Paul Yoon's Snow Hunters
I've had a copy of Paul Yoon's Snow Hunters (Simon & Schuster, 2013) sitting in my must read soon pile for half a year because, like stephenhongsohn, I love Yoon's debut short story collection
Once the Shore
(and had a chance to teach it as well).
More than anything, the power of this language is in the contemplative sentences. Describing the plot would do little justice to it, even though the plot itself is full of potential for lots of interesting exploration into history, transnational movements, war, romance, and more. In brief, the story focuses on Yohan, a man from northern Korea who ended up conscripted into the North Korean military and eventually was captured by American allies to South Korea. He spent time in a prisoner of war camp where he learned to mend clothes, and after the end of the Korean civil war, he moved to Brazil to become an apprentice to Kiyoshi, a Japanese tailor in a seaside village. The novel interweaves moments from throughout Yohan's life, often with flashbacks and thus disrupting a linear narrative structure. Throughout his life, Yohan encounters people with whom he forms friendships and other kinds of relationships. In addition to Kiyoshi, these people include Peng, who as a boy traveled with an entertainment troupe and later ended up in the POW camp with Yohan; Bia and Santi, an itinerant girl and boy in Brazil who pop in and out of Yohan's life; and Peixe, the groundskeeper at the church in the village.
To provide a sense of the language in this novel, here are a few paragraphs:
As this passage shows, Yoon's language is spare. Many of the sentences are concise descriptions of basic actions or objects. Yet, the choice of words often evokes something more emotional (sometimes verging on pathetic fallacy). The middle paragraph describes a tree, but the description suggests the impact of nature and the course of life on a living being's shape. This type of writing is highly metaphorical, and in some instances, it is a kind of metonymy where the tree comes to stand in for Yohan himself.
One thing I am curious about is the naming of this novel for people who appear briefly towards the end of the novel. The eponymous snow hunters are a group of people, possibly a nuclear family unit, scavenging in the winter. From a distance, it looks like they are gathering snow, and Peng describes them that way--as snow hunters (p. 152). This description is curious, and the deliberate misinterpretation of the family's actions, which is more accurately probably scavenging for food, clothing, and other necessary supplies for surviving a winter in a war zone, suggests both a violence and a beauty. I need to think more about snow hunters as the overarching image or idea for the novel, how they might encapsulate or capture all of the themes of the novel.
More than anything, the power of this language is in the contemplative sentences. Describing the plot would do little justice to it, even though the plot itself is full of potential for lots of interesting exploration into history, transnational movements, war, romance, and more. In brief, the story focuses on Yohan, a man from northern Korea who ended up conscripted into the North Korean military and eventually was captured by American allies to South Korea. He spent time in a prisoner of war camp where he learned to mend clothes, and after the end of the Korean civil war, he moved to Brazil to become an apprentice to Kiyoshi, a Japanese tailor in a seaside village. The novel interweaves moments from throughout Yohan's life, often with flashbacks and thus disrupting a linear narrative structure. Throughout his life, Yohan encounters people with whom he forms friendships and other kinds of relationships. In addition to Kiyoshi, these people include Peng, who as a boy traveled with an entertainment troupe and later ended up in the POW camp with Yohan; Bia and Santi, an itinerant girl and boy in Brazil who pop in and out of Yohan's life; and Peixe, the groundskeeper at the church in the village.
To provide a sense of the language in this novel, here are a few paragraphs:
In the fall, Yohan climbed to the top of the hill town. He passed the church where the road ended and crossed a sloped meadow, heading toward the tree on the ridge.
The tree was tall and had been shaped by the wind. Its branches were long and thick, extending out in one direction. Some nearly touched the ground.
He rested there, on the peak of the hill, and looked out at the distant lighthouse and the old plantation house to the north. Breakers approached a cliff. The wind was steady, consuming the noises, and he watched the town go about its day. (p. 49)
As this passage shows, Yoon's language is spare. Many of the sentences are concise descriptions of basic actions or objects. Yet, the choice of words often evokes something more emotional (sometimes verging on pathetic fallacy). The middle paragraph describes a tree, but the description suggests the impact of nature and the course of life on a living being's shape. This type of writing is highly metaphorical, and in some instances, it is a kind of metonymy where the tree comes to stand in for Yohan himself.
One thing I am curious about is the naming of this novel for people who appear briefly towards the end of the novel. The eponymous snow hunters are a group of people, possibly a nuclear family unit, scavenging in the winter. From a distance, it looks like they are gathering snow, and Peng describes them that way--as snow hunters (p. 152). This description is curious, and the deliberate misinterpretation of the family's actions, which is more accurately probably scavenging for food, clothing, and other necessary supplies for surviving a winter in a war zone, suggests both a violence and a beauty. I need to think more about snow hunters as the overarching image or idea for the novel, how they might encapsulate or capture all of the themes of the novel.
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