"Some liquors serve as currency. In life, there are times when one must give something to someone with no guarantee of getting anything in return."
- Bae Myung-Hoon, Tower
An collection of interconnected short stories I picked up on the recommendation of Lawyers, Guns and Money, Myung-Hoon's book revolves around a massive tower that houses over 500,000 people. The stories stand alone but also flesh out how such a complicated enterprise operates.
I liked the stories but found that none of the protagonists, with the exception of the sad-sack security guard overseeing the elephant in “The Buddha of the Square”, were particularly interesting as people. Which is always a risk in satires as ideas usually supersede the characters. And here we have governmental functionaries, or normal people trapped in an immense system, so there’s a lot of “after all, what can one do?” passivity that I find it hard to identify with. Of course, this lack of agency could be the point; after all, these people live their whole lives in a building (kinda like a spaceship!) and Myung-Hoon does show dehumanizing accommodations in their lives. For example, the characters are always needing to navigate various elevators, or deal with the social strata of where they are working or living in the tower (a great metaphor for social status). On the other hand, “Taklamakan Misdelivery” shows the power of a people coming together to accomplish a large task, so I could just be missing the point. Regardless, I found this book more interesting than moving; it didn't touch me emotionally like my favorite books do.
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