0:01

Hey Craig, it's Andrew. Hi Andrew, it's Craig. Cool. If

0:05

you're overdo- cool beans. Hey, if you're overdue on adding

0:09

another podcast, you're listening Q, then

0:11

I'd highly recommend checking out Missing

0:13

Pages, the chart topping and signal award

0:15

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0:18

Missing Pages just returned for a brand new season, it

0:20

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0:22

Post, and the American Academy. On

0:26

this new season, host and acclaimed literary critic Bethann

0:28

Patrick investigates the publishing industry's

0:31

hot button topics, with the help of special

0:33

guests like Publishers Weekly's Jim Milliot and Slate

0:35

columnist Laura Miller. Looking

0:38

for somewhere to start? I'd recommend listening

0:40

to their banned book series, which features a special interview

0:43

with New York Times bestselling author Jodie Pico on

0:45

her own experience with book banning. The

0:48

book banning is a special feature of the New

0:50

York Times bestselling author Jodie Pico on

0:53

her own experience with book banning. They

0:55

also take a step back to look at the current state of book

0:57

banning in America, unpacking the

0:59

question, is there more nuance to book censorship

1:01

than is at the surface? Do you

1:04

ever think about that, Craig? I think about that sometimes. I

1:07

do actually. Yeah. So

1:10

everybody, go ahead, listen to Missing Pages

1:13

on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite

1:15

listening app. Hey,

1:23

everybody, welcome to Overdo. It's

1:42

a podcast about the books you've

1:44

been meaning to read. My name

1:46

is Craig. My name is Andrew.

1:49

Welcome to our podcast. We

1:51

read a book every week. And

1:53

one of us tells the other person about it. And

1:55

also every week we change sort of

1:58

the inflection and the places. in

2:00

words where we emphasize them, just to keep, just

2:02

to make the listening experience

2:05

fresh and interesting for everybody. If you

2:07

come to this podcast looking for relaxation

2:09

with a familiar voice,

2:12

sorry, use a

2:14

familiar voice doing weird stuff, which

2:17

is good, because I didn't have any like

2:19

funny ideas for the intro this week, so

2:22

I'm glad that you did this. I'm just

2:24

muddling through, that's the real lyric that everybody

2:26

likes. Well, I go through somehow. Yes, it's

2:29

at that time of year when- December

2:32

18th, everybody. You read a great

2:34

book, that's what happened to me.

2:37

Beginning to look a lot like

2:39

December 18th. Book

2:42

in every year.

2:49

So, do you think we can update the reference

2:51

from like five and 10 to, I don't

2:54

know, a kind of store that's existed in the

2:56

last 90 years? I would have said Rite Aid,

2:58

but all the Rite Aids are going out of

3:00

business. Woolworths

3:04

was five and 10, five and dimes.

3:07

You ever been to a Woolworths as a

3:09

kid? I don't think so. I once watched

3:11

a video of the video game Cool Spot

3:14

demoing in a Woolworths. And

3:17

I can't believe a store

3:19

that would focus on Cool Spot like that would

3:21

eventually go out of business. That's

3:23

wild to me. All right,

3:25

Craig, what'd you read this week for our book

3:28

podcast? Relevant to everything we've just said, I read

3:30

the book Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. A

3:33

bit on my TBR list for

3:36

a while here. I watched it given as

3:38

a gift among multiple people

3:40

in my life. I heard about the acclaim.

3:42

It's a National Book Award finalist and the

3:44

finals in the NBA. You know how it

3:46

is. I like this picture of you just

3:49

like standing across a room sort of looking

3:51

at people giving gifts of each other. And

3:54

one of them is Pachinko. Like maybe you're looking

3:56

in someone's window and just like, oh man, Pachinko

3:58

again. Listen, man, I was at a- holiday

4:00

party today and someone

4:02

was describing

4:06

Goodreads to someone else and I just thankfully

4:08

Simon wanted to run all over the place so I

4:11

just quietly left the room. You

4:13

didn't get to the part where like a lot of

4:15

people decide that they're gonna write reviews in character as

4:18

like their cat or whatever. No!

4:21

Like all my all love to all the Goodreads

4:23

using listeners out there. Some

4:25

of y'all got bits. Yep. And

4:28

you're sticking to them. And bless

4:30

these people talking about it. They were just like excited

4:32

to talk about books and they were excited to share

4:34

tools for recording what they've read. But like my

4:37

brain's broken and so I had to

4:39

leave. Yeah. And I

4:41

wasn't there with my guitar so you

4:43

couldn't like talk about the number of

4:45

stars that is sometimes assigned to

4:47

reviews of books on Goodreads. The lady was talking

4:50

about a book that she had read and logged

4:52

on Goodreads and I literally tried to speak and

4:54

I couldn't because there was no music. But

4:57

no this book yeah I've seen it given

4:59

as a gift and I logged it away

5:02

for the future. Yeah so it's

5:04

on my to be watched list. Oh! I

5:07

knew it was a... Watch a book?

5:09

Well you can it's not very interesting. It

5:12

was adapted into a show on Apple TV

5:15

Plus in 2022. So

5:17

I watched the first episode of

5:19

it finally as research

5:21

for this episode. Oh you're welcome. A

5:23

little bit. There's

5:26

always for whatever reason there's always an extra like

5:28

mental hurdle for me to clear when

5:31

it comes to watching a show with subtitles

5:33

because obviously like in this house subs

5:35

not dubs. But also in

5:38

this house we do things while we watch

5:40

TV. Yes also that. So like it's hard

5:42

to be like okay I'm gonna learn how

5:44

to refinish a chair or learn

5:46

everything about Pokemon cards or like whatever the stupid

5:48

thing that my brain is doing to me. It's

5:51

hard to do that and pay attention to subtitles. Yeah sure.

5:53

But thank you for finally. So you gotta carve out the

5:56

focus. Yes finally getting me to focus on the show and

5:58

watch it even though I had to keep pausing. it

6:00

so I could talk to you about how I was watching it. Okay,

6:04

so spoiler alert, I like the book.

6:06

Spoiler alert, you blank the TV show.

6:08

I like the TV show. One episode

6:10

in. Though, yeah, I might. So

6:12

I was reading an interview with Minjin Lee and

6:15

she, like, it's a New

6:17

Yorker interview. We'll probably link it on social alert

6:20

or whatever sometime this week. Talking,

6:23

so she initially started on the Pachinko

6:25

show as an executive producer. But by

6:27

the time this New Yorker interview

6:30

ran in February

6:32

of 2022, she was no longer

6:34

attached to it and did not want to talk about

6:36

it. Oh wow. So it does make me feel a

6:38

little weird about the about the TV show, but it

6:40

was it was acclaimed. I've been

6:42

recommended it by both professional and

6:45

nonprofessional TV people. Okay. So I

6:47

am, I will finish it, but

6:49

yes, I guess keep that

6:51

in the back of your mind while we talk

6:53

about the TV show. I think that is what

6:55

Minjin Lee wants us to see by Michael Luo,

6:57

just to since that we're dropping this

6:59

up at the top. Yes, yeah, yeah. Okay,

7:02

this is only her second novel. Her first novel

7:04

is Free Food for Millionaires, but this is the

7:06

first novel I had heard of hers. And

7:10

so I knew nothing else about her. What do we need

7:12

to know about her, Andrew? Minjin Lee

7:14

was born in 1968. She was originally born in

7:16

South Korea and immigrated

7:20

with her family here when

7:22

she was seven. She immigrated to New York and

7:24

has lived there sort of on and off for

7:28

the rest of her life. Like she went to she

7:30

went to Yale. She referred

7:32

to in that interview Bergen County, New

7:35

Jersey as quote the promised land. Oh

7:37

boy, big ups Bergen.

7:39

I mean she talked a lot

7:41

in that interview about

7:46

how she had a as a seven-year-old, she

7:49

had a vision of America in her mind

7:51

as this like glamorous place where everybody's wearing

7:53

ball gowns everywhere. Oh sure, yes we were.

7:55

And then I realized it looks just like

7:57

Seoul except with non-korean people. I remember were

8:00

thinking it was so ugly. I lived in

8:02

such an ugly little hovel and talked about

8:04

her, you know, her, my

8:06

mother was a piano teacher. My father was a

8:08

white collar executive as a cosmetics company. Not

8:11

an uncommon immigrant experience. I think where

8:13

people who are like, you know, valued

8:16

professionals in the place where they came from are

8:20

doing sort of paycheck to

8:22

paycheck like subsistence level work in the

8:24

United States. Working in a, or

8:27

owning a jewelry store. A

8:29

new stand in a jewelry store, I think, was the

8:31

progression of things that her dad owned. But

8:33

yeah, they just, they saved money and eventually

8:35

they moved to New Jersey and things went

8:37

from there. So

8:40

yeah, she, like I said,

8:42

studied at Yale. She was a corporate

8:44

lawyer for like a couple of years.

8:47

Okay. In the mid-90s

8:49

and then quit. I think this

8:51

was partly because she was dealing

8:53

with a chronic form of hepatitis

8:55

B. Oh boy. Like

8:58

a doctor had told her that she was probably going

9:00

to get liver cancer and die. Oh my God. Yeah,

9:03

and so she says,

9:06

I felt like I had to get all this done. I didn't

9:08

feel terrified of quitting being a lawyer because I felt like, well,

9:10

if I'm dead, I'm going to write this book and then I'll

9:13

be fine. Hell

9:15

yeah. Yeah, and so she's, I mean, obviously

9:17

still alive, obviously still working, but

9:20

she, you know, she decided,

9:22

you know, if I, I mean, she

9:24

got married young. Also she decided if

9:26

I'm going to be

9:28

chased around by the specter of death for

9:31

however long I'm alive, I might as well

9:33

do something that's like fulfilling. Yeah, sure. So

9:36

she does this in the mid-90s,

9:38

doesn't publish Free Food

9:40

for Millionaires until 2007, and

9:42

then doesn't publish Pachinko until 2017. And

9:45

these are her only two novels that exist right now.

9:48

She's working on a third that is

9:51

called. Oh,

9:53

American Hagwan. Yeah,

9:55

and she views this as like part of a trilogy

9:58

of books that she's just kind of doing. about

10:01

various aspects of the

10:03

Korean experience. But she

10:06

had, you know, both

10:08

of these books are published to good reviews

10:10

and good sales. She talks about her writing

10:12

process just being extremely research-heavy.

10:15

Her two books filled, quote, more than 10

10:18

bankers' boxes with interview notes and other background

10:20

material. She says, I read secondary

10:22

material. I read academic material. I read scholarship.

10:24

And then I also do numerous interviews of

10:26

experts and subjects when

10:29

asked why she writes in this way. She says,

10:31

the answer is confidence. It's the confidence I don't

10:33

have when I begin something. I have so much

10:35

insecurity about the stuff that I don't know. And

10:37

by the time I finish my research, I'm like,

10:39

bring it. Yeah,

10:43

I watched an interview with her on

10:45

the YouTube channel for the

10:48

Weatherhead East Asian Institute that

10:51

people can go Google her name and that YouTube

10:53

channel. You'll find it. Talks a little bit about

10:55

her process with this novel, but she also talks

10:57

about like there's there's

10:59

a scene in this novel that takes

11:01

place, I think, in the 60s or

11:04

70s. I don't

11:06

think it's early 80s where like a

11:08

14 year old boy has to get

11:10

he's been born in Japan, but he's

11:12

ethnic Korean. And so he has to

11:14

go get his like foreign registration card

11:16

on his 14th birthday. He has to

11:18

get fingerprinted. And his dad

11:21

is like a super rich pachinko

11:23

magnate. And she is

11:26

like trying to spell

11:28

out still how much of a

11:30

like third class citizen Koreans

11:32

are in Japan at this time. Yeah. And she

11:34

says in that interview, she's like, but

11:37

in 1993, there's this big,

11:40

you know, upheaval and some of the laws change and people

11:42

are protesting. But the book only takes place from 1910 to

11:44

1989. So I needed to know that. But you, the

11:49

reader never needed to know that. Yeah. And

11:51

to Your point, I Think that's like

11:54

the research gives her the confidence to say. here's

11:56

what the reader does and doesn't need to know.

12:00

Give her, give her the confidence to like.

12:03

As. Somebody who didn't live through it to capture

12:05

a. A period in

12:07

Korean history from the point of view.

12:10

Yeah, someone who who didn't. With.

12:12

Reserve live through it and who like

12:14

didn't know what was coming? You know?

12:16

Yeah, we're always. she said that interview.

12:18

So the book spans Nineteen Ten to

12:20

Nineteen Eighty Nine. and see says that

12:22

Nineteen Eighty Nine is when he first.

12:25

Truly learned about the experience

12:27

of Koreans in Japan. Does

12:31

I need see? I think is like the Korean

12:33

but the one of the terms for Koreans and

12:35

Japan. And. She

12:37

says like so for me. I.

12:40

Stopped. Of the book there. So.

12:42

That I could like, had a good

12:45

hard line to work against that wouldn't

12:47

overlap with my own experience in our

12:49

which is interesting. It's in it's

12:51

it's It just reminded me of something that

12:54

I do what I'm researching article. sometimes when

12:56

I'm when I'm writing is I still prefer

12:58

if you know and around yes yes and.how

13:00

bout a lot? Because I'm insecure Bhalla things

13:02

a way if I don't know if you

13:05

know that google L among it's like search

13:07

tools and I'm not gonna like stick up

13:09

for the quality of Google search results right

13:11

now but just talking about it as like

13:13

a snapshot of the internet search. Or if

13:15

you search for something and and you click

13:18

on tools up there there is an option

13:20

to search through. Date Range.

13:22

Oh. Especially if

13:24

you're trying to research background on like

13:26

a new or development the just happened.

13:29

If you want to take a snapshot

13:31

of the internet that existed like a

13:33

before this new or thing broke her,

13:36

you know, whatever the scuttlebutt was about

13:38

a thing like five years ago that

13:40

doesn't also include newer information, You can

13:42

set a date like boundary of like

13:45

units way seventeen, twenty eighteen or whatever

13:47

and it makes it much easier to

13:49

uncover the contemporaneous coverage of the other

13:52

thing. So the I just thought. I'd

13:54

instance tickle my brain injuries is

13:56

like. What? What episode

13:58

of our show is this? Six

14:00

hundred and mm. And you're

14:02

telling me this now. There's. You

14:04

know your your startup that for me oh

14:07

I mean if I give everybody only

14:09

useful if they're not have a java or

14:11

it is not as many of these

14:13

rock all the media p were just clinging

14:15

the these logs overload Emilio some. Effects

14:20

Nevada throw you for are all this floating

14:22

on doors like in Titanic and we can't

14:24

let another person up on the doors. crags.

14:28

Of you quick, it's on. Does

14:31

this book and it's genesis. There's a

14:33

then time in from the interview the

14:35

you ready and drive stuff from the

14:37

addition that I read had an afterword

14:39

that she wrote as well as like

14:41

an interview that has some quotes in

14:43

it. So what I've

14:45

gleaned is that you know she had

14:47

been working on a version of this

14:49

story since the early nineteen eighties when

14:51

she heard a story about a Korean

14:53

student who took his own life after

14:55

some extreme racists, bullying, and hatred in

14:57

Japan. A version of that story makes

14:59

it's way into this novel which we

15:01

can talk about. Ah, any

15:03

kind of stuck with her forever and

15:06

she worked on versions of it as

15:08

early as Ninety Ninety Six Story called

15:10

Motherland bout a Korean Japanese boy who

15:13

gets his Bourne Identity card is like

15:15

the most aeration of it. Some

15:18

of that. Versions. of that story

15:20

and I think a version of the of the. Boys.

15:23

of his own life. Also I kind of

15:25

when her some early fellowships which like to

15:27

help build her career. And

15:30

then I'm in two thousand

15:32

seven See moved to Tokyo.

15:34

Ah, And tosses out whatever

15:36

existing manuscript she had of

15:38

this novel after starting her

15:40

research, meeting with Korean, Japanese

15:42

folks and ah, Discounted.

15:45

Their experience was much more nuanced and

15:47

complex than she had thought. I think

15:49

her initial take. As

15:52

she puts it was, she was writing

15:54

mostly from the perspective of so. Of

15:56

this boy Solomon whose can have enters

15:59

later in the. Ah bowl. and he,

16:01

he's a guy who goes away to American

16:03

Studies and then comes back and that's pretty.

16:06

Is. One of the closer perspectives to

16:08

her own I think and through

16:10

extensive interviews with folks in Japan

16:12

just like Nana. Okay, I gotta

16:14

start I guy go back to

16:16

Nineteen Ten I got toss at

16:18

all is a dead. And

16:21

disaster, You know, get that confidence.

16:23

As he said, so, term this

16:25

one of the three. Books.

16:28

Quote Unquote that this novel is

16:30

divided into I think is called

16:32

Motherland and that might be worth

16:34

worth of that comes from Sir

16:36

I. The isn't the only other

16:38

thing to can talk about from

16:40

before we break his or this

16:42

book like at least part of

16:44

it. Takes place against

16:47

the backdrop of I'd like Japan

16:49

or Korea. The Curry The Japanese

16:51

Occupation of Korea? Yes on second

16:53

to sneak up on yeah for

16:55

sure I in Korea it's often

16:58

does a translation by it's it's

17:00

referred to. As usually

17:02

as the Imperial Japanese compulsive occupation period.

17:04

oh ok or this runs from nineteen

17:06

tend to nineteen forty five am and

17:09

I think like you're just just reading

17:11

about it at a high level you

17:13

know I think my my impulses to

17:15

be you know colonialism sucks it's such

17:18

with are a lot of people in

17:20

Japan including the music composer for the

17:22

Dragon Quest series who are like you

17:25

know when. When. Japanese

17:27

officials, you know coerced

17:30

young Korean women into.

17:33

The are performing sex acts. It was.

17:35

Empowering, For those women like it's it's

17:37

super is it is free Bad is pretty

17:39

bad. Little a that there exists in the

17:42

world people who take stuff like that. I.

17:45

Just I'm reading that that New Yorker interview

17:47

with Li I think there's just like a

17:49

that there's one like interesting note that we

17:52

can yes sir. And don't

17:54

like? I think we can probably agree. like

17:56

Colonial S S I O Six, we don't

17:58

We I would often find. You on

18:00

the mat now but but lead sorry

18:02

my house you know her heard saying

18:04

as we've discussed a little that is

18:06

figuring out how the people. Themselves

18:08

would have felt yeah about the things her.

18:11

she says, she's talking about how Koreans have

18:13

you this period I'm and she says and

18:15

this is I just I recognize myself in

18:17

her initial responses. Specifically, very important for me

18:19

with the Koreans and Japan because I started

18:21

out in the position of oh, these are

18:24

poor victims who been oppressed by colonialism and

18:26

how horrible and that's all true but they

18:28

didn't see it that way and they told

18:30

me you're wrong and I was like well,

18:32

okay, how am I wrong When hang out

18:34

with them you realize they're quite a the

18:37

word and Japanese is a very. Gang teeth

18:39

are very sturdy and strong, so I thought, oh

18:41

well, where did that come from And I realize

18:43

it's kind of like what Hemingway says about being

18:45

broken, right? You're stronger when you're broken. Any.

18:49

And they've got. You know, I've got couple of i think

18:52

that all ties into. Complicated. Ideas

18:54

about. Ah, I

18:56

don't know, like weathered trauma like a

18:58

you need experienced trauma that makes a

19:00

great art or like whether you know

19:03

some kind of the hardship or oppression

19:05

is necessary to make eve strongest person

19:07

like that's that's varied as complicate. I'm

19:09

not raid a past. President.

19:12

I thought in this in this context

19:14

that perspective was just important to keep

19:16

and in the background of our. Yeah.

19:18

No compensation for sure, I think. So Cool!

19:21

What's take a break and then I can

19:23

tell you about what. Is. In

19:26

the pages of the book.

19:29

And. My experience of reading it. Any. Tired

19:40

or it's craig again. Whoa.

19:42

Still a gay always a folks

19:45

Etti A and I am year

19:47

with the Perfect book. His podcast

19:49

recommendation for you. It's. Called

19:51

Missing Pages in hosted by

19:54

renowned literary critic and publishing

19:56

insider Death and Patrick and

19:58

It's Back for Brain The

20:00

even. Produced. By the award

20:02

winning from the Pod Glamour it

20:04

Missing Pages features of of the

20:06

biggest names in the book world

20:08

today like New York Times bestselling

20:10

author Jodi Picoult, Publishers Weekly, Gym

20:13

Million, and Sleep columnist Laura Miller.

20:15

Each episode these lit heroes sit

20:17

down with Best and A set

20:19

the record straight on the industry's

20:21

pressing topics including book bans in

20:23

America and the various gamers impacting

20:25

writing communities across the world. Scammers

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they Andrew Whoa. I didn't know

20:30

that the your. Games.

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Are everywhere I sit. I should be

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so naive I need that of house

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in is also why we have the

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are all around us. If you don't

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know where to start with missing pages,

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I would highly recommend listening to the

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first episode of the season, the Colleen

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Hoover Story. It's a compelling look at

20:53

Hoover's rise to stardom and explore the

20:55

central question is her career, a sign

20:57

of a changing literary landscape where book

20:59

publishers are losing their power as the

21:01

industry gatekeepers. As. The Washington Post

21:03

and The Guardian said missing pages is a

21:05

quote must. Go

21:08

ahead was in a missing pages or ever you.

21:18

Are right Andrew Hi Craig.

21:21

Where. Would you like to start

21:23

where I'm You know I'm not

21:26

actually an expert on the novel,

21:28

but as long as these episodes

21:30

unfold, the person who read the

21:32

book is the closest thing to

21:34

an active lid on relative expert.

21:36

We we deal in Relativity. Hear

21:38

that Overdue. So. Ah, To

21:40

use a Reddit term. Ask

21:43

me Anything. About

21:46

that a novel for go. So do That

21:48

is what I read the novel. but see

21:50

going, I may. Have

21:55

a. Good

21:57

point the lowest. steaks least interesting i have

21:59

a with Try to you know when

22:01

they published when they like publicize them like oh

22:03

my god, you know Somebody's

22:05

gonna be a dude Colonel

22:08

Sanders is doing an AMA in three hours. You

22:10

gotta get there like some

22:12

dude in Philadelphia Look,

22:15

I'm going to read it now Okay,

22:19

so let's talk about structure first yeah,

22:22

please because My understanding

22:24

is that the book is like split

22:26

into three acts basically

22:29

That each Chronologically cover

22:32

a different span of time. Yes, there is

22:34

go young or hometown motherland

22:37

and pachinko as

22:40

we said the Like a

22:42

full novel runs 1910 to 1989 the

22:46

first book ends at 1933 the

22:49

second book ends at 1962

22:52

and the last book ends at 1989

22:56

that a Taylor Swift album. Yeah

22:58

Wait, or is it? Yes. Yes, it is. Yes I

23:01

there are no references in it cut up

23:03

cut up keep in the part where I

23:06

answered immediately and confidently that 1989

23:08

is definitely a Taylor Swift album and then cut

23:10

out the part where I Needed

23:13

to make sure that it was Because

23:16

one of them makes us sound way more with it.

23:18

I'm the one who asked the question anyway Yeah,

23:21

but I get to look smart. Yes fair

23:23

enough. Okay. Okay, so those are the three

23:26

books and they trace I've

23:30

seen it described as four

23:32

generations of a family

23:35

and I think I sort of Would

23:37

say it's all it's like four and a half generations

23:41

of a family through

23:43

that era We

23:45

have the first like named character. We

23:47

meet is this guy named Huni living

23:51

in young young I think Korea

23:55

and Young Jin who is the woman that he

23:57

marries and then we have his parents

24:01

who is like the previous like half generation I

24:03

would say like they're not a big part

24:05

of the story sure then they're the next generation

24:07

is their daughter Sunja and

24:10

a she marries

24:13

a guy named Isak Beek

24:17

who was a minister but she

24:19

also has a relationship with a guy named Kohan

24:21

Zhu and Han Zhu is who boy

24:24

he's a he's a shady character

24:26

we'll talk about Han Zhu and

24:29

then she has two sons

24:32

Noah or Noya and

24:35

Mosashu or Mosashu and

24:38

and then Mosashu has a son named Solomon who we

24:41

meet who was like the last generation

24:43

there's there's other people within that

24:45

kind of ladder of generations but

24:48

those are the ones that the stories

24:50

turn yeah and those are all the

24:52

ones that are related I think an

24:54

interesting thing that Lee does throughout the

24:57

book is like we'll pull in

25:00

members of like non related

25:03

people who become part of

25:05

the story and thus can

25:07

represent other aspects of

25:10

the Korean experience within

25:12

each age group even says that

25:14

she doesn't have to contain every

25:16

experience within just this family which

25:18

I think is really smart yeah

25:21

but what was your question about structure or or

25:23

if you want to compare it to the TV

25:25

show because I really might be coming to this

25:27

book purely from the TV show yeah right like

25:29

I didn't have a question so much as I

25:32

just wanted to compare the the way that stories

25:35

are told and kind of use that as a

25:37

jumping off yeah sure about what the story is

25:39

I think so when you have a book where you

25:43

have a especially a book where

25:45

you have a bunch of sort

25:47

of discrete separate narrative chunks but

25:50

they're all like in communication they're

25:52

all in communication with each other I think

25:54

the easiest way to adapt it for TV

25:56

and the way that the Pachinko show chooses

25:58

to adapt them is just to

26:00

intersperse them. And I think that's- Makes

26:03

sense. A lot of that is done for

26:06

Expedience so that in episode seven,

26:08

the show doesn't need to do

26:10

some kind of- Yes. Like

26:13

contrived flashback or echo

26:16

of a voice thing

26:18

to make the audience remember, oh hey,

26:21

thematically, this recalls a thing that happened

26:23

in episode two. Sure, yes. So

26:26

this show opens in 1910. And

26:30

then cuts back and forth between this 1910

26:33

era and the 1980s era. And

26:37

then I'm not sure, because

26:40

I only watched the first episode, I'm not sure how much the

26:42

1910 era comes back. Like

26:45

how much, are these all

26:47

equally sized chunks of book? Or

26:50

do some eras get more attention than

26:52

others? I did not do the math.

26:54

That's okay. If you don't have

26:57

an immediate impression, because the 1910 era part of the

27:00

show could

27:04

be done after episode one. I'm not sure

27:06

yet, because it talks about-

27:11

I think that feels like it could

27:13

be true, even if it isn't true.

27:15

Yeah, it looks at Sonja's, her

27:19

young childhood and her relationship with her dad

27:22

and a little bit with her mom, and

27:24

it ends with her dad dying

27:26

of- It's not

27:28

said in the show that it's tuberculosis,

27:30

but I know from reading other research that

27:32

it's tuberculosis. And

27:35

then at the very end of that episode,

27:37

it flashes forward nine years from that to

27:40

start talking about her adulthood

27:42

in Chad. So

27:45

yeah, I don't know how often the

27:47

show will jump back and forth, but

27:49

in the first episode, it's definitely like,

27:51

here's the past, here's the future. And

27:55

those two things are happening in

27:57

conversation with each other. Like you'll see- Old

28:00

soon yeah, and she'll be dealing

28:02

with something like Solomon is messing up

28:04

like cooking something It'll go back in

28:06

time to like her and her mom

28:09

like preparing food or something. I get

28:11

yeah Yeah, it makes perfect listen. I

28:13

watched the first several seasons of

28:15

This Is Us I know what it

28:17

is to do to interweave timelines

28:19

for narrative import I get

28:21

it Yeah, who will

28:23

the crock-pot kill next? Oh my

28:26

god But Pour

28:29

that guy from Heroes and Gilmore

28:31

Girls Anyway,

28:34

I'm just gonna go over to the time Craig

28:37

mentioned an X X number of days since Craig

28:39

mentioned mention the show heroes. I'm gonna flip it

28:41

back This is season one. I don't talk about

28:43

it You had there weren't very many

28:45

days on that board already, and then you did it again

28:48

It's been zero days since Craig mentioned the

28:50

show heroes season one uh-huh But

28:53

yes The the novel

28:55

does not do any jumping back and

28:58

forth I think it is so the

29:00

first line of the novel is history

29:04

has failed us But

29:07

no matter the is not there

29:09

that was me editorializing um history has found us

29:11

but no matter and editorializing

29:18

Maybe I don't know what that word means it mostly means that I

29:20

had to scroll to my notes to make sure I got the quote

29:22

Right, I think that yes sure it was a pause for Effect

29:27

as well. What's what we call it some kind

29:29

of effect who knows what it is But

29:32

I think like the the New

29:35

Yorker interviewed talks about that is like a thesis.

29:37

Yeah like she started

29:40

free food for millionaires with a thesis statement

29:42

competence can be a curse and then the

29:46

Talking about what she means by history has failed

29:48

us she says on the top level I was

29:50

arguing about the discipline of history Obviously

29:52

and history as a general rule has failed poor people

29:54

and people who don't have a voice yep She

29:57

specifically says in the

29:59

weather Institute interview

30:02

that one of the reasons

30:04

that she shifted the book to be

30:06

about Sunja is as she was interviewing

30:08

people about this whole period of history

30:10

and the Korean experience in Japan there

30:13

were all these women who had

30:17

you know built whole families that

30:20

were now like part of very

30:23

successful business ventures or

30:25

whatever she was thinking she was going to

30:27

be writing about and

30:29

Sunja is an example of an

30:32

illiterate woman who has no social

30:34

status and like

30:36

the historical record would

30:39

never include her as anything other

30:41

than a name in a census

30:43

maybe. So

30:46

she approaches this novel as an idea

30:48

and she says this in the interview

30:50

at the back of the novel that

30:52

like she's very interested in

30:56

minor characters and

30:58

minor plot lines because they are kind

31:01

of the offshoots of the

31:03

historical record that don't get represented and

31:06

she has decided to like first

31:08

center this novel on someone

31:10

who is going to be a footnote in

31:13

an encyclopedia but that like okay

31:16

the the grandson of Sunja Moseshu

31:18

goes on to be this like

31:20

billionaire pachinko magnet right we'll talk

31:22

about the game of pachinko a

31:24

little bit later but maybe

31:27

he gets a Wikipedia article one day right

31:30

his maybe maybe his grandma

31:32

gets mentioned and she does not have

31:34

a link you know she's

31:37

a red link she's a red link

31:39

at best right yeah I

31:41

mean you mentioned you know being a footnote

31:43

in encyclopedia like it's not even a footnote

31:46

in encyclopedia it's like boiled down to a

31:48

like an archetype or a statistic yes that

31:50

is in a footnote in encyclopedia it's that

31:52

far removed from having any idea what is

31:54

going on in her head so like life

31:56

yeah that is the central character of the

31:59

book and then What she also does throughout

32:01

the book, and this is, I think, some of

32:03

the ways in which she is able to deftly

32:06

explore the diasporic

32:09

experience, and then a couple

32:11

other character archetypes along the way, is

32:13

she'll bring in a small character for a

32:15

scene, and then you get

32:17

the point that she's trying to achieve, and

32:20

then she moves on, and she knows she

32:22

doesn't need that character anymore. It's really effective

32:25

and really artful the way that she does it,

32:28

and I'm not surprised that she only publishes one

32:30

book every 10 years. Right. Yeah. But

32:34

yeah, Sunja, in the opening

32:36

of the novel, I can see why you wouldn't

32:38

jump around in the novel, because she is here

32:40

to tell us, oh, that's how I got here,

32:43

is that the march of

32:45

history, I think, is important to the way the

32:47

book is structured. You,

32:53

the reader in the 21st century, are

32:55

aware of some world events that are

32:57

going to happen, right? Maybe you don't

32:59

know the details of the Japanese occupation

33:01

of Korea, but you

33:03

do know about the bombing of Hiroshima

33:05

and Nagasaki, and you

33:08

do know about the split of

33:10

North and South Korea, and

33:12

you do know about

33:14

the Cold War, and

33:17

business interests growing

33:19

in Japan, and things like that. So

33:22

I think she's kind of banking

33:24

on many readers coming

33:27

to this book with some superficial

33:29

knowledge of the history, and

33:32

so to put it in chronological order

33:34

allows her to fill in some

33:36

very copious blanks in the average reader's

33:39

knowledge, and have it

33:41

pinned to major events along the way.

33:43

Sure, yeah, that makes sense. The only

33:45

other sort of structural or stylistic thing

33:47

about the show that I wanted to

33:49

check on is, so

33:52

again, we're a subs not dubs family. We

33:54

heard over here. Yeah. And

33:57

the nature of the show, the topic it's

33:59

talking about. means that we are dealing with, you

34:01

know, there, there's some English in the, in the 1980s

34:03

scenes. Um,

34:06

and of course there are like expensive

34:08

needle drops for no reason, because it's an

34:10

Apple TV plus show. So you get some

34:12

English through that. They're

34:14

just like playing a random Roy Orbison song

34:16

or something, because you can afford it. Um,

34:20

but the, the subtitles are in

34:22

a, like the language is

34:24

being spoken as a mix of Korean

34:26

and Japanese and Korean

34:28

subtitles are in yellow. And

34:30

Japanese subtitles are in blue. And the interesting thing

34:33

in the 1980s scenes, especially

34:35

a lot of the younger generation

34:37

will use words

34:39

or idioms in Japanese

34:41

when they're speaking mostly

34:44

Korean. And so, so you'll see, especially like

34:47

Solomon talking to his grandmother,

34:49

Tunjaya, um, saying

34:53

he's speaking in Korean with her, but

34:55

then using Japanese to, to represent like

34:57

this or that thing. Yeah. Sure. And

34:59

I just think the color coding of

35:01

it is interesting. I don't know if

35:04

there's a similar way in the book,

35:06

how it's, how

35:08

it's displaying in a shorthand

35:11

sort of way, the, like

35:13

both, both the, like the, the two separate cultures,

35:15

but then in how, in how they're sort of

35:19

running together as time goes on. You

35:21

know what I mean? Yeah. I don't

35:23

think that there is quite,

35:26

uh, an analogous thing

35:28

there. I'm looking for right now, as

35:31

I go through my notes, there

35:33

are, there's discussions of it, but I don't

35:35

think that there are things on

35:37

the page that quite evoke what you're

35:39

talking about. Okay. Yeah. That's what I

35:41

was just wondering if it was addressed

35:43

at all. Like when, when do, when

35:45

people talk about it, what is it

35:47

like? Did somebody admonish somebody else about

35:49

using Japanese phrases or speaking Korean or

35:51

Japanese in a certain context?

35:54

The, the macro level, uh,

35:56

take on this within the novel is, is kind of

35:58

the Notion. This is

36:00

something that exists across. A

36:03

colonial enterprises is like the quote

36:05

unquote Good version of the oppressed

36:07

group right? Like what are they

36:10

good Korean. In. Japan and which

36:12

of the characters in the novel are

36:14

preoccupied with being a good Korean? Which

36:16

of the not? which of the characters

36:19

don't care about that at all. Most

36:21

issues like he get like he'll hold

36:23

teenage years or just punched people in

36:25

the face cause he did not care

36:27

about being a quote unquote good curry

36:29

and. And know

36:32

on the other son of soon just. Is

36:35

interested he over the course and I

36:37

will decide like. I. Really would

36:39

prefer it if people don't think of

36:42

me as Korean like. He has a

36:44

lot of reasons for that. Yeah and

36:46

so the close as I can like

36:48

my first reaction to what you bring

36:51

up as when we are introduced to

36:53

him he's eight years old, he's going

36:55

to school and every ethnic Korean in

36:57

Japan has like they have their Korean

37:00

family name, they have their. The

37:03

of Japanese Korean name than they have

37:05

their Japanese name that they might be

37:07

using as well as it did when

37:09

three or four different names that they

37:11

have to know to use and different

37:13

settings sir and. By. And large,

37:15

he is exclusively using his Japanese

37:17

name at school, like even like

37:20

not even introducing any to himself

37:22

to any one. As

37:24

his korean name and then

37:26

no actually goes on as

37:28

an adult to I do

37:30

want to. Go. Talk about

37:32

why this happened in the plot but

37:34

he goes on to kind of create

37:36

a second life for himself as a

37:39

Japanese man that in a different town

37:41

and he is. A exclusively

37:43

using the Japanese name that was

37:46

given to him and has it

37:48

has a fully different assumed identity

37:50

and has left his Korean heritage

37:53

behind him. So. That

37:55

that same tension between.

37:58

i think that's an interesting way that show

38:00

is like how do we

38:03

communicate that

38:05

tension visually? Yeah,

38:08

a show has... Watching it with subtitles, right?

38:10

Yeah, a show can communicate

38:13

both more and less information. Like

38:15

there's more information and that there's

38:17

a... like a visual mention

38:19

to it, but there's less information and that

38:21

you have way less time.

38:24

And space

38:26

in a certain kind of way, like space

38:28

in letting the story spread out kind of

38:30

way. You know? Like you have

38:32

less time and less space to do that sort

38:35

of thing. Yep, yep. Yeah,

38:37

it's interesting. That's an interesting thing

38:39

to think about because yeah, one of the tensions

38:41

in the book is like what

38:44

does it even mean

38:46

to be Korean? And

38:48

that's not just what does it mean to

38:50

be Korean in Japan because over the course

38:52

of the novel you have... okay, you have

38:55

Sun-jin, her parents, and Sun-jin growing

38:57

up in occupied Korea, you

39:00

have this practice

39:02

of young Korean women being

39:04

like off quote-unquote offered

39:06

jobs in China, in occupied

39:09

parts of China. And

39:11

they're just being you know sold into you

39:13

know sex slavery for lack of you know

39:15

for lack of any other nuance. Yeah. And

39:20

then you have

39:23

the Korean experience in

39:25

Japan and then you have

39:27

the Korean experience in America briefly.

39:30

And it's

39:32

just like there's not

39:34

a central through-line

39:36

other than that. It

39:38

is defined by a whole bunch of other

39:41

things rooted in the fact that our homeland

39:44

has changed while we were gone. So like the

39:47

big thing is that like you know after World War

39:49

II then not only was Japan occupying

39:53

Korea but now you

39:55

have competing Cold War like powers.

40:02

helping to separate the country and

40:04

investing in the territories, right? And

40:09

you have the emergence of North and South Korea, and

40:12

so you have characters in this novel who are like,

40:14

well, I want to go back to where I'm from.

40:16

And people are like,

40:19

it's not that anymore. It is like

40:22

you don't have a place to go back to. And

40:25

now you're here in Japan, like the

40:29

kind of rootless quality of a

40:31

lot of these characters from a

40:33

heritage perspective, and yet

40:35

they're grounded in their family and

40:37

in their relationships and the

40:39

lives that they're trying to lead. So

40:43

yeah, I mean, that's on my – that

40:45

was on my list of like, this is

40:47

a book about blank, and it

40:49

is heritage and being

40:52

uprooted and the

40:54

families that get broken up along the way. Sure,

40:56

sure, sure. Okay, so that's all

40:59

– I think that's all my stuff from the show. Okay.

41:01

So just like – you said high

41:03

level. Your review was, I liked it.

41:06

Oh, yeah. Tell me more

41:08

about what you liked. Oh, great. From

41:11

a plotting perspective,

41:14

and I mean plotting with

41:16

T's, not plotting with D's,

41:19

it's a gripping book. It moves really

41:21

well, and one of the things

41:24

that she does, which if

41:27

I boil it down is going to sound like

41:29

it's cheap, and it's not. I don't think

41:32

it's cheap the way that she does this. But

41:34

she deploys

41:36

time very

41:39

well, and some of that is

41:41

on chapter breaks. It's

41:43

like, oh, wow, we're skipping eight years. Oh, wow,

41:45

we are – we're

41:48

in the same year, so we're going to roll back. You

41:51

know, she doesn't actually – to your point

41:53

about the structure of the novel, there's only

41:55

a few spots where she has to kind

41:57

of double back and account for what another

41:59

character does. was doing during

42:01

a period of time that's largely

42:03

confined to Noah

42:05

and a little bit of

42:08

Hanzu I think. Largely

42:10

she can just keep the novel moving forward

42:13

but so there's some chapter breaks where they're like

42:15

oh wow oh somebody aged eight years okay whoa

42:17

whoa whoa but the other thing that she'll do

42:19

is like between two

42:22

paragraphs she will just you

42:24

know slam through time so

42:26

I'm just gonna tell I'm gonna tell

42:28

you about Sunja's dad

42:31

dying here. Tell me about the

42:33

time slamming. There's

42:37

a lot about her father Huni

42:39

like he has a cleft

42:41

palate and he has another like

42:45

you know foot issue

42:47

that leads him to be somebody

42:49

who's like not desirable for marriage

42:52

conventionally right. Ultimately his parents

42:54

kind of create a successful business so

42:56

then when times are tough they are

42:59

actually you know somebody who

43:01

a matchmaker is interested in and yada yada

43:03

yada he gets married and they

43:06

try to have kids for a while it's

43:08

not working and then finally they have Sunja.

43:11

Few fathers in the world treasured their daughters

43:13

as much as Huni who seemed to live

43:15

to make his child smile. In the winter

43:17

when Sunja was 13 years old

43:19

Huni died quietly from tuberculosis. At

43:21

his burial Yang Jin and her daughter

43:24

were inconsolable the next morning the young

43:26

widow rose from her palate and

43:28

returned to work. Okay

43:33

like Lee is very

43:36

deft at passages like that

43:38

where she describes

43:40

how hard someone worked to

43:43

get to a point in their life

43:47

what they are doing to kind

43:50

of savor or really just live in

43:52

that moment in their life and then

43:55

we'll like within a sentence jump

43:58

the the requisite. amount of

44:00

time to the next tragedy in their

44:03

life. Not dwell in the tragedy

44:05

and then just move on.

44:07

Yes, because you literally can't. I

44:09

laugh because like, oh,

44:12

okay, I guess. Yeah, yeah.

44:15

Like, wow. Yeah. You laugh

44:17

because there's like nothing else to do about, I

44:20

don't know, human grief

44:23

being exposed of in

44:25

that way. She's very good at grief. There's

44:27

a layer. Because of out of necessity.

44:29

Yes. Because like, there's no

44:31

other way to do this other than

44:34

to just not grieve, like not stop.

44:36

And you know, for a novel that's going

44:39

to span 79 years, you have to know

44:41

that there's going to be characters that pass

44:43

away and people lose other people in their

44:45

lives. And so she

44:48

does that trick, if I can

44:50

call it a trick which seems

44:52

reductive about two or three times

44:54

in the novel. It's effective every time, but

44:56

she does the like, people achieved the

44:59

thing they wanted, sadness

45:01

arrived later. Like, she does

45:03

that. I

45:06

understand why you use

45:08

trick because it can't, like if deployed

45:11

unskillfully can feel like artificial or

45:13

manipulative or unearned. If that was

45:15

the only thing this novel were

45:17

doing, it would feel very cheap.

45:20

Yeah. Thankfully it's doing other things. One

45:22

of the other things that she gets

45:25

away with again, one of

45:27

the other things she's skilled at rather is

45:30

she will use grief

45:32

and then unpack it in an

45:34

interesting way. So like the

45:37

young boy Solomon, who's of the last generation

45:39

that we meet in the book, who

45:41

I think is really interesting. You've described the novel as

45:43

like it really kind of balancing

45:47

Sunja and Solomon with the

45:49

show rather, which I think

45:52

the novel might be doing, but in

45:54

my read of it, like Sunja and

45:56

Solomon didn't spend a lot of time

45:58

together. So. It kind

46:00

of fascinated it. I'm eager to go

46:02

off the show and see how the

46:04

story. yeah cause of the for the

46:06

first episode make sure it's had to

46:09

get them kind of a awaited interact

46:11

interacting in the same room at least

46:13

yeah bye bye or on the halfway

46:15

point. I again having only thing that

46:17

the first episode I can't talk about

46:19

whether that continues they've served. it seems

46:21

like it's being set up to to

46:23

play out that way. That's cool I'm

46:25

so when ah Solomon's mom dies. Ah,

46:29

You. Can you can see that it's

46:31

going to happen? I won't talk about

46:33

specifics but you can see that that

46:36

might happen. And we get a scene

46:38

from her funeral and see. Had always

46:40

wanted to go to America and it's.

46:43

Kind of a like what if she's

46:45

ethnic Korean and she's like what if

46:47

we get out of this situation in

46:50

Japan. Her husband who is one of

46:52

soon just son most issue is like

46:54

ah. I'm. Gonna thing going here

46:56

in Japan like. Allo allo know

46:59

that I wanna go. But. That's

47:01

how were we leave them until she passes

47:03

away. And you get the scene from the

47:05

funeral when the mourners wept at the sight

47:08

of the little boy. this is a little

47:10

boy being salience in the black suit. Solomon

47:12

would say don't cry. He calmed one hysterical

47:14

woman by telling her mama is in California.

47:17

When. The mortar looked puzzled. Neither Solomon

47:19

or Moses you explain what this meant.

47:22

Paragraph. Breaks. He had never

47:24

taken her there. They to meant to go

47:26

and then you get this. Like really moving?

47:29

Unpacking. Of human

47:31

desire to go to America

47:33

that tension between her and

47:35

most issue in their marriage

47:38

and dislike. She's.

47:40

It is. It was really unexpected and then in

47:42

the moment like of course she would do that

47:45

of. I. Didn't know about

47:47

this conflict. And. She found a

47:49

perfect place to put it which was actually after

47:51

you me was gone. And we get

47:53

this like really. Moving. Portrait of

47:55

her son first and then we get

47:58

the like whole thing is is. She's

48:01

the book good. Just need

48:03

to reiterate book good book. But

48:07

the other like through line

48:09

of the novel from a plot perspective that

48:11

I have not talked about yet. And

48:14

it sounds like this is not in the first episode

48:17

of the TV show is that

48:19

Sunja, after her father

48:21

passes away, she grows up a little bit.

48:23

She's helping her mom run this like boarding

48:25

house in Korea. And

48:28

when she's going to market, she meets

48:30

this guy named Kohansu. And

48:32

he has like he is ethnic Korean, but

48:34

he has kind of a mix

48:36

of Japanese and Western energy. And so

48:38

you do you do get just a

48:40

hint of this in the very end

48:42

of the first episode where Sunja is

48:45

walking through a market, sort of interacting with people.

48:48

And then there's this other new hot shot who you

48:51

don't know yet who's clearly

48:53

meant to seem

48:55

like a hot shot because he is oh, yeah,

48:58

but also he's wearing this like dapper white

49:00

suit and a hat. Yes. Yeah.

49:02

And then yes, they

49:04

strike up a relationship. He is ways

49:06

older than her. And

49:09

they start meeting

49:11

surreptitiously and then

49:14

on a mushroom foraging expedition.

49:18

That sounds like euphemism for something. Well, I

49:20

don't know what. No,

49:22

but then he does sexually

49:24

assault her. Oh, rad.

49:26

Cool. And she's young enough

49:28

that she like. Doesn't

49:31

like it, but does like the relationship that

49:33

she has with this older man who

49:36

is interested in her. And so

49:38

the relationship continues. The

49:40

sex continues, even though he is clearly taking

49:43

advantage of her and exploiting her. Yeah. She

49:46

becomes pregnant. And

49:48

he tells her this or she tells him this.

49:51

And he's like, oh, snap, I am married.

49:55

And that's why I have the job that I have, so I

49:57

can't stop that. would

50:00

buy you a house so you could live here and be my

50:02

mistress and raise my son. And she's like, no, thank you. And

50:06

so her kind of life

50:08

then spins in a different direction where this priest,

50:12

Isaac Beck, who her and

50:14

her mother had, you know, uh, helped

50:17

recover from about, you know, from a

50:19

recent ill bout during

50:21

his, like he has tuberculosis. And

50:24

so it cropped back up. Um,

50:26

he's like, I will marry this young girl.

50:28

I will be the father

50:30

to her child. I'm going

50:32

to a soccer to beat, to live with

50:34

my brother. Um, so

50:37

I will like kind of legitimize

50:39

her and this child and that,

50:41

that is what takes her out of Korea and to

50:43

Japan and kind of where the rest of her life

50:45

goes. We

50:48

meet East ox brother, Yosa. He's

50:50

a very prideful man. He's got a job

50:52

in a factory. He's trying to provide for

50:55

his family. He's not

50:57

gets arrested under some like species

51:00

charges of being religious, being

51:04

like Protestant Christian during the time of

51:06

the emperor. And like you should be

51:08

worshiping the emperor and not be praying

51:10

to God kind of stuff. Um, and

51:15

soon just takes this job with her sister

51:17

in law, uh, selling kimchi.

51:20

And then ultimately they get recruited into

51:22

a restaurant and they're working for this

51:24

guy in a restaurant. Everything seems cool. Oh, wouldn't

51:27

you know Han Su owns

51:29

the restaurant, Andrew? And

51:32

also Han Zou owns

51:35

the lone shark who got, uh,

51:38

he sucks brother in trouble. Oh, Han

51:41

Su has been kind of with

51:43

his Yakuza connections orchestrating their life

51:45

a bit.

51:49

That sucks because

51:52

her son Noah is Han Su son. Uh,

51:56

Moses shoe is actually a sock son. So they're

51:58

half brothers. And that's like, The two of

52:00

them are the back half of the novel until

52:02

it gets to Solomon. But

52:05

like, Hansu's shadow role

52:08

in their life and

52:11

what choices they have and have not

52:13

been afforded by first

52:15

the occupation of Japan and then decisions

52:18

made by Hansu who is

52:21

very invested in his son but is

52:23

not an active part of his life,

52:25

yada, yada, yada. I

52:30

think that gets at the central metaphor of

52:32

the novel which is the

52:34

pachinko game. Yeah, I was gonna say,

52:36

before we wrap up, we

52:39

do need to talk about the game pachinko.

52:42

Which I did some

52:44

research on it because I was kind of

52:47

aware of it but didn't know anything about

52:49

it specifically. So

52:53

this is like an arcade slash gambling

52:55

game that is essentially in

52:57

Japan, it is what slot machines are in

52:59

the US. I don't love

53:02

to quote directly from Wikipedia for research

53:04

stuff but it's phrased well there. Pachinko

53:06

feels a niche and in Japanese gambling

53:08

comparable to that of the slot machine

53:10

in the West as a form of

53:12

low stakes, low strategy gambling. When

53:14

you look at it, it looks, I

53:17

grew up watching a lot of prices right and

53:19

I watched a lot of the game plinko where

53:21

you drop a disc down a big board

53:24

of pegs and it's trying to land in

53:26

a specific spot. If you

53:28

watch pachinko being played, it looks sort

53:30

of like that. It also

53:33

reminds one of pinball

53:35

without the flippers. Yes,

53:37

so this is all

53:39

from jrpass.com which I

53:41

think is a pass

53:43

that you can buy in Japan that gives

53:45

tourists access to a lot of things. They

53:48

say the easiest way to describe the game is

53:50

that it's a cross between pinball and slot machines

53:52

that relies on both skill and luck to win.

53:54

Players launch balls around the special pachinko machine trying

53:56

to win more and more balls which they can

53:59

then either keep playing. with or hand in

54:01

for their winnings. The

54:03

skill in pachinko comes from knowing just how hard to

54:06

launch the ball in the machine to find the path

54:08

to these pockets, but then there's the element of chance

54:10

as well as each ball in the right pocket triggers

54:12

a slot machine which determines how many additional balls you

54:14

win. The name doesn't mean

54:16

anything, it's just an automa a pia based on the sounds

54:18

the ball make with the rules. So

54:21

I assume

54:23

this is where the metaphor comes in. Sure.

54:25

Let me talk about it. You cannot,

54:27

in Japan, gambling is illegal. You can't

54:29

gamble for money. Yep. And

54:32

you also can't take the pachinko balls that

54:34

you win out of pachinko

54:36

parlors, but there

54:38

is a loophole where

54:40

the balls that you win from

54:42

the machines can be exchanged in the

54:44

pachinko parlor for tokens, then

54:46

you can take those tokens to a separate

54:49

but closely affiliated location where

54:52

they will change the tokens in

54:54

for money. Mm-hmm. And

54:56

then the tokens are sold back to

54:58

the pachinko parlor. And

55:01

so you have this weird like gambling is

55:03

illegal, but like here's a way to do

55:05

it. Yep. Sort of system. And

55:08

I would assume that that

55:10

like quasi legality and

55:12

maybe the I don't know something about that

55:14

seems like it would be a metaphor in

55:16

a book like this. That's

55:19

interesting. I had not zeroed in.

55:21

I obviously thought that that would

55:24

I of course thought that that part

55:26

of it was interesting, though, like the

55:28

trading for money to get

55:30

around the law thing to

55:34

me. So like the pachinko

55:36

thing factors literally into the back half

55:38

of the book because Moses you one

55:40

of soon just son son

55:42

ends up working for a pachinko guy

55:45

and then becomes this like billionaire pachinko

55:48

magnet and the

55:50

history of pachinko in Japan is that because it is

55:52

a gambling enterprise is actually

55:55

like it is not

55:57

respectable work. Yeah, right. And then like

55:59

for a long time and possibly still it was

56:01

like deeply infiltrated

56:03

by like Yakuza. Yeah. And like, yeah,

56:06

it's not a not a job

56:08

that people are proud of,

56:10

I guess. And this is how it's

56:12

portrayed in the show. Yeah. Yeah. And so

56:15

and so it is a an industry where

56:17

Koreans who are looked, you know, Korean

56:19

Japanese are looked down on, who are looked

56:21

down on, can get work in this industry

56:23

because Japanese

56:26

folks don't want to work in it. And

56:30

so that's how Moses who makes all his money.

56:32

And then Noah also goes into the Pachinko industry

56:34

when he is like down on his luck and

56:36

pretending to be a Japanese guy. There

56:40

is a scene early

56:42

on when Moses who is working

56:44

in the Pachinko industry, his boss,

56:47

Goro is working on the

56:49

machines at the beginning of the day. And so

56:51

I'm going to read this passage because I think

56:54

this gets to what I read as like some

56:56

of the metaphor here. OK, sure. Each

56:58

day before the store opened, Goro would

57:00

gently tap a few straight pins on

57:02

the vertical Pachinko machines with his tiny

57:05

rubber coated hammer. He was

57:07

tapping the pins very, very slightly

57:09

to alter the course of the

57:11

metal balls to affect the machines

57:13

payout. You never knew which machine

57:15

Goro would choose or which

57:17

direction Goro would direct the pins. There

57:20

were other Pachinko parlors in the area that

57:22

had decent businesses, but Goro was the most

57:25

successful because he had a kind of a

57:27

touch, a true feel for the

57:29

pins. Minuscule adjustments he made were

57:31

sufficiently frustrating to the regular customers

57:33

who studied the machines before closing

57:35

hours for better payouts in the

57:37

morning. Yet there was

57:39

just enough predictability to produce attractive

57:41

windfalls, drawing the customers back to try

57:44

their luck again and again. Goro

57:46

was teaching Moses you how to tap the pins.

57:48

And for the first time in his life, Moses,

57:51

you had been told that he was a good student.

57:54

So and later on it like talks

57:57

about Pachinko being

57:59

this. game of chance relative

58:02

to life or something like that. That's

58:05

neat though because you wouldn't of course for

58:07

your regulars you would not want everybody to

58:09

like you wouldn't want word to get out

58:11

but like the one in the back corner

58:13

is the good one. Second from the right

58:15

is the one that pays out more. Exactly

58:17

but he does want ones that like maybe

58:19

pay out a little bit more. Yeah you

58:21

gotta keep the mist going. Yeah and so

58:23

the for me Pachinko in this book as

58:25

a metaphor is that like there

58:27

are choices available to

58:30

you or consequences for your

58:32

actions that are not in

58:34

your control. They are not

58:36

wholly random chance though. There

58:38

are other people who

58:40

are making those decisions

58:42

or otherwise affecting your life.

58:45

So like the thing where

58:47

Sunja has finally found a

58:49

way to help her family. So

58:52

one of the reasons that they wind up working in

58:54

this restaurant is because Isak's brother

58:57

was in Nagasaki when the

58:59

bomb dropped and so he is like

59:02

you know horribly burned and you

59:04

know can't work. You

59:07

know Isak got arrested and then he later

59:09

died and so like they're now working in

59:11

this restaurant. Oh no the

59:13

the bombing happens after the restaurant I guess

59:15

but they're there because you know they're on

59:17

hard times but then Hanzu is revealed as

59:19

like the orchestrator of that whole thing

59:22

in the same way that like the

59:25

Korean experience for the Korean characters

59:27

in this book is dictated by

59:29

laws of Japanese government,

59:32

by practices in Japanese culture,

59:34

by racism, by Japanese characters.

59:38

Noah only finds out about his

59:40

true heritage like he spends the

59:43

whole book not knowing that

59:45

Hanzu is his dad. He

59:47

finds out about it because he's dating

59:49

this Japanese girl who's like my parents

59:51

are super racist but I'm not because

59:53

I'm sleeping with a Korean boy and

59:57

she like stomps her

59:59

way into a meeting between Noah and

1:00:01

Hanzu doesn't like how it goes and

1:00:03

then immediate is like, you know, that's

1:00:05

your dad, right? He's a Yakuza and

1:00:07

Noah loses his mind because no one

1:00:09

has ever told him this and

1:00:13

the fact that his dad is so, you know, dishonorable

1:00:16

and all of that just kind of shakes him to

1:00:18

his core. And so there

1:00:21

are things at play that you are not in

1:00:23

control of and yet you must play the game.

1:00:25

It's like kind of the central metaphor of the

1:00:27

novel and then I also use

1:00:30

that example of a Kiko

1:00:33

who is the girlfriend

1:00:35

that Noah has at university as

1:00:38

an example of how Lee

1:00:41

really likes minor characters and

1:00:43

like uses them to let's

1:00:46

have a character who really embodies

1:00:48

this like kind of well meaning

1:00:50

Japanese character who isn't, who

1:00:52

doesn't think they're racist but they are and

1:00:56

but also they spur the action forward and

1:00:58

so we never need to have that character

1:01:00

ever again in the novel because she's created

1:01:02

things that live past her sort of, you

1:01:05

know, sort of stuff in the action. Sure.

1:01:07

Similarly there's a character at the end Solomon's

1:01:09

girlfriend Phoebe who is Korean American and

1:01:12

so when Solomon moves there with

1:01:14

her and she witnesses how the

1:01:16

Japanese treat Koreans she's like

1:01:19

what are we doing here and

1:01:21

it creates a whole bunch of tension

1:01:23

that is very interesting. Yeah. But

1:01:26

Lee is like I don't need to center

1:01:28

those characters in the novel. Sunja

1:01:31

is the focus. Sunja's

1:01:33

relationship to her family,

1:01:35

Sunja's relationship to Korea,

1:01:37

that is the focus of the novel.

1:01:39

So sure. Yeah and I think that to

1:01:42

hear Lee tell it that's like a thing she learned over

1:01:44

30 years. It's like where she

1:01:46

wanted to put the the heart

1:01:49

of the thing. Seems

1:01:51

like it's like it's like it. It seems like

1:01:53

it. You know, slow and steady wins a race.

1:01:56

Yeah. And all. You know and it's some

1:01:59

people some people succeed in their life

1:02:01

by publishing a book every six months and

1:02:04

some people succeed in their life by publishing a book every

1:02:06

ten years. Yeah I'm glad that there's

1:02:08

room for both of those things because I have

1:02:10

I have enjoyed and not enjoyed both both kinds

1:02:12

of books I think I would say. Yes I

1:02:14

have as well. This book rules there's a whole

1:02:17

bunch of stuff in it that I didn't get

1:02:19

to talk about but that's

1:02:22

just a challenge that you should

1:02:24

go read it listener go read it. Yeah. Or

1:02:27

watch the show or do both. I'm not in charge

1:02:29

of you. Or am I? Except

1:02:32

subs not subs. Yeah well

1:02:34

subs not subs. In that way we are in charge of

1:02:36

you. We will come to your house. We

1:02:39

will come to your house and we will alter the

1:02:41

captioning settings on your television and we won't

1:02:43

tell you what we did so you'll never

1:02:45

be able to alter it again. Yep. If

1:02:48

you did already read Pachinko or watch the

1:02:50

show and you want to write to us

1:02:53

tell us what you think or ask us

1:02:55

questions you can do so [email protected]

1:02:58

hit us up on social

1:03:00

media at OverdoPod. We're embracing

1:03:03

the blue sky we're starting

1:03:06

to express ourselves via threads. Uh-huh.

1:03:09

Find us on these new and novel

1:03:11

services. Yeah. Maybe not on

1:03:14

Twitter which is bad. Maybe not on that

1:03:16

one. Find us on

1:03:18

Twitter so that you can easily follow

1:03:20

our links that we've posted to our

1:03:22

other social fronts. Yeah. Uh-huh. Thanks

1:03:24

to Nick Lourandis who composed our

1:03:27

theme music. Andrew, if folks want

1:03:29

to know more about the show

1:03:31

where do they go? overdopodcast.com is

1:03:33

our website. There

1:03:35

it is. That's it. It's got links to the books that we

1:03:37

have read and the ones that we are going to read. Next

1:03:41

week we are both reading a

1:03:44

very special very sexy book called

1:03:46

Her Night with Santa by

1:03:49

Adriana Herrera. Actually

1:03:51

don't know how sexy it's going to be yet because I haven't cracked

1:03:53

a spy on this bad boy but I

1:03:56

am assured that it will

1:03:58

fit well with... in the tradition

1:04:00

of our horny holidays.

1:04:02

Happy horny days, horny

1:04:04

days, horny Honda days episodes. patreon.com/over

1:04:09

to pod. If you want to keep, if you

1:04:11

want more of this to hit your ears, it's

1:04:13

a great way to support the show financially. You

1:04:17

can get access to bonus episodes early.

1:04:19

We are already, uh, no,

1:04:21

I wouldn't say deep, but we are, we have embarked

1:04:24

upon our long read of Emily

1:04:26

Wilson's, the Iliad translation

1:04:28

for our stop Homer time episodes

1:04:31

and we're having a good time with that. And

1:04:33

then we're also going to, uh, we're

1:04:36

streaming her night with Santa, right? That's

1:04:38

happening. No, no, that's a regular main

1:04:40

feed episode. Oh yes. We're streaming the,

1:04:42

what's the other one? The snow queen

1:04:45

by Hans Christian Andersen. It's

1:04:48

what they say they were inspired by

1:04:50

for the film frozen. I can't wait to

1:04:53

read this Hans Christian Andersen book about

1:04:55

this talking snow and named Olaf. Yep. That's

1:04:57

exactly what it is. That's what they took.

1:04:59

Everything else was made up by Disney,

1:05:01

but they, Olaf is what is

1:05:05

yes. The snow queen is like in it at the

1:05:07

end and most of it's about Olaf. Yeah. My understanding.

1:05:09

So, so join us for that. We are doing that.

1:05:12

Um, what is that Friday the 29th? Uh,

1:05:15

so if you join us at the sufficient

1:05:17

tier on patreon.com/over to pod, you can join

1:05:19

us for the live stream on

1:05:22

December 29th. Uh,

1:05:24

and then other patreon supporters will get that

1:05:26

early, all that good stuff. So, uh,

1:05:29

yeah, next week her night with Santa. Can't

1:05:31

wait. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening.

1:05:34

And until we talk to you next time, please try

1:05:36

to be happy. That

1:06:05

was a Head Down

1:06:07

Podcast.