[리뷰] 하루키 단편집 Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006) / First Person Singular (2020)

하루키의 단편집인 Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006)을 읽고 든 생각.

이렇게 하찮은 책을 쓰고, 재미없는 이야기들을 풀어놓아도

돈을 벌고 살 수 있구나.

그것도 일반인들에게는 막대한 돈을...

작가란 정말이지 쓸데없는 문제를 300페이지에 걸쳐 묘사할 수 있는, 난쟁이 똥구멍 같은 놈들에게 어울리는 직업이구나.

이 빌어먹을 세계는 여전히 참 넓구나...

 

미안하다 하루키.

하지만 정말 별로였다.

362 페이지로 이루어진 24개의 단편들 중에서 그.나.마 마음에 드는 것은

3편 정도 (A Folklore For My Generation, Tony Takitani, The Kidney-shaped Stone) 였다.

 

보다 최근에 쓴 단편소설 모음집인 First Person Singular (2020)은 조금 더 깊이가 있었다. 

(8개의 단편들 중에 5개 정도 (Cream, With the Beatles, Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey, Carnaval, first Person Singular)는 썩 읽을만했다. 앞에 언급한 책에 비하면 훨씬 더 타율이 높았다.)

 

하루키의 소설은 에세이보다는 단편이, 단편보다는 장편이 깊이가 있지만

(당연하다면 당연한 말이지만),

그 장편마저도 방대한 분량에 비하면 불쏘시개 같은 느낌이 드는 것은 어쩔 수 없다.

 

그가 쓴 책들의 특징은 읽을 때는 비교적 재미있게 술술 읽히지만, 읽고 나서 며칠만 지나면 뭔 개소리를 떠들었는지 당최 기억이 안 난다는 것이다.

 

그도 그럴게 별로 영양가없는 킬링타임용 이야기들의 연속이기 떄문이다.

 

불쏘시개같은 하루키의 소설들... 

 

그럼에도 불구하고 그의 책들이 가치가 있는 것은 책 그 자체보다는 작가의 성실한 일상과 신뢰성있는 내면세계가 글에 투영되어 나타나고, 그의 글들을 읽다보면 저절로 그의 삶의 철학에 동화되기 때문이다.

 

...

 

"He was silent for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I uncrossed my legs under the table and wondered if this was the right moment to leave. It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the right point in a conversation to say goodbye. But I missed my chance: just as I was going to tell him I had to go, he spoke up."

- Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman p.93 

(아로 이야기?절)

"In the town square there was a statue of a hero of Greek independence. He had led an insurrection on the Greek mainland and planned an uprising against the Turks, who controlled the island then. But the Turks captured him and put him to death. They set up a sharpeend stake in the square beside the harbor, stripped the hapless hero naked, and lowered him onto it. The weight of his body drove the stake through his anus and then the rest of his body until it finally came out of his mouth - an incredibly slow, excruciating way to die."

- p.115

"A week later she phoned my office abot some minor matter and we chatted for a bit. I told a joke, and she laughed. "Want to go out for a drink?" I asked. We went to a small bar and had a few drinks. I can't recall exactly what we talked about. With a laserlike clarity I could grasp everything she wanted to say. And things I couldn't explain well to anyone else came across to her with an exactness that took me by surprise. We were both married, with no major complaints about our married lives. We loved our spouses and respected them. Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle - running across someone yu express your feelings to so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been a mistake to label this "love." It was more like total empathy.

We started going out regularly for drinks. Her husband's job kept him out late, so she was free to come and go as she pleased. When we got together, though, the time just flew by. We'd look at our watches and discover that we could barely make the last train. It was always hard for me to say goodbye. There was so much more we wanted to tell each other."

- p.117-118

(이상형과의 연애를 훌륭하게 묘사!)

"I may be the type who manages to grab all the pointless things in life but lets the really important things slip away."

- p.313

...

"The cream of the cream. It means the best of the best. The most important essence of life - that's Crème de la crème. Get it? The rest is just boring and worthless."

- First Person Singular p.21

 

"Even if, say, we passed each other on a street, or were seated at adjoining tables in a restaurant, I seriously doubt that we would even recognize each other. Like two straight lines overlapping, we momentarily crossed at a certain point, then went our separate ways."

- p.47

(불교 연기법을 연상시키는 훌륭한 비유!)

"I was certain that kind of music existed in the world - music that made you feel like something in the very structure of your body ahd been reconfigured, even so slightly, now that you'd experienced it."

- p.68

(찰리 파커의 재즈+남미 보사노바의 결합이?)

 

"Waht I find strange about growing old isn't that I've gotten older. Not that the youthful me from the past has, without my realizing it, aged. What catches me off guard is, rather, how people from the same generation as me have become elderly, how all the pretty, vivacious girls I sed to know are now old enough to have a couple of grandkids. It's a little disconcerting - sad, even. Though I never feel sad at the fact that I have similarly aged.

I think what makes me feel sad about the girls I knew growing old is that it forces me to admit, all over again, that my youthful dreams are gone forever. The death of a dream can be, in a way, sadder than that of a living being. Sometimes it all seems so unfair."

- p.77

(노년이 되서 젊은 시절을 회상하는 것을 탁월하게 묘사)

 

"Later, I got to know a few women, and went out with them. And every time I met a new woman it felt as though I were unconsciously loging to releive that dazzling moment I'd experienced in a dim school hallway back in the fall of 1964. That silent, insistent thrill in my heart, the breathless feeling in my chest, the bell ringing gently in my ears.

Sometimes I was able to recapture this feeling, at other times not. (Unfortunately, the bell didn't ring enough.) And other times I managed to grab hold of it, only to let it slip through my fingers. In any event, the emotions that surged when this happened came to serve as a kind of gauge I used to measure the intensity of my yearning."

- p.80

"I never saw him again. Chance had brought us together a second time. With nearly twenty years between encounters, in cities three hundred miles apart, we'd sat, a table between us, sipping coffee and talking over a few things. But these weren't subjects you just chatted about over coffee. There was something more significant in our talk, something that seemed meaningful to us, in the act of living out our lives. Still, it was merely a hint, delivered by chance. There was nothing to link us together in a more eseential or organic way. I never saw that lovely young girl again, either, the one who was holding the LP With the Beatles. Sometimes I wonder - is she still hurrying down that dimly lit high school hallway in 1964, the hem of her skirt fluttering as she goes? Sixteen even now, holding that wonderful album cover with the half-lit photo of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, clutching it tightly as though her life depended on it."

- p.123-4