Sang Young Park was born in Daegu, South Korea in 1988. He studied French and journalism at Sungkyunkwan University and attended the creative writing master’s program at Dongguk University. He launched his writing by winning the 2016 Munhakdongne New Writer’s Award for “Searching for Paris Hilton.” He is the author of the short story collection The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta (2018), the serial novel Love in the Big City (2019), and the essay collection Sleeping Hungry (2020). He has received the 2018 and 2019 Young Writer’s Award, and the 2019 Heo Gyun Literary Award. The English translation of Love in the Big City is forthcoming from Tilted Axis Press and Grove Atlantic in 2021.
1. Life
Sang Young Park was born in Daegu in 1988. He studied French and journalism at Sungkyunkwan University and attended the creative writing master's program at Dongguk University. He worked as a magazine editor, copywriter, and consultant for seven years before debuting as a novelist. Park began his career by winning the 2016 Munhakdongne New Writers Award for "Paeriseu hilteuneul chatseumnida" (패리스 힐튼을 찾습니다 Searching for Paris Hilton), and published his short story collection Allyeojiji aneun yesulga-ui nunmul-gwa jaitun paseuta (알려지지 않은 예술가의 눈물과 자이툰 파스타 The Tears of an Unknown Artist, or Zaytun Pasta) in 2018. His first novel, Daedosi-ui sarangbeop (대도시의 사랑법 Love in the Big City), was longlisted for the 2022 Booker International Prize. He is the recipient of the 2019 Munhakdongne Young Writers’ Award and the 2019 Heo Gyun Literary Award.
2. Writing
Park debuted in 2016 with "Paeriseu hilteuneul chatseumnida," a short story about two narcissistic wannabe influencers that is markedly free of gravity and suffering. In the years since, he has become Korea’s best known queer writer domestically and abroad.
Love in the Big City, Park's first novel, is structured as a chain of linked novellas tracking the emotional life of its protagonist, Young, as he makes his way through a series of defining relationships over the course of his twenties, in Seoul: Jaehee, his straight female best friend in college; his mother, who is battling uterine cancer and is still in denial about her son’s sexuality; and Gyu-ho, a boyfriend whose sweetness keeps thwarting Young’s cynicism. A casual reader might be tempted to call it a Bildungsroman—except Young progresses only from the befuddlement and frustration of his late teens to the qualitatively different but quantitatively equal befuddlement and frustration of his late twenties.
The narrator can be flippant, even arch, about traumas other writers would turn into the focus of a whole novel. With exquisite timing, he deploys the classic queer coping mechanism of deflective irony, which is often absent from more classically engagé fiction. Park’s real stylistic achievement, though, consists of turning that cutting judginess, which might have easily descended into vapid cynicism, into a first-person voice that’s deeper than its extremely entertaining quips.
Park’s characters [are] funny, and, in some sense, amused, even if their humor comes from a place of deep resentment, a feeling that other people are out of their minds in a world where they are powerless to do anything about it. In a passage from Park's novella, "The Tears of an Unknown Artist," the protagonist, a semi-failed director, fumes helplessly while a dubious colleague is showered with praise. The anger burns, but is also very funny to read—its ranting, rhythmic blend of social critique with professional grudge, percolating in frustration with an arts scene that rewards the performance of queer tragedy without caring much about anything else. Park’s voice, here as in Love in the Big City, stands out for the way it repudiates the glamor of martyrdom for the insouciance of humor. [1]
Reference
[1] Lee-Lenfield, Spencer. "Why so Serious?" The Yale Review, 16 May 2022. https://yalereview.org/article/sang-young-park-queer-fiction
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