In Night Picture of Rain Sound, Sue Ja Joo navigates the blurry line between fantasy and reality, witnessing and wit, passion and the symbolic meaning of everything in the world.
Night Picture of Rain Sound synopsis
Seventeen short stories transcending the line between fantasy and reality. Sue Ja Joo is on the frontier of ‘Smart Fiction’. A new genre between poetry and the short story, unique to the Korean literary world. Night Picture of Rain Sound opens the small door in the corner where certitude is imagination, and imagination is certitude. Night Picture of Rain Sound creates a world where it’s possible to run into Don Quixote at the store or discuss physics with Einstein in a café. Smart Fiction is the latest reinterpretation of the Mini-Fiction genre.
Book review
There can be a huge difference between what people (and books) are like on the inside/outside and what other people notice. This challenges you to find a solution when nothing and no one stands out. How do you draw a person’s facial features for a criminal case or describe a situation you witness? If you are not at the center of the world and even you don’t stand out, what does that say about your responsibility?
The seventeen stories in this collection navigate the blurry line between fantasy and reality, witnessing and wit, passion and the symbolic meaning of everything in the world. Think of a reader that starts a dialogue with a book character in The Burden of Being Juliet or mirrors that show you more than the naked eye can see in Lola in the Tilted Mirror. Sue Ja Joo visualizes what does not want to be visualized.
My favorite stories are the ones I mention in this review. The overall quality of this collection seems uneven (hence the three star rating), with especially the later stories being unmemorable and not bringing anything new or interesting to the table. This might be because most of the stories are quite short and immersion never happens. What does happen is immersion in their combined story, which shows you a picture of a society in which everything leaves a trace and affects someone’s life (as in Her Knives). The stories are like mirrors that reflect what may be hidden, whether intentionally, unknowingly or unwillingly. They’re critical of society, but only if you want to interpret them like that.
The message can be confronting, especially when you consider the scope and meaning of the word trash in Emergency City Clean-up or the fact that everything is merely symbolic in The Burden of Being Juliet. The Amusement Park is one of the stories that strongly feels like a satire.
As I read, I am always thinking about where witnessing takes over from wit and symbols become more than they set out to be. The story Appellations – a funny short story that left a bigger impression than its page count demands – probably proved quite a challenge to the translator (I am tempted to buy the original so that I can compare). The jokes and setting of most stories feel Western, and only a few are explicitly set in South Korea. On the other hand, One Click shows us that “The whole world was involved, seamlessly connected, yet nobody was to be held responsible.”
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Book details
Title: Night Picture of Rain Sound
Author: Sue Ja Joo
Translator (from Korean): Jennifer M. Cho
Language: English
Publisher: Page Addie Press
Pages: 138
ISBN (13): 9780645062205
Publication date: 12 December 2020
About the author and translator
Sue Ja Joo is a novelist, poet, and playwright who was born in Seoul, Korea. She emigrated in 1976, living abroad for 23 years in France, Switzerland, and the United States. She returned to Korea in 1998. Holding a B.A. in Fine Arts (Seoul National University) and an M.A. degree from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, Sue’s literary inspiration comes from her deep roots in aesthetics, religion, and global cultures. In 2013, she became the first recipient of the Insung Park Mini-Fiction Literary Award, which recognizes her achievements in popularizing this genre in Korea. She is at the frontier of a new literary genre, ‘Smart Fiction’ which hybridizes poetry and short fiction. Sue is currently working as the editor-in-chief of a literary magazine based in Seoul.
Jennifer M. Cho is a Korean-American writer and translator. She has always been fascinated with the art of storytelling. Growing up in both Washington D.C. and Seoul, she found herself naturally drawn to the examination of communication and comprehension between different cultures and generations. After earning her degree in Digital Communication and Creative Writing from Stanford University, she pursued a career in video gaming – a platform for epic tales and sweeping sagas. She has worked in marketing and operations for global brands such as Electronic Arts, Sony PlayStation, and NCsoft. Jennifer’s interest shifted to the short communication form of the media industry. Working in advertising technology with mobile game studios across the world, Jennifer honed her skills in captivating audiences within a 15 to 30-second time frame.
