A Privileged Source of Information
 
 

An e-mail conversation between Korean writer Kim Young-ha and German writer

Matthias Göritz

 

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Dear Young-ha,

 

I feel stupid, because I sent you a catalogue of questions three weeks ago, or at least I thought I did, or did I and you did not receive it? Not like it, not believe it? Not answered it?

 

Anyway, it’s weird with modern times, e-mail sounds to my german ears always a little bit like "Emaille", a shimmering, glittering material, like a pot no one could smoke. Well, just a joke for me as a non- native speaker, one of the many professional pidgins of our generation, who find words suddenly more fascinating than they are, because they remind them of certain other words in their own or their assumed and commonly shared e-mail language. It’s the same for me with the word "deleting" that This Century’s Review asked me to write about together with you.

 

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Dear Matthias,

 

I didn't get your questions you sent before. I think something wrong happened. My mail server has a strong spam-banning system for (especially) only-foreign-language-written email (what a chauvinistic system it is!). Now, it's midnight in Seoul. I am happy to get your email, but it's time to go to bed. I think I can have time to read the attached questions of yours carefully tomorrow. Please be patient, amigo.

 

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Dear Young-ha,

 

how are you?

 

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Dear Matthias,

 

I have to say I’m sorry for the late answer. A new semester begins in the first week of March in Korea. As you know, I work for a university. So, I was a bit busy last week. I have one more excuse. Actually I am not good at writing in English, so it takes more than "an hour" to write a page of mail. But it’s a thrilling thing to work with you for This Century’s Review.

 

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Dear Young-ha,

 

since "Lethe" is in, and I’m fond of all that fancy old greek stuff, I’m in. In fact, once you step into Lethe - or "deleting" - you can never be the same person as before, I realize that while I’m writing. Seeing is believing and writing is deleting. Actually as a writer, insecure as I still feel about my profession, the biggest thing I deleted so far was my place of birth. In my passport you’ll read: Name: Göritz; Given Names: Matthias Roland; Date and Place of Birth: 11.09.69 Elmshorn.

 

Where the hell is Elmshorn?, you might asked, wasn’t it all over the place that Göritz is from Hamburg? And why the hell is this guy born on September 11th? Well, Elmshorn is a small industrial town near Hamburg, for a long time only known for its (what a joke!) one whaling ship in the 19th century, Germany's largest oatmeal producer and its one world widely-known hometown hero: Wimbledon winner Michael Stich.

 

It’s curious, but I used to play tennis in the same club as Michael did for a couple of years, often on a neighbouring court. His pure stature – he’s as tall as myself, but was a far more talented tennis player even in my early teens – overshadowed every possibility of me becoming an important citizen of the town I was born. So I decided to take on writing.

 

And with that, deleting and overwriting became a far more important part of my life, than even Plato had in mind with his famous invective against us Poets/Liars/Writers. In fact, I became a deleter, once I quit Elmshorn after school. I had to. I moved to Hamburg, then to Moscow, then Paris, then Chicago, then New York, and many places in between. Places I did not leave many traces in, but which were very important to myself and became important for my writing. It came in handy that once I was asked where I’m from I could answer „Hamburg“, and everybody seemed to pat me on the shoulders, muttering "Sankt Pauli Girl", "Reeperbahn", "Hans Albers" or two or three encouraging lines about one of our local football teams. It was comforting. It felt right, like a reinvention, that I had suddenly chosen my home all by myself, and deleted my other life, my family, my small town upbringing, thereby reserving it for literature.

 

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Dear Matthias,

 

I read your mail about “deleting”. Your idea that writing is deleting is very impressive. I feel a kind of virus seems to live in my head. It erases my identity as a citizen, as a 39-year-old guy (what a gruesome age!), as a husband of a woman. I am rebooted as a writer. The cursor urges me to type something and I press any key, then magic start to work. But this would be common to writers in the world, I think.

 

In my case, “deleting” has another meaning. It's more practical and traumatic than yours. When I was ten years old, my father was in a military camp as a battalion commander. One day I was sleeping in a room with my mother, and it happened. My mother and I got carbon monoxide poisoning. The gas was leaked from a fireplace in the kitchen. Five or six hours later, we woke up from the coma. The doctor said we received high-pressure oxygen therapy. I felt nothing bad. My father ran to us in a hurry and gave bananas to me. Bananas were expensive at that time (it’s imported fruit!), and it made me happy. The next day, I went to school and studied with my friends. There seemed to be no problem for me.

 

Fifteen years later, when I started to write short stories and novels, I found I have no memories of my early youth. More shocking thing was that I hadn’t realized that before. Where had the memories gone and why didn’t I know that? I was embarrassed and distressed. I tried to recall the memories, but I failed. It was like shadow boxing with an eye-bandage.

 

Eventually, I began to suspect myself. Am I myself? How can I know that I am the person who was born in 1968 in Hwachon, Korea? Did some alien sneak in my brain at the accident? Am I the alien or the real self of mine? When I was a child, I don’t need the past. Like other young friends of mine, all my concern was the future and the present. For the writer, however, memory is essential. not a disposable beer can. I would be depressed for a while whenever I tried to write something about childhood and infancy. But I got to think that the accident might be a good fortune to me. Thanks to the accident, I am liberated from the hazardous Oedipus complex (if I had one!) and some traumas that I might have suffered. If so, I thought I could be a totally different kind of writer who never existed before. God bless carbon monoxide and the wet hard coal of the day!

 

For me, writing is not deleting. Instead, I can say that deleting laid a foundation for my writing. In my novels, characters don’t like to say the past. Their motto seems to be “Carpe diem”. It also became my motto. I write in order to make certain that I’m alive. Every moment I write, I felt the shadow of the forgotten memories. Even though I don’t know what it is, but I do know that it pushes me to write something. Sometimes I would think that death is similar to my forgotten memory. We know that it exists, but we don’t know what it is. Writing might be an ally when we fight with that dark fear of death.

 

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Dear Young-ha,

 

good night and take care. Hope to see you soon. Best, Matthias

 

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Dear Matthias,

I will go to Leizig March 14 for the book fair. If you go there, keep your eyes open. See you!! Best wishes, Young-ha