“Caring for Plants,” your story in this week’s issue, is the seed that grew into a novel, “The Hole,” which comes out in English next month. Did the story come first, or did you carve out this piece from the longer manuscript?
I wrote “Caring for Plants” first. It was a commissioned piece for a literary magazine, so I had to keep it short. But, afterward, I felt compelled to keep writing about Oghi and his wife. The characters wouldn’t stop speaking to me. About a year later, I began writing down the story that Oghi was telling me, which turned into “The Hole.”
In the story, a man is struggling to recover from a devastating car accident, which has crippled him and killed his wife. As the story progresses, we become unsure about how accidental the accident was. Should we doubt it?
The entire story is limited to Oghi’s point of view. Readers start out listening to Oghi’s tale and picturing it, but at some point they find themselves having to question whether they can really trust this narrator. When that happens, they have to reconfigure everything that he’s told them. They doubt what they once believed and are forced to wonder what he has omitted. With the car accident, I figured it was best to keep it vague as to whether it was accidental or intentional.
Should we suspect that Oghi wanted to kill his wife or that he was trying to kill himself?
The one thing we know for sure is that he would never have wished to be in an accident. All he wanted was an “easy, tranquil life,” but that was the sort of bourgeois ambition his wife couldn’t stand. The collision of their two personalities was, in a manner of speaking, another kind of traffic accident.
Oghi’s mother-in-law, who takes charge of him in his injured state, seems to be trying to torture him, or possibly worse. Do you think that her malevolence is justified?
Oghi’s mother-in-law has had everything she loves taken away from her. So I can see why she would become so malicious, given certain conditions—for example, if the only person she has left is the son-in-law who may have caused her beloved daughter’s death; if she were to find out how much her daughter had suffered because of that son-in-law; and if that son-in-law were now an invalid. Some actions have to be judged completely separately from ethical justifications.
Is the element of suspense important in all your fiction?
I believe the world turns according to unclear or ambiguous principles. So it’s inevitable that the things that take place in this world are all inherently mysterious and, to some extent, suspenseful.
The story—in its plot structure, at least—made me think of Stephen King’s novel “Misery.” It also called to mind some of Ian McEwan’s early work. Were you thinking of either of those writers when working on this?
Stephen King is one of my favorite writers. It’s hard to avoid comparisons to “Misery” when you have a character physically confined to an enclosed space by another character who harbors ill will. The fact is that it’s impossible to surpass any work that is considered “archetypal” or “classic.” But, for that reason, it was better for me not to try to avoid the comparison, because I was able to benefit from the expectations that readers of “Misery” would bring to my book.
Are there other writers who are an inspiration to you?
I’ve always been in awe of Franz Kafka’s world of absurdity and Philip Roth’s intimate internal narrative. But the ones who really keep me going are my fellow contemporary authors writing in Korean. They encourage me and enable me to handle the “labor” of writing fiction.
You’ve published four story collections and four novels in Korea. “The Hole” is your second book to be published in the United States. Is it difficult as a Korean writer to break into the English-language publishing market?
Of course, there will be a delay any time you introduce a work of literature to other countries via translation. The issue of translation itself is always a stumbling block. But lately a number of translated Korean books have done really well, and Korean literature has been proving its merits overseas. I think we’ve built up momentum that will eventually help to reduce the gaps in the English market.
(Answers translated, from the Korean, by Sora Kim-Russell.)
