Name: A person who writes lies even in his diary
Brand: LIBRAIRIE COREENNE
SKU: 134669
Price: 24.00 EUR
Availability: InStock

A person who writes lies even in his diary

€24,00

A person who writes lies even in his diary

Description

Book Introduction

“So I will say what I want to say.”
"Loving Calmly" Poet Cha Do-ha's First Essay

The first collection of essays by poet Cha Do-ha, who has emerged as a rising star in the literary world with his novel and provocative works, has been published.
The poet's collection of essays, "A Person Who Lies Even in a Diary," which he had no choice but to write lies even in his private diary, is, coincidentally, full of honest confessions that are difficult for the reader to handle.
A father who was ignorant of how to love his children, a childhood filled with violence, a thoughtless condemnation of homosexuality, memories of a night when he decided to die…
The poet throws away the lies she has used to describe herself: a good daughter, an ordinary child, a harmonious family, and so on, and pours out words she has never been able to write in her diary with a frightening force.
It displays before our eyes, one by one, the reasons why it is difficult to love the world calmly.
Between the lines of the confession written in a calm manner, there is an even more unbearable pain.
His pain, which came flying like a boomerang, was more dazzling than sad.
Because the steps taken slowly but confidently, choosing one's own truth over the order demanded by the world, are so confident and resolute that they can push back the back of those who walk ahead of them.

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Some sorrows are so sad that words alone are not enough to express them, so I had to write a poem about them. Some experiences are so difficult to describe as fact that I had to write them down as fiction.
When I didn't want to open my mouth anymore, when I couldn't open my mouth, the blank page urged me to say something, even if it was a lie, so I wrote.
--- p.18, from "Writing"

The moment you set your goal as a performance, you become impatient, and that impatience affects every choice you make, ultimately stealing away your life little by little.
It's getting old.
I have lived my life splitting myself apart, wanting to be named somehow.
Good daughter, ordinary child, highly educated, harmonious family, ideal woman, my name itself.
But now I'm going to do what I want to do.
I like things like nothing special, honesty, and indifference.
No lessons are better.
I was a student who read a lot of books and wrote great book reports since I was young, but in fact, what I wanted to write in my book reports wasn't 'what can I learn or gain from this?'
So I'll say what I want to say.
--- p.21~22, from “Actually”

When I talk to friends who were born and raised in Seoul, I am reminded of the saying, "a frog in a well."
An idiom that teachers used to say so much.
“This is a well, you have to go to a bigger place.” But to me, Seoul is like a well with strong, high walls.
People who were born and raised in Seoul must have heard the phrase “You are frogs in a well” countless times since they were young.
Which side needs to broaden its horizons?
A frog in a well.
Teacher, we are not frogs.
The well wall is not here.
I've been wanting to say this for a long time.
--- p.42~44, 「井」

"Can't you just date a normal guy? I was most worried about you acting like this."
A few days ago, my mom found out that I was seeing a psychiatrist.
But more than the fact that I was mentally ill, what worried my mother the most was the fact that I was seeing a woman.
I cried in sorrow.
--- p.146, from “An Ordinary Coming Out”

If you think that every single moment is a scene from life, you should live life diligently, but then you end up thinking, "So what, I'm just living a haphazard life."
With so many scenes remaining, it would be difficult to choose.
So, I think, rather than wasting time choosing a scene, we should live each moment well.
If there is a transcendent being, he will choose for himself.
The highlight of my life.

--- p.179, from “Four Cuts of Life”

I want to quit this whole self-discovery thing.
I want to stop crying and whining about how I don't exist.
I want to declare that there is someone I want to be.
I want to be someone who sincerely apologizes, and I want to be someone who sincerely receives an apology.
That's it.
This is all I have right now.
--- p.198, from “The Person I Want to Become”

I went on a picnic that day and it was fun.
If there is such a thing as complete sorrow, I don't have it for the Sewol ferry disaster.
I also feel like I can't have it.
The space between my lines and the space between people's lines seems like a lie.
No one should die a bewildered death.
No one can learn a lesson from this.
It's incomparable.
I can't break free and move on.
--- p.217, from “April 16, 2014”

When I live alone, I think of the days when laundry rarely piled up and I used to hang my family's laundry out to dry.
Tastes that clearly distinguish which clothes belong to whom.
When I shake off my clothes, I feel like they are flying away with the dust.
When I think of my family now, it doesn't hurt as much as before.

--- p.327, from "Laundry"

Publisher's Review

“What will happen if I just struggle to survive like this?
I don't know what will happen, but if I don't die,
I think there are people who don't die because I don't die.
“I might be laughed at for being overly self-conscious, but that’s what I think.”
_From the acceptance speech for the 2020 Hankook Ilbo New Year’s Literary Contest

Have you ever been abused like I was?
Why, why did that happen, and how did it make you feel?

Poet Cha Do-ha's New Year's Literary Contest winning work, "Loving Calmly," depicts a scene of violence committed in the name of love.
The poet's actions after his debut are not as helpless as the speaker in the work.
He calmly confronted the unfair treatment of the paragraphs that continued silently as if it were natural, in his own way.
He refused to include the winning poems in a spring literary contest by a publisher associated with a sexual assault perpetrator within the literary world, and instead refused requests to disclose his fees, he operated his own mailing service, “Voice,” and communicated genuinely with readers who were curious about his work.
In his new essay, “A Person Who Lies Even in His Diary,” he presents essays filled with memories and determination that have shaped who he is today, along with unpublished poems and five mini-fiction pieces drawn from his experiences.

The poet, who calls himself a "self-conscious person," has diligently expanded the size of his self-consciousness without yielding to voices that do not acknowledge his own life.
By writing poetry, creating stories, sharing my writings, raising cats, interacting with friends who love poetry and song, and displaying my 'unashamed' femininity, I have calmly, one by one, increased the number of things worth loving in a world where love is difficult.
Because I never gave up my own room even during those moments of staggering, I can confidently make this pledge today.
Family conflict, homosexuality, and the world's prejudice all stand in the way of my love, but I still want to love my life calmly.

Like "Loving Calmly," "The Man Who Lies in His Diary" also features countless faces of violence that a person encounters as he or she is born and grows into an adult.
Some part of that face might one day lift a page from the diary you wrote.
His diary, which brings up memories that we had long ignored or forgotten, poses numerous questions to us, but none of them can be easily answered.

The desire to read others, the desire to be read by others,
These two hearts are one.
So I write an essay.

“I think I really have to be honest in front of a diary that no one sees.
“When I write a diary, my words are written in it, and since I write a diary that no one sees, I do it just for that purpose, so I get nervous like someone who receives a confession they don’t want to receive, and I end up lying.”

“A person who confesses his or her feelings, which are difficult to be honest about, is transparent in and of itself,” poet Kang Hye-bin wrote in her recommendation.
This book, like a novel, depicts the emotional flow of a self-conscious woman who finds it difficult to be honest even in front of her diary, as she transforms from a girl to an adult.
As poet Kang Hye-bin puts it, when a “transparent person” decides to be honest, we see through his diary how much intense sorrow his confession can bring to the listener.
The accumulated time recorded by the poet contains a pain that anyone who has ever experienced savage love or shameless pranks will immediately sympathize with.
The record of pain is so innocent, calm, and composed that it reaches us more poignantly than any scream.

The poet listens as we confront childhood sexual violence.
“Everyone else is fine, so why are you the only one?” the poet hears when resisting the violence of her classmate.
“Do you think you can beat me with strength?” The poet listens with pain to the words of his classmate, who has no intention of hurting him.
“I heard he’s dating a girl.
“Are you crazy?” The poet writes about the orderly and meticulous violence inflicted on the young and powerless, and does not get angry or cry.
Just ask persistently without revealing or asking questions.
I wonder if everyone else is really okay, why do people with the same sorrow have to fight each other, and how everyone is surviving while enduring all this pain.

If anyone is looking forward to my future poetry, I'd like to write until then.
Let the future come into the futureless mind.

Yet, the poet writes, “I don’t want to be someone who stays in my body, in my ego, my whole life.”
At one time, the poet was a girl suffering from childhood depression, a student who was afraid to open the door for fear that a man outside would harm her, but fortunately, she did not stay there.
He returns home with the prescribed medication, vowing to himself, "I'm going to get a good night's sleep and wake up strong," and gets a tattoo on the scar, promising himself that he will no longer let the pain target him.
I also have the luxury of anticipating the day when I can tell my story to my mother, who worries more about my homosexuality than about my own anxiety disorder.
“My story will be painful on one hand, but also very funny on the other.”
He has no future as a teacher or a negative example, struggling to succeed or not fail, but he also promises to keep writing until then if someone expects his future poetry.
Look at the scars of the past without leaving any trace, and raise your head and prepare to cross over to your own future.

He declares, “I want to break away from the people around me and my family, fight with myself, and run with myself through ups and downs,” and, as befitting a person with excessive self-consciousness, he names ‘Cha Do-ha’ as his rival.
After stealing a peek at this intimate diary, spanning from his childhood to his twenty-three years, one cannot help but cheer on the vibrant vitality embedded in his self-consciousness.
I can't help but look forward to Cha Do-ha, who is in his thirties and forties.
The poet wrote, recalling his teacher who told him that he had to go to a university in Seoul to be successful and that he was now a frog in a well.
Seoul is like a giant well.
Wherever the well may be, the more voices there are who grieve so transparently, love so steadfastly, and leap so powerfully, the clearer and wider the well will become.

GOODS SPECIFICS

- Publication date: December 6, 2021

- Page count, weight, size: 340 pages | 422g | 125*190*18mm

- ISBN13: 9791168120877

- ISBN10: 116812087X