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Unrecorded Moments: Who Is Dr. Kim? by Lee Kiho

by Kim Dongshik October 27, 2014

Who is Dr. Kim?

  • Lee Kiho
  • Moonji Publishing Co., Ltd.
  • 2013
  • 9788932023939

Lee Kiho

Lee Kiho made his literary debut when his short story “Birney” won the Hyundae Munhak New Writer's Contest in 1999. He is the author of the collections of short stories, Choi Sunduk: Filled with the Holy Spirit, I Knew If I Stayed around Long Enough, Something like This Would Happpen, Who’s Doctor Kim?, Kang Min-ho, the Church Guy Friendly to Everyone, the novels At Least We Can Apologize, A World History of Second Sons, the novellas Circumstances of the Fire at Mogyang, and the short novels Unbothered Most of the Time, What is Learned in the Cradle is Carried to Summer, and Evidently a Love Story. He currently serves as a professor of creative writing at Gwangju University.

Who Is Dr. Kim? is Lee Kiho’s third collection of short stories. The author has proven to be a talented storyteller in two previous collections, Earnie (2004) and Having Been at a Loss, I Knew It Went That Way (2006). This latest collection introduces us to eight new stories in which the author raises two fundamental questions: Is it possible to write about life itself in fiction? What is the new frontier of fiction? In other words, this collection is the writer’s musings on the limitations and new possibilities of the genre.

In the short story "Pushing Closer Again, "the narrator notes, "There is a blank spot in everyone’s story, which everyone tries to fill by making up more stories, which is where all the stories of this world come from, which I did not know back then."

The short story is about the protagonist’s uncle who keeps a record of every mile he has driven with his car. The uncle’s car does not go in reverse, so he has to push it backwards himself. The interesting thing is that the most profound moment in the uncle’s life comes when he is pushing his car backwards, yet the distance the car has backed up is not recorded in his driving log. According to the writer, this is precisely the sort of profound blankness that goes unrecorded. The profound blankness in one’s life is not written or spoken about; it can only be alluded to. These unrecorded moments in life form the boundaries as well as the beginning of fiction. Lee Gi-ho discovers another possible origin of fiction in this meeting of things untold.

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