[Article] He Has Just Managed To Live Through Modern Korea: I Went To My Father as the Art of Memory and Presentness / Han Ki-wook
The Quarterly Changbi 193, Autumn 2021
Abstract
Carefully examining Shin Kyung-sook’s recent novel I Went To My Father, literary critic Han Ki-wook performs a close reading of the process in which a daughter’s perspective narrativizes the life of a father who lived through the turbulent period of modern Korea, as an individual and the head of household in a traditional rural community. It is a concise critique, which stands out for the way he discerningly reads how realistic narratives acquire aesthetic presentness, together with affective scenes, and evaluates its literary achievement in a balanced way, while also paying attention to the creative method of using a narrative of memory characteristic of Shin.