stirring memory and desire

Before Dreams on the Half-Shell, Insook’s first (published) graphic novel, Ilseob held no love for comic books. With his exhaustive, monogamous devotion to the written word, visual components to storytelling often felt somewhat burdensome and restrictive. A critic at heart, Ilseob loathed the obligatory modifications to his own interpretation of the work as a whole. Still, he recalls with the utmost clarity the two-page spread that loosened his stubborn grip on the instincts of his imagination:

A great boar, black as pitch and awash in smoldering red light, hobbles through a primordial fog on broken limbs. Nettles catch in its matted fur, drawing inky blood that seems to drip from its back and onto the very page itself. The margins are lined with the immortal words of T.S. Eliot: I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

(A large print of the scene hangs in his foyer, a somewhat unsettling centerpiece to his otherwise plush home.)

Ilseob understands Dreams on the Half-Shell to be a fictionalization of his life. It’s source of neither pride nor agitation; above all, Ilseob values the work for its excellent (and fairly accurate) storytelling. Insook’s ancient boar might lack the overgrown tusks and bloodshot eyes of Ilseob’s longtime phantom tormentor, but the brief lapses in authenticity are entirely forgivable—especially when he hasn’t seen his younger sister in almost a decade.

(Ilseob keeps tabs on Insook like he does Hyeon, his hyacinth girl, but he can’t bring himself to traverse the ocean of grief and guilt that separates him from his sister.)

Deny it as he might, Ilseob also knows Dreams on the Half-Shell to be a lifeline, one Insook threw him to keep from drowning in their shared past. While a benevolent offering of forgiveness for his childhood sins, Ilseob sincerely doubts that it would extend to his current ones. He’s too much of a prideful coward to venture a plea, so he snubs the overture of salvation resigns himself to treading water.