Letter from the Past 1

Chapter 1: Valentine's Day | Canmore | Our Best

Letters from the Past 2

Chapter 2: Mercuryland | Today's Visitor | Spoiled Child | White Day | Best Friend | Summer Clothes Season

Letters from the Past 3

Chapter 3: Happy Together | Again, Canmore | Eighteen Blues | Festival Day | School Anniversary

Letters from the Past 4

Chapter 4_ Not an Angel

Letters from the Past 5

Chapter 5: University Song Festival

Things left behind


Author's Note · 407

“This novel will change the adjectives that precede Park Sang-young’s name.”
_Jeong Se-rang (novelist)

“This novel is that kind of work.
It reminds me of the weak, sinister, and cowardly me that I became aware of through love, and the desperate happiness of that moment.
“That’s why I’m fascinated and that’s why my heart races.”
Byun Young-joo (film director)

Park Sang-young, winner of the Young Writer's Award and the Shin Dong-yup Literary Award, presents his first full-length novel.

Park Sang-young, who won the Grand Prize at the Young Writer's Award in 2019 for "A Sea Bass, the Taste of the Universe" with the comment that "it has power because it is bold and truthful" (novelist Kim Seong-jung), and the Shin Dong-yup Literary Award in 2021 for "How to Love in a Big City" with the comment that "it showed an innovative side that breaks down old relationships and notions" (Shin Dong-yup Literary Award Jury), has published his first full-length novel, "I Want to Be One-Dimensional."
"I Want to Be One-Dimensional," which garnered great attention and popularity when its first half was serialized in the webzine Weekly Literature Village in the first half of 2020, was later completed with the author's painstaking efforts into a substantial volume of over 1,300 pages of 200-character manuscript paper.
This will be a welcome gift to readers who have been waiting for a full-length novel by an author who is not only actively working as one of the representative young writers of Korean literature, but also has a distinct presence by appearing in various broadcast media, and has been selected as one of the 'Writers to Watch in Fall 2021' by the American publishing magazine Publisher's Weekly, and is receiving attention overseas as well.

"I Want to Be One-Dimensional" is set in D City, a provincial city in Korea, and tells the story of a teenage queer named "Na."
The heartbreaking love with his friend 'Yoon-do', the yearning friendship with the free-spirited 'Muni' are vividly conveyed through 'Na's' voice, and the life in the contemporary apartment complex, divided by real estate prices and school districts, the suffocating college entrance competition and school life filled with twisted violence, and the colorful aspects of the people around him who lived during that era come to life.
The author, who has vividly depicted the love and separation of the youth generation, turns his gaze to the starting point of life, the teenage years, through his first full-length novel, and shows us the fundamental world that brought us here today.
This unique coming-of-age novel, which brings back even the dark memories buried deep within the reader and allows readers to experience moments of joy and pain simultaneously, is truly a new 'first' for author Park Sang-young and will be a story that will be read and talked about for a long time.

“The world we belong to has stopped.”
A new wave of teenage love
Moments of joy pouring down like feathers

On a summer day in 2002, during the World Cup round of 16 between Korea and Italy, I was sitting alone in an empty study room, withdrawn from the world, realizing my identity as a different person from others. Then, as if by magic, someone appeared to me.
“A man with a pure white face, neat, sporty hair without sideburns, and wearing a black sleeveless T-shirt” (page 41), Yun-do, leisurely watching “Chungking Express” at a moment when everyone is cheering for Korea to advance to the quarterfinals.
Yoon-do was the first to speak to me, who was glancing at him.
As it turned out, he not only went to the same school as me, but he already knew about me.
A moment when only each other exists before your eyes, cut off from the noisy noise outside.
The impressive first meeting between 'I' and Yoon-do is like a scene from a youth movie, making the viewer's heart flutter.
'I' spend the summer going back and forth between the swimming pool, arcade, and karaoke room with Yoon-do, and spending time together in a container, which is their own hideout.
'I', who suffers from depression and anxiety while living wearing the "mask of a model student" (page 25) to hide my identity, becomes increasingly obsessed with Yundo, and while Yundo treats 'I' as if nothing happened, he whispers words that I will never forget.

“What are you most afraid of in life?”
I said that every night when I lay down in bed, I was gripped by the pain of the shadows on the four corners of the ceiling, as if they were weighing down my whole body. When I thought about how many nights I would have to endure the weight of this ceiling, everything became unbearable.
“Then, let’s stay in our one-dimensional world.”
I couldn't understand what you were saying, so I asked what you meant.
“It’s a one-dimensional world where there is only a line segment that firmly connects the two points, you and me.”
(Page 130)

As I become more entangled with Yun-do, like the “red thread of fate” (page 121), my peace of mind crumbles and I am caught in a whirlpool of emotions that I cannot control.
Does Yoon-do really like 'me'? What is in Yoon-do's heart?
Can I be happy with Yoon-do for a long time?

Things that saved us in those days

While developing a special relationship with Yoon-do, 'I' also becomes close to a girl named Mun-i who attends the same academy.
Although Moon-i was caught giving Yoon-do chocolate on Valentine's Day, Moon-i, who smokes and has "a lot of ear piercings like springs in a practice field" (p. 21), does not find it strange for a man to give chocolate to another man, and does not go around telling others about it.
Instead, the pattern leads me, who was confined to my own narrow room, to unfamiliar places and cultures that I had never known before, and introduces me to comics such as Yazawa Ai's "Nana" and "My Boyfriend's Story," Park Hee-jung's "Hotel Africa," Won Su-yeon's "Let Die," and Ragawa Marimo's "New York, New York."
And he tells 'me' his story of how he is having a hard time because of his relationship with 'Namie-sister'.
'I' experience a different sense of liberation in the world opened up by the pattern, and empathize with the pattern's story and build a sense of solidarity.

Before, the only narratives I knew were comics like 『The Fighting』, 『Hip Hop』, 『Jjang』, and 『H2』 that boys would pass around in class.
A world filled with adventure and competition, salty friendships and death.
But the 『Hotel Africa』 that Munji gave me was different.
The image of a man who left his small-town hometown to pursue art in a big city, and a man who loves another man while carrying a loss that can never be filled, was so natural.
As I read 『Hotel Africa』, I felt as if a thirst that I didn't even know I had, but that clearly existed inside me, was being quenched.
(…) I learned about men’s love by reading “Let Die” and “New York, New York,” absorbed science fiction from “Into the Starlight” and “Normal City,” and occult culture from “X,” “The Holy War,” and “The Devil’s Bride.”
That was the first time I realized that there were so many different narratives for me in the world.
(Pages 54-55)

Including “curation of patterns” (page 54) like this, Park Hyo-shin’s “Tokyo” that ‘I’ sing at the arcade karaoke that I went to with Yoon Do, the movies “Happy Together” and “Howl’s Moving Castle” that ‘I’ watched with Yoon Do and Moo-ni, the magazines “Trendy Communication” and “Kino,” etc., “I Want to Be One-Dimensional” is filled with a rich list of various popular cultures such as comics, music, movies, and magazines that were popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
This list, which will evoke a special fragrance for the generation that was immersed in the popular culture of that era, and will be a new discovery for later generations, not only adds vividness to the background of the novel, but also makes us reflect on what sustained us during that time and, in turn, what has made us who we are today, and sheds new light on that era.

“So as not to ignore what was left behind.”
A hand of reconciliation extended by the present 'me' to the past 'me'

"I Want to Be One-Dimensional" is a heart-fluttering romance that unfolds first and foremost through the complex emotions and various incidents between "I" and Yundo, and Munui and her older sister Namie, but it also encompasses a variety of genres that cannot be simply summarized in that way.
The novel begins with the present-day 'I' receiving a message from an unknown person reminding him of past events, and the curiosity surrounding the secrets of the past is at the center of the narrative as he informs us that a skeletal body has been found in a lake in City D.
What is the identity of the skeletal body, and why did he die?
And who on earth is it that is telling me this news now?
The novel keeps the tension high by interweaving the narrative that progresses from the past with the present-day 'letter from the past'.
Because of that, whenever new characters such as Mira, the mother's best friend from the past story, her family including Taeran and Taeri, Moo-ni's friend Hee-young, and vice-president Jeong Dong-hoon appear and become entangled with 'me', the reader ends up looking at them with suspicion.
The way 'I' and they hide from each other, hurt each other, and yet embrace and embrace each other may show that growth itself is a cruel and beautiful thriller.
So, 『I Want to Be One-Dimensional』 should be called a genre called ‘Park Sang-young’, which is a romance, mystery, and thriller in itself.

What is clear is that the truth that the current 'me' faces in the memories of the past is neither merely sweet nor merely painful, and that the moment when the 'me' that was merely a dot in it connected with others as a line has created the 'me' of the present.
By re-experiencing that moment, the present 'me' can listen to the voice of the past 'me' that was forgotten and extend a hand of reconciliation to the past 'me'.
The image of him finally overcoming the waves of pain along with the past remains as a beautiful and moving scene even after the novel ends.

In fact, I may have wanted to write a salvation narrative.
I wanted to find, even in a virtual world, a relationship where we could find comfort just by leaning on each other and being there for each other, a salvation that was not available in my life at that time.
_From the author's note