Wed  2 Jun 23:18:06 KST 2021

Dear Gopherspace,

I still haven't gotten the hang of journaling. Perhaps my life
isn't eventful enough. I imagine journals to be writings you look
back over later in life to trigger memories of places, times,
people, feelings, thoughts, etc.

The best journals go into quite a lot of detail about daily
activities and moods. I would like to be able to express myself in
that way, because I have a terrible memory. I rarely think of past
times, but when I do, it's often when I feel low, and then waves of
memories wash over me. I try my best to cling to them and live with
them for a while, but they are usually fleeting.

It becomes frustrating to try to cling to the past, and all I can
do try to accept that it is gone and try to keep moving forward.
But, I would still like some of those times back, in some kind of
form. Oh, well.

Anyway, the point of this post was to mention something I wanted to
remember about Korea. Something small and insignificant that I'd
probably forget later. It's to do with the kinds of books people
read here. More specifically, the kinds of 'western' books. First,
there is Herman Hesse. People love him here. Everyone seems to have
read Demian. Maybe it is prescribed reading in high-school or
something. Even BTS references it. This was surprising to me, as he
certainly isn't a major author in Ireland, outside of people who
really care about 20th century literature of course. Here, it's not
just literary types who love him, it's more general. I've only ever
read Steppenwolf, and it was incredible, so maybe the Koreans are
onto something with this one.

The second two are more obvious - The Selfish Gene and Sapians.
Those books are popular everywhere, but here they are on the front
stand of every bookshop I've been to. Even my school's tiny
library, which consists of tiny kids English books, has a couple of
token 'serious' books (which very few - if any - of the 9 year old
Korean kids will ever read). They are, the first Harry Potter book
and Sapians. It seems like if you want to appear 'cultured' or
'educated' in polite society here, you have to have an opinion
about those books (usually about how wonderful they are). I don't
like either of those writers, though, admittedly, I've never had
the patience to read the entirety of either book.

Finally, there is another curious one - Bernard Werber's "Ants"
books. I had never heard of these before coming to Korea, but I've
met a couple of people who've read them, and I've seen the entire
set in a few bookshops.

Anyway, my selection is probably biased based on my own experience,
but its something I'd never considered before moving to a distant
country - western cultural hegemony can 'express' itself in
different ways in local contexts. Imitations of western cultural
canons will produce their own variations, peculiarities. This
phenomena is, of course, most evident in the case of K-pop, which
to me at least (I'm not a fan), sounds like a blatant imitation of
US/UK styles of pop/hip-hop, but also sounds totally different and
unique. It's the same with the Western literary cannon here.