Sang Young Park’s English-language debut Love in The Big City follows Young, a queer man in search of love and meaning. An aspiring writer who drinks and dances the night away in Seoul’s gay clubs, Young tries to make sense of his life through short stories in the morning, watching anxiously as others around him seem to be growing up and leaving. After many unsuccessful dates and arrogant boyfriends, he finally meets the man who could be his soulmate, but the two must come to terms with the cruelty of reality. With dark and humorous prose translated from Korean by Anton Hur, Park navigates the messiness of friendship and dating while capturing the rawness of breakups. The result is a book as addictive as the pack of Marlboro Reds that Young and his roommate keep in their freezer. In our interview, translated by Hur over email, Park and I discuss writing about love, being a person in the twenty-first century, and finding inspiration in pop music.
Rose Bialer (RB): I don’t like the cliché of a setting in literature being viewed as another character. However, in Love in The Big City, Seoul seems to have a developed personality. It can come off as melancholy, exuberant, romantic, and—depending on its current mood—Seoul affects how the characters live and love. Since you live in Seoul, I wanted to ask how you experience the city. Like the characters in the book, has it changed how you interact with the world?
Sang Young Park (SYP): I think a person’s environment decides their character. I was born in a city called Daegu—one of the most conservative places in Korea. When I was a teenager, I dreamed of Seoul as a kind of platonic ideal; I arrived here in my twenties for college, and that’s when my life began for real. Living here has made me realize that I resemble Seoul—it’s multi-faceted and passionate and at the same time, a very lonely and bleak city. I think these are my own sensibilities, as well as sensibilities that are present in the novel.
RB: How would you say that the city affects how the characters both love and receive love?
SYP: Each “big city,” as they appear in the book, possesses different aspects. Seoul is complicated and crowded but lonely and sorrowful at the same time; Bangkok is like a Mecca for gays—that kind of thing. The characters’ situations shift according to where they are. I think there’s definitely an organic interaction between the characters and their settings.
RB: I wanted to talk about the book’s structure. It is written as four short stories which connect to form the compelling whole. Each section is set at a specific moment in the narrator’s life, spanning from the time he is in college to when he is in his thirties. What drew you to this narrative form?
SYP: I wanted to show a different kind of love in each chapter. Part One, through Jaehee, I wanted to show the love we call friendship; Part Two was maternal love, along with first love; Part Three romantic love; and Part Four about what remains after the end of love. Through the last chapter, I wanted to wrap up my thoughts on the previous chapters, so the entire book would be a treatise on love itself. I thought, by showing the various emotions the narrator feels as he encounters different people in his twenties, I could effectively show the changes a character goes through, and at the same time see the emotion of love from different angles through this structural choice.
RB: In exploring all of the emotions of love, you don’t shy away from capturing the pain and cruelty which can stem from what people typically see as a positive experience. Why was it important for you to show the unbearable sides of love?
SYP: I just happen to think the ugliness of love is just as close to love’s essence as the beauty of it.
RB: In your Acknowledgements, you discuss the social changes that occurred in Korea during the year you spent editing the book; HIV PrEP was approved by authorities and insurance companies can now cover the drug for high-risk demographics. The Constitutional Court also ruled to decriminalize abortion. As an author who is writing about these topics in real time and giving them depth through storytelling, do you see fiction as a way of advocating for these changes?
SYP: I don’t believe in grandiose ideas that fiction can change society. But it was important for me personally to add those lines to my book. I do think a small section of the readers of the book can be profoundly affected by reading them.
RB: Your voice as a narrator is very colloquial. In fact, reading the book felt like listening to a close friend confide in you about their loves and heartbreaks, to be riding all the highs and lows with them. Young also does have this kind of close friendship with another character in the book, an equally messy, heavy-drinking, party-lover named Jaehee. Your protagonist describes the beginning or writing fiction as similar to “the nights I spent talking to Jaehee.” I was curious if you also intend to write with a conversational tone, or if it’s a style that comes naturally to you?
SYP: Both. I think compared to most Korean authors, I write in a lighter, more colloquial voice. I purposefully wrote Love in the Big City more colloquially to give the feeling of a friend sitting next to the reader and chatting away. Also, it was my intention that the voice settles down further the closer one gets to the end of the book. It’s a device to show how the main character himself changes as time goes by.
RB: In a previous interview, you mentioned that your dialogue and plots are often inspired by snippets of your friends’ conversations. Regarding your writing process for this novel, where did you take your inspiration from and how did you turn that into a story?
SYP: Fragments of insignificant things from daily life or jokes I made over drinks, newspaper articles or Internet memes, these big and little things all become fuel for creativity. I don’t incorporate them verbatim or exactly as is into my fiction—it’s more like these ideas go off on a long tangent and the plot ends up forming itself. Like watching children playing in a park inspiring the character of a mother with cancer.
RB: As a young writer you capture what it feels like to be living (and finding your place in the world) in the twenty-first century. One of the many reasons the novel felt so “of the moment” for me is because of the numerous references to pop culture—specifically pop music. In the background of the action, there was a continuous musical shuffle featuring the songs of artists such as T-ara, J-Lo, and Kylie Minogue. I was wondering in what ways pop culture influences your writing?
SYP: Being a young writer in the twenty-first century is exactly like being a young person in the twenty-first century. It’s complicated and hard but fun. I live a life completely immersed in popular culture. I wake up in the morning and shower to music, and I watch Netflix with my coffee and breakfast. I listen to Ariana Grande as I write, and at night as I read. This is why I think it’s natural that my work shows so much pop culture influence. I hope my book will prove a very reliable record of twenty-first-century Seoul for remembering and reminiscing in the future.
RB: Did you make a playlist while writing the book?
SYP: It’s not that different from the Billboard Hot 100. I’ve loved Mariah Carey since I was little; I think she’s one of the best producers in the world. These days I listen mostly to Lil Nas X, Ariana Grande, Troye Sivan, Lana Del Rey, and BLACKPINK. And so many others. When I’m blocked, I listen to classical music like Debussy and Chopin. When I listen to piano music, I find myself settling into the right mood for writing.
RB: There was an overwhelming response in Korea from queer readers who recognized themselves in your narrative. How has the response been so far in the United Kingdom and the United States? I imagine it may be the first time many English speakers have read queer Korean literature.
SYP: The response has been unimaginable. Famous media outlets have reviewed my book and many readers have messaged or mentioned me on Instagram or Twitter. They’re mostly very enthusiastic and warm, which makes me very happy. I hope many readers in the Anglosphere get to know the wonder of Korean (queer) literature and Korean culture through my work.
RB: Who are your favorite Korean authors?
SYP: Kyung-Sook Shin, Park Wanseo.
RB: Finally, what are you thinking about writing next?
SYP: I am currently promoting my latest novel Lie Like Lines in Korea and writing something set in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope to publish it in the form of a composite novel soon.
Sang Young Park was born in Daegu. An award-winning Korean author of fiction, he has published the short story collection Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta, and the novels Love in the Big City and Lie Like Lines. Love in the Big City has been published in English by Grove Atlantic and Tilted Axis Press. He resides in Seoul.
Rose Bialer lives in Madrid, Spain. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as The Kenyon Review Online, Full Stop and Rain Taxi.
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