Adam Johnson, THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON

We were a group of 7 at the meeting on Thursday evening:  Maren, Robin, Philippe (Welcome !!), Michel, Catherine, Mark and myself. An enthusiastic discussion of The Orphan Master’s Son took place despite the strange table configuration and flaming beef in the center of the tables. All things considered, most of us were pleasantly surprised by the food, and we discovered that there is such a thing as white sesame ice cream. Merci once again to Caroline for the restaurant suggestion.

Mixed reviews of the book helped stimulate the conversation. Three of us loved it  (Catherine, Mark, Cynthia), Michel read it earlier this year and seems to still have quite unpleasant memories of it,  Robin was a bit more than half-way through and was not having fun with it, Maren was very nearly finished with it but was mostly enjoying it, and the conscientious-student-

combined-with-brilliant-diplomacy award goes to our new joiner, Philippe, who came well-organized with written notes summarizing his positive and negative points about the book.

A good portion of the discussion concerned how the chronology of the story and multiple narrators was extremely confusing. No one denied this fact, but those among us who enjoyed the book said it was worth putting up with it, but that overall it was kind of a pain until you figured out what was going on.  Indeed Mark read the book after me and said that he may not have enjoyed it so much if I had not explained what was happening when he reached the confusing bit with the change of narrator. In reviews that some of us read online, it was the most widely criticized point about the book, however it did win the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

The other subject widely discussed was whether or not the story was realistic. Robin had the sense that the first part of the book seemed to be a collection of random events patched together to make a story, but without success, which makes it perhaps not realistic that all this could happen to one individual. It is probably true that the narrator was a vehicle to present the ensemble of atrocities on could find in North Korea. For example, a few of us read an interview with the author included at the end of the paperback version in which he says he spent many years in North Korea and based a lot of the novel’s events on what he observed while there. (The starvation and armed guards protecting the fish in the pond, the loudspeaker, the specific event of the tattoo being sliced off of a prisoner, etc.)  

Catherine, who has actually been twice to North Korea, confirmed that the author did manage to capture a good bit of the mood of the place.  I am afraid to put all the details of it in writing, but she did entertain us with the exciting story of how one of her photos wound up on the cover of Time Magazine ! Philippe also acknowledged that he perhaps would have appreciated the book a bit more if he had had a better notion of what was realistic and what wasn’t. Robin, our reigning expert on Asia, did make the comparison with Laos, where people will eat literally anything they can get their hands on. I suppose that for the large majority of us we learned a lot about North Korea by reading this book, but because what we learned was so depressingly negative, it was not so easy to believe. We did admit, not surprisingly, that despite the fact that the book became a real page-turner near the end, the grand finale was was a bit over-the-top. 

On the positive side, we mostly agreed that the writing was quite good and we enjoyed several of the images:  the woman rowing the boat throughout the night, the journey to Texas and observations on the American way of life, the comments about how none of the senior citizens have ever been seen on those beaches, and the related story of the torturer who fed his parents the poisonous canned peaches so that they wouldn’t continue to suffer.  

No one among us seemed to believe that the opera singer was Jun Do’s mother or that the orphan master was his father. As for the title, the author mentions in an interview that children in North Korea are taught to have their first loyalty to the state, and their second loyalty to their families. This sort of makes everyone an orphan, and the Great Leader by design is the orphan master of everyone.  So it sort of makes sense that the main character would be named Jun Do, a reference to the anonymous John Doe, who represents the everyday, average, anonymous face in the crowd.

One new twist to the summary is a list of subjects we could have, but didn’t, discuss.  Maren calls it the “self-criticism section”. We all have loads of ideas about the book but the discussion takes many twists and turns, so it is a good opportunity for everyone to contribute.  (HINT: Strong encouragement for comments !) Some initial ideas are:

• The evolution of the main figure Pak Jun Do - While the concatenation of all events in his life seems just to be improbable/lacking credibility, do we at least believe in the evolution of his character? And why? Same question about the evolution can be asked for the interrogator. 
• Sun Moon, we didn't talk about her at all although a main character
• How someone would live in a society of denouncement and what does this do with relation between people?
• Effect of systematic torture, as means of “education” - What does this do to a population? Can it be expected that someone really elevates oneself above such a situation? 

Cynthia