Why are people fascinated by other people's secrets? Is confession really an act of revealing something hidden?
Novelist Lee Seung-woo, who has maintained the themes of sin, salvation, solitude, and desire for 45 years since his debut, has returned with a new novel, 'The Back Side.'
'The Back' is also the first book in the new Korean literature series 'Jeongseoga' presented by Open Books.
The topic the author brings up in the new book is ‘confession.’ The author delves into the back side of the act of confession and explores the complex relationship between truth and lies, memory and forgetting, and revelation and concealment.
“While he worked very hard to bring up old things that had been hidden for 18 years, about 10 members sitting spaced apart watched him in silence” (page 9).
The work begins with a scene where a character named ‘Chu’ tries to confess his secret past to people.
Chu, who was judged 'recommended for counseling' in the company's psychological test, is led by the search algorithm and enters an anonymous community called 'Backside'.
Chu reads the secrets of strangers on the anonymous bulletin board of 'Backside', which has the slogan 'Everyone wants to look perfect, but no one has an imperfect backside', and becomes addicted to the "exhilarating thrill that shakes the soul."
Chu, who is increasingly immersed in provocative and secret stories, goes to an offline meeting where they confess face-to-face, and Chu also reveals his past.
The memories are intertwined with his mother's earnest request that he take the civil service exam in place of his troublemaker twin brother, and his older brother's death.
However, someone who was listening to Chu's story pointed out the inconsistency, and the atmosphere of the meeting changed from confession to interrogation.
Confession is the responsibility of the speaker, but it is the listener's authority to judge the truth and weight of the story.
Chu tries to piece together the puzzle of the story by recombining his memories, but people conclude that his confession is fake, and Chu loses his membership.
The author points out the irony that the act of confession can actually be a technique of hiding something else by revealing something else.
“Think of a criminal who confesses a small sin to cover up a big one. Don’t you know that the effect of confession is not to confess, but to conceal?” (Page 74)
Did Chu actually take the civil service exam in place of his older brother? If it had been done, what would have been the result? What is the bigger secret he wanted to hide?
The author leads the reader into an exploration of identity through the desires latent deep in Chu's heart.
The author's essay 'Memory, Confession, and Mirror', bundled with the novel, serves as an important guide to understanding that latent desire.
In this essay, the author introduces Borges' short story 'The Palace Fable' and explores the proposition that "two completely identical objects cannot coexist in the world."
For example, the ‘me reflected in the mirror’ is both me and not me. The mirror perfectly reflects and reproduces my appearance, but that perfect reflection and reproduction is not real.
This mirror paradox also overlaps with the conditions for the existence of twins.
Chu has the same genetic information as his twin brother, but because of the sameness, his uniqueness is not recognized.
Their mother's demand that they take responsibility for their older brother's life because they are twins is close to violence in an attempt to unite their lives.
This may be a spoiler, but at the end of the novel, Chu cries out to his mother lying in her bed in a nursing home. “The real reason I didn’t do it even though my mother wanted it so much was because I didn’t want my brother to end up like me.”
The cry is read as an ontological protest to separate one's life from that of one's brother and to protect one's own uniqueness.
Although it is a short novel, the theme of 'The Back Side' is not light. It can be said to be a highly pure literary masterpiece developed through philosophical exploration of human existence.
Page 104.
