Happy day. The Korean version of Escape Everything! arrives in the post. It’s beautiful!
There’s some colour ink inside — purple — for headings, and some new ornaments in the shape of manacles and whatnot.
It’s also amusing to see snippets of original English amongst the Hangul text. It’s like when you listen to Gaelic radio and your ears prick up at something like, “Is toigh leam a bhith a ’seinn… Sega Megadrive.”
The English bits largely refer to people’s names and the titles of books and films so it builds up into a litany of cultural references. It also seems to include English concepts for which there is no Korean translation. An example that leaps off the page is “sexual opportunism.” They don’t know what they’re missing.
There’s often an asterisk next to a name or title to explain the context to the Korean reader: what The Inbetweeners is and who Mark E. Smith and Giant Haystacks might be. Those without an asterisk include Tom Waits, Jim Jarmusch and Donald Trump.
(I wish I hadn’t mentioned Trump in my book, by the way, but I wrote it before his presidency if you can imagine such a time, and I only cited him as an example of a celebrity dirtbag.)
Anyway. Yes. I am rather beside myself today — as an egomaniac but also as a bibliophile. I didn’t know the book would be treated so nicely. A wonderful surprise.
Why is Giant Haystacks name a plural? If he resembled anything at all, it was a singular giant haystack.
Well, one giant haystack per rippling limb is my read on it. Then again, it’s not Big Daddies, is it? Good Lord, I think you’re onto something.