113. Bae Suah, Time in Gray [2013, tr. 2017] 119 pages [Kindle]
Another short work by Bae Suah, Time in Gray begins with an essay on past and future time, saying that we know the future (as wish) better than the past and connects the past (or past-ness) with shame and guilt; then has a rant by a vegetarian friend of the narrator about eating meat (as an example of guilt), before it proceeds to the real story (and we don't realize at first that it is the real story; it begins as if it is another example). The story is about a crush the narrator had in high school on a woman named Su-Mi. (The Afterword by the editor assumes the narrator is a man, but this is never stated; I assumed it was about two women, but it is actually totally ambiguous.) After giving a short description of the narrator's crush, it then has him (or her) meet Su-Mi twenty years later, also in the past tense, but the Afterword assures us (with a diagram) that it is actually in the wished-for future. The story seems fairly meaningless, but is much more experimental if we accept the explanation of the editor, which is undoubtedly correct -- I just don't like stories that only make sense if you read a commentary by someone other than the author. So for me this was a failure. It was also not formatted correctly for the Kindle, and it is only available in Kindle format.
113. Bae Suah, Time in Gray [2013, tr. 2017] 119 pages [Kindle]
Another short work by Bae Suah, Time in Gray begins with an essay on past and future time, saying that we know the future (as wish) better than the past and connects the past (or past-ness) with shame and guilt; then has a rant by a vegetarian friend of the narrator about eating meat (as an example of guilt), before it proceeds to the real story (and we don't realize at first that it is the real story; it begins as if it is another example). The story is about a crush the narrator had in high school on a woman named Su-Mi. (The Afterword by the editor assumes the narrator is a man, but this is never stated; I assumed it was about two women, but it is actually totally ambiguous.) After giving a short description of the narrator's crush, it then has him (or her) meet Su-Mi twenty years later, also in the past tense, but the Afterword assures us (with a diagram) that it is actually in the wished-for future. The story seems fairly meaningless, but is much more experimental if we accept the explanation of the editor, which is undoubtedly correct -- I just don't like stories that only make sense if you read a commentary by someone other than the author. So for me this was a failure. It was also not formatted correctly for the Kindle, and it is only available in Kindle format.