New myths from old

kw: book reviews, fantasy, mythology, essays, history, anthologies

When a writer has overleapt all the boundaries, I refrain from categorizing. Minsoo Kang, a historian of the West who is of Korean extraction, has published in of tales and enigmas a collection of new myths in old myths' clothing, and a couple of essays.

Three sections, five pieces each. The stories in the first section, Talse From a Lost History, seem entirely a product of the imagination. Yet their grounding reflects the author's Korean origin. The fourth piece, "The Beautiful and Useful Machine", seems a parable of the progression of Western theology from 1900 until now. The sentence "Mechano-rejectionism lost the war on the battlefield, but it triumphed as Mechano-finitism in the halls of universities" neatly sums up the liberalizing of Western campuses after 1970, if the Mechano- terms are replaced with Socialism and Social Liberalism.

The second section, Fables of the Dream World, reflects in five ways the dilemma of solipsism and the meaning of our dreams. The fourth of these, "The Dilemma of the King and the Beggar," takes a new tack on "The Prince and the Pauper", reaching an equally just, and less contrived, solution. The question remains, am I dreaming you, or are you dreaming me?

As I know exactly nothing about Korea's history, I have to take it for granted that the two historical essays in the third section are not more myth-making. The author seems to take scrupulous care, including a radical change of voice, to indicate where he is synthesizing sources. The other three items are ghost stories with a twist quite unlike any Western story.

Among the publisher's early blurbs, one states, "...Kang makes a bid here to become the Borges of the 21st Century." Just as Borges both exposed Hispanic culture to ignorant Anglos and simultaneously mythologized it, so Kang has begun to do for Korea with this collection. His craft is not yet up to Borges' level, but he's getting there.