Starred Booklist review of Minsoo Kang's The Melancholy of Untold History audiobook

*The Melancholy of Untold History.

By Minsoo Kang. Read by Keong Sim

2024. 8hr. HarperAudio, DD (9780063337534).

Writer/professor Kang's debut novel is a stupendous feat of erudite imagination and a convincing treatise on the timeless cultural value of storytelling. Korean American actor Sim is an optimal cipher—patient, inviting, revealing. Kang presents a tri-fold puzzle with intriguing pieces that could stand alone, but bound together make a radiant whole. He opens with an ancient storyteller whose fabled prowess grabs the emperor's attention, only to be brutally punished for his unparalleled skills. Thousands of years later, stories become history and the contemporary historian lectures to his undergraduates. His own narrative leans toward tragedy: his storied career—elevated for debunking centuries-old history—means little after he loses his beloved wife. His loneliness is briefly alleviated by a surprisingly comforting affair with his former student-now-colleague, but he remains trapped in his overwhelming grief. Meanwhile, the storyteller's myths begin, introducing the "magnificent mountain known as Four Verdant Mothers," where four powerful deities (two gods, two goddesses) are about to destroy their friendship, not to mention global peace, over a single perfect peach. Humanity suffers—in between thriving, warring, recovering, reinventing. Amidst that "melancholy of history," marred by "futile ambitions and unending violence," survive life-giving, life-saving stories, even as gods, royalty, leaders, soldiers, and common people forever fade. Remarkable are the promises of new starts, new endings, and new adventures. Sim delivers an utterly exquisite performance.

— Terry Hong

Minsoo Kang in the Los Angeles Review of Books on the film Exhuma

“[Exhuma] features a version of the slick, fast-paced, genre-mixing style that has defined many of the most internationally successful South Korean movies, including speculative works like Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013) and Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan (2016). Yet it is also replete with elements specific to Korean culture and historical memory to the extent that much of the narrative will likely be opaque to non-Korean viewers. These elements include the persistence of traditional forms of magic in Korean society and the historical trauma of the Japanese colonization of the Korean peninsula (1910–45). They also include a particular myth concerning the Japanese attempt to destroy Korea through geomancy—a myth that I was in part responsible for spreading in the late 1990s.”

Read the entire piece at the LARB website here.

A slew of great reviews for Minsoo Kang's debut novel

PASTE MAGAZINE:

“A storyteller faces certain death. A historian falls into a deep depression after the loss of a loved one. And four gods play out a conflict in life after life, regardless of the number of years they spend in their war. These tales blend together, weaving in and out of each other in a dance of myth, history, and personal narrative, in Minsoo Kang’s powerful debut novel, The Melancholy of Untold History…Untold history may be melancholy, but it’s in the process of living that history can be transformed, that stories can be understood, and that justice can, at last, be found.”

LOCUS MAGAZINE:

“An energetic and ambitious epic... Kang seems determined to show us that Story is as much a web as a cauldron, connecting the most ancient myths and the most contemporary anxieties, with what we think of as history as a kind of mediator. Since it's almost impossible to read The Melancholy of Untold History without coming away haunted by these questions, he's succeeded brilliantly, and given us one of the more inventive and intellectually provocative fantasies of the year.”

LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE:

“The Melancholy of Untold Historyis often funny with dark humor, sarcastic storytellers, and petulant gods. It could even be considered a fun read if it weren't for the genocide, death, and loss of a national idea and history. Instead, Kang creates an intriguing book that challenges the notion of history... [S]tories are meticulously stacked, wrapped, and unraveled, creating a complex yet coherent narrative where tales nest within each other... Kang seamlessly time-hops across millennia without ever losing the thread or emotional intensity of the story... Finishing the novel offers that satisfying sense of pieces falling into place.”

BOOKLIST:

“This deeply introspective debut from University of Missouri history professor Kang not only tugs at heartstrings but also pulls on the mind's capacity to understand grief in hopes of savoring life's brief but beautiful moments... This layering of stories explores the connections between fiction, history, myth, and narrative, highlighting how human imagination can, for better or worse, supplement gaps in historical archives. Kang's unique storytelling form also shines through his archiving of fictional secondary sources with footnotes and academic citations and his precise and meditative dialogue, making his novel especially suitable for readers interested in piecing together the kind of narrative puzzles that push fiction's boundaries.”

Some bad book news from Costco

As per today’s Publishers Lunch:

Costco to Stop Carrying Books Year Round

Costco recently informed publishers that it will stop carrying books on a year-round basis in its stores. This comes after they stopped carrying books in Hawaii and Alaska as of late 2022, and after their renowned book buyer Pennie Clark Ianniciello left company in 2021.

The NYT reports based on conversations with publishers, "Beginning in January 2025, the company will stop stocking books regularly, and will instead sell them only during the holiday shopping period, from September through December. During the rest of the year, some books may be sold at Costco stores from time to time, but not in a consistent manner, according to the executives, who spoke anonymously in order to discuss a confidential business matter that has not yet been publicly announced."

Luke Salisbury with a brilliant letter to the New York Times

Baseball on the Clock

To the Editor:

“Baseball Has Lost Its Poetry,” by Jesse Nathan (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 21), is an excellent piece of baseball writing. Baseball, however, is not played on the page. It’s played on the field.

Mr. Nathan could not be more wrong about the pitch clock, which he opposes.

As an author of baseball books, articles, essays, reviews and short stories, I have an appreciation for good writing, and include Mr. Nathan’s piece in this category. As a fan since 1957, an attendee at 50 opening days at Fenway Park and an inveterate TV watcher, I love the game.

Starting about 10 years ago, the game became unwatchable. Each batter had his ritual of stepping out of the batter’s box, adjusting batting gloves, touching body parts, to reset focus and interrupt the pitcher’s rhythm. This happened on virtually every pitch.

Pitchers, for their part, could hold the ball, throw to first with a man on base unlimited times, stare, even walk behind the mound, to reset and interrupt the batter’s timing. This could happen on every pitch. It was not a timeless escape from modern life. It was not poetry. It was a waste of time.

If Mr. Nathan desires the timeless, I suggest Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Luke Salisbury
Chelsea, Mass.
The writer is the author of “The Answer Is Baseball.”

Minsoo Kang in The New York Times

Novelist Han Kang published a piece in the New York Times on Wednesday, September 6th titled “Read Your Way Through Korea” that mentions Minsoo Kang’s excellent translation of The Story of Hong Gildong. Read the entire piece HERE. Check out The Story of Hong Gildong HERE.

Congratulations, Minsoo! That’s some excellent company you’re keeping!

Review of New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color (Solaris)

Minsoo’s story was reviewed in Lightspeed Magazine:

“I bounced hard off Minsoo Kang’s story in the first New Suns, but also noted that perhaps I wasn’t the reader for that particular piece and that other readers might find it to be brilliant. Here Minsoo Kang offers “Before the Glory of Their Majesties” and I am definitely the reader for this one. Fans of the darker elements of Game of Thrones and similar will be smitten within a few paragraphs. And after a few pages, they will be hungry for a series set in this macabre world. Many authors attempt to write captivating dark high fantasy, but so often it reads as generic or derivative. Kang makes putting together a captivating story look easy. And then, just when you think, “Damn, this is good, I wonder where it’s all going,” Kang turns everything on its head. What follows? I don’t even want to tell you. But it’s essential reading for writers engaged in the act of telling stories, as well as for readers who casually chew through book after book, story after story. It’s unexpected and kind of breathtaking, and I don’t want to spoil it for you any more than that.”

Welcome to the Brattle Agency Minsoo Kang!

A hearty welcome (back) to the Brattle Agency family to Professor Minsoo Kang of the University of Missouri at Saint Louis. Minsoo’s new fantasy novel is The Melancholy of Untold History is due in the spring of 2024 from Morrow. The Brattle Agency is delighted to represent this fine writer to the trade. Please inquire.

More advance praise for Chris Amenta's debut novel A Cold Hard Light

“The Cold Hard Light is a stark, Dostoyevskian tale of obsession and the myriad of ways in which hatred corrupts the soul and, bit by bit, chisels away at our humanity.  “H” is a contemporary American grotesque, a modern-day Raskolnikov, shaped and fueled by bigotry, his own failings, and the very “white” sense of what he is owed in the world and what he believes others have taken from him. Twisted into a paranoid shell of a man, and, like Raskolnikov, obsessed and subsumed by his own hatred and shame, “H” ultimately exists within a prison all of his own making.”

 — Thomas O’Malley is the author of This Magnificent Desolation and, with Douglas Graham Purdy, the Boston Noirs, Serpents in the Cold, and We Were King

“Christopher Amenta has done something remarkable with The Cold Hard Light: he’s told a crime story that doesn’t make you feel like you’ve heard it all before; a Boston story that actually feels like Boston, and a revenge thriller that affords the hunter, the hunted, and all the tragedies in between the courtesy of a beating heart. Quite a debut.”
— Howard Bryant, author of Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston

Congratulations to Chris Amenta on the sale of his first novel Fists Made Loud to Blackstone Publishing!

Fists Made Loud is Donald Ray Pollock's Knockemstiff crossed with Andre Dubus' story "Killings" from Finding a Girl in America mixed with an episode of The Wire...of a sort.

Set in present day Boston, Fists Made Loud explores the drama of modern American urban life, in which the very rich are catered to by the poor, in which race relations flare, where guns are prevalent and considered toys, and where the desire to blame others trumps the need to understand them. These forces and more weigh upon the characters in this short, single-narrative novel, hurtling them towards an irrevocable conclusion.

index.png