그러한 것도 본 적이 없지 않은가? 그리고 본국으로 돌아와 전장으로 떠나기 전과 하나도 변한 것 없는 편안하고도 흥청거리는 사회 안으로 들어갈 때, 오직 변한 것은 자기 자신 뿐이고, 자신과 자신의 동료들의 희생에 바뀐 것이나 기억되는 것이 하나도 없음을 느낄 때, 아마도 그들의 박탈감은 너무도 클 것이다.
어떤 명분으로라도 누군가를 죽이도록 내몰린 사람들, 그들을 그 무엇으로도 함부로 평가하거나 판단하거나 심지어 이해한다고 말할 수는 없을 것이다. 다만 진심으로 그들의 경험을 폄하하지 않고 존중할 수 있어야 한다는 생각이 들게 만든 책.

Nikolai Gogol의 "Dead Souls" 중

in short, the same as everywhere;

No one equals him in power - he is God! But such is not the lot, and other is the destiny of the writer who has dared to call forth all that is before our eyes every moment and which our indifferent eyes do not see - all the terrible, stupendous mire of trivia in which our life is entangles, the whole depth of cold, fragmented, everyday characters that swarm over our often bitter and boring earthly path, and with the firm strength of his implacable chisel dares to present them roundly and vividly before the eyes of all people! (skip) This contemporary judgement does not recognized writer; with no sharing, no response, no sympathy, like a familyless wayfarer, he will be left alone in the middle of the road. Grim is his path, and bitterly will he feel his solitude.

Strange people these gentlemen officials, and other degrees along with them: They knew very well that Nozdryov was a liar, that not a single word of his could be trusted, not he least trifle, and nevertheless they resorted precisely to him.

What the deceased was asking - why he had died, or why he had lived - God alone knows.

What a strange, and alluring, and transporting, and wonderful feeling is in the word: road! and how wondrous is this road itself:

and think not about not doing wrong, but only about having no one say they are doing wrong. (skip) You fear the deeply penetrating gaze, you are afraid to penetrate anything deeply with your own gaze, you like to skim over everything with unthinking eyes.

But Kostanzhoglo was angry now, his bile was seething, and the words came pouring out.

And often, unexpectedly, in some remote, forsaken backwater, some deserted desert, one meets a man whose warming conversation makes you forget the pathlessness of your paths, the homelessness of your nights, and the contemporary world full of people's stupidity, of deceptions for deceiving man. Forever and always an evening spent in this way will vividly remain with you, and all that was that took place then will be retained by the faithful memory: who was there, and who stood where, and what he was holding - the walls, the corners, and every trifle.

He still did not know that in Russia, in Moscow and other cities, there are such wizards to be found, whose life is an inexplicable riddle. He seems to have spent everything, is up to his ears in debt, has no resources anywhere, and the dinner that is being given promises to be the last; and the diners think that by the next day the host will be dragged off to prison. Then years pass after that - that wizard is still holding out in the world, is up to his ears in debt more than ever, and still gives a dinner in the same way, and everybody thinks it will be the last, and everybody is sure that the next day the host will be dragged off to prison. Khlobuev was such a wizard. Only in Russia can one exist in such a way. Having nothing, he welcomed visitors, gave parties, and even patronized and encouraged all sorts of actors passing through town, boarded them and lodged them in his house.

Believe me, as soon as circumstances get critical, the first thing to do is confuse. One can get it so confused, so entangled, that on one can understand anything. (skip) The crayfish thrives in trouble waters.

<from Translator's Introduction>
because the road is also writing itself,

Gogol wrote in a letter of 1843;
I have been much talked about by people who have analyzed some of my aspects but failed to define my essence. Pushkin alone sensed it. He always told me that no other writer before has had this gift of presenting the banality of life so vividly, of being able to describe the banality of the banal man with such force that all the little details that escape notice flash large in everyone's eyes. That is my main quality, which belongs to me alone, and which indeed no other writer possesses.

Gogol's characters; they are all external, like landscapes.

The unresolved mystery of banality is the lining of the extraordinary behind it. It is Chichikov's chest with its double bottom, in which he stores all sorts of meaningless trash, but from which his "dead souls" also emerge in procession and move across all Russia. It is the renewal and futurity inherent in the road.

- 처음 접하는 N. Gogol의 책에서 러시아에 이런 작가가 있었다니 하는 감탄을 금치 못했다. 책을 읽고 나서 처음 "가벼움의 무게"라는 생각이 들었다. 인간의 허영과 실체를 쪽집게처럼 뽑아내어 풍자적으로 묘사하는 문장들을 읽으면서 실소를 터뜨리면서도, 씁쓸한 뒷맛을, 개운치 않은 뒤통수를 느끼게 하는... 진부한 삶의 의미없음을 세세한 문장으로서 다루고 있으면서도 그 의미없음이 곧 삶이고 우리가 개탄해 마지 않는 인물들이 이 시대를 또 이루고 살아가고 있음을 부인치 못한다는 것이 200년이 넘은 소설이 오늘날까지 가슴 뜨끔하게 다가오는 이유인 것 같다.
Tolstoy의 소설에서의 moral과 Dostoevsky의 인간의 본성의 고뇌의 진중한 무거움에만 길들여졌던 러시아 소설에서  가벼운 실소를 터뜨리며 가슴과 생각은 채워 줄 좋은 책을 만난 듯하다.

Viktor E. Frankl의 "The Unheard Cry for Meaning" 중

For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Even more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

Albert Camus once contented "There is but one truly serious problem, and that is . . . judging whether life is or is not worth living . . ."

Man does not live by welfare alone.

in finding meaning, however, we are perceiving possibility embedded in reality. (skip) It has a "kairos" quality, which means that unless we use the opportunity to fulfill the meaning inherent and dormant in a situation, it will pass and be gone forever.

to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation (skip) we are challenged to change ourselves.
(skip) the meaning of suffering. It can have a meaning if it changes oneself for the better."

as Martin Heidegger said, being human is "being in the world." What I have called the self-transcendence of existence denotes the fundamental fact that being human means relating to something, or someone, other than oneself, be it a meaning to fulfill, or human beings to encounter.

A human being is not one thing among other things. Things determine each other. Man, however, determines himself. Rather, he decides whether or not he lets himself be determined, be it by the drives and instincts that push him, or the reasons and meanings that pull him.

Blaise Pascal once said, "Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait point" (the heart has reasons that reason does not know). There is, indeed, what is called the wisdom of the heart. (skip) there is more to being human than being the battleground of the clashing ego, id and superego, as Fulton J. Sheen once mockingly put it, (skip) From the man in the street we may learn that being human means being confronted continuously with situations which are each at once chance and challenge, giving us a chance to fulfill ourselves by meeting the challenge to fulfill its meaning. Each situation is a call, first to listen, and then to respond.

the loneliness of "the lonely crowd."
(skip) existential privacy. What is greatly needed is to make the best of being lonely, to have "the courage to be" alone.

the absence of a sense of personal distance, (skip) - he cannot stop informing you about his private life or inquiring about your private life.

Language is more than mere self-expression. Language is always pointing to something beyond itself.

Writers who themselves have gone through the hell of despair over the apparent meaninglessness of life can offer their suffering as a sacrifice on the altar of humankind. Their self-disclosure can help the reader who is plagued by the same condition, help him in overcoming it.

healing through reading.

It is true, the author should be granted the freedom of opinion and its expression; but freedom is not the last word, it is not the whole story. Freedom threatens to degenerate into arbitrariness unless it is balanced by responsibleness.

"tragic heroism" is the possibility of saying yes to life in spite of its transitoriness.

is this memory not also transitory? (skip) It exits and it continues to exist regardless of whether we look at it or think about it. It continues to exist even irrespective of our own existence.
(skip) that wholeness of our life, which we complete in the very moment of our death, lies outside the grave and outside the grave it remains - and it does so, not although, but because it has slipped into the past. Even what we have forgotten, what has escaped from our consciousness, is not erased from the world; it has become part of the past, and it remains part of the world.

for day by day life is asking questions, we are interrogated by life, and we have to answer. Life, I would say, is a life-long question-and-answer period. As to the answers, I do not weary of saying that we can only answer to life by answering for our lives. Responding to life means being responsible for our lives.

This leads to the paradox that man's own past is his true future. The living man has both a future and a past; the dying man has no future in the usual sense, but only a past; the dead, however, "is" his past. He has no life, he "is" his life. (skip) The past is precisely that which cannot be taken away.


-Frankl 박사의 책을 다시 읽어나가면서, 그의 글은 암울한 일상에 지쳐갈 때 등불을 밝혀주는 듯 하다는 생각이 든다.
매일의 생활 속에서 건조해지고 약해지고 무디어지면서 생의 진정한 가치를 의심하게 될 때, 매 순간 삶에 응답함으로써 자신을 완성해가는 인간, 한 세대의 삶이 아닌 시대적인 가치로서의 인간, 과거로서 정형화되지만 그것으로서 영원해지는 인간을 그 본인의 삶을 통해 그의 글을 통해 역설하고 있다.
너무도 단순하지만 그의 주장은 삶에서의 가장 본질적인 가치를 인간에게 부여하고 또 부여된 가치를 인지하고 실행할 것을 삶으로서 세계에 응답할 것을 그의 전력을 다해 종용함으로서, 의미가 있다면 어떠한 상황도 버티어 나갈 수 있다는 것을 그러나 변하는 시간 속에서 가능성을 끄집어 내어 그것을 실재로 만드는 것은 오직 자기 자신만임을, 그것을 기억하고 실행할 것을 거칠고 굵은 목소리도 계속해서 진심을 다해 옆에서 말하고 있는 듯 느껴진다.