쑥쑥 TOPIK 한국어어휘 고급

모든 읽은 책이ㅔ 대해서 글 써야겠다는 목표에 할말이 별로 없어도 이 책에 대한 글도 쓰겠다.  이렇게 어희 목록을 바탕으로 학습 하는 게효과 없는지 나도 알고 있다.  왜 이렇게 시간 낭비 했을까?  여기 들어간 1500 단어를 50일안에 누가 습득 할 수 있다?  첫쪽을 다시 보니, 몇 게월전 배워본 30 단어 중에 5게 아직 기억이 돼.  난 언어학습 로봇 아니니까.

Tracy Letts: August: Osage County

If you had asked me to make a series of suppositions about the author of this gripping script, I feel that I would have done pretty well.  Both the writer and the story reveal themselves with every line, and I feel like I cheated myself out of the opportunity to be smug by looking Letts up before writing my predictions down.  Naturally, Letts is an actor.  This script is an actors' showcase in all of the best ways.  It manages to have a reason to exist outside of itself, unlike so many modern American theatrical "classics" (basically every script I read in college, but the most ghastly example I can think of is Margulies' Dinner with Friends), resulting in something like a terrarium, where the audience just observes the actors, and is expected to marvel at how lifelike they are.

But it's more specific than that.  It's not just that this script was written by an actor, but by a very certain type of highly skilled actor, for whom every line is its' own story.  The ghosts of Edward Albee and Anton Chekov are on every page, and even more so on the second reading.  I flatter myself by imagining that I could have predicted that Letts was not only an actor, but one who specializes in the works of those playwrights, as indeed he does.  Osage County is no less than a modern Desire Under the Elms, so rawly and honestly American. 

But one thing did surprise me about Letts, when I did a little research.  He's a man.  Perhaps even more than the three playwrights to whom I've compared him above, he has created women who are so true that I assumed Tracy was a woman's name.   I was so gobsmacked by this script, that I couldn't sleep until I had not only finished it, but watched the movie.  Sadly, the edges seem purposefully filed down in the screen adaptation, but even a taste of this experience was enough to make me resent my entire ancestry.  Perhaps it's best that I don't have a chance to see it on stage.

Stagecoach

Often when watching older films, we find ourselves spoiled by the fact that whatever is about to happen on the screen, we've seen it before.  Everything that was once shocking and innovative, is now de rigeur, and we know, often down to the subtlest of character moments, how "this" is all going to play out.  Naturally, I went in to this 80 year old movie expecting to see where characters and scenes of which we've since seen a thousand versions were born.  I was not disappointed on that count.

But in a strange way, I was reverse surprised--unspoiled?--by the movies I had seen before.  Specifically Tarantino's Hateful Eight, which is based on what seems to be just the first ten minutes of Stagecoach, but also every other "eight strangers in a box" movie, had conditioned me to expect certain things: a hidden past, a sudden betrayal, a secret identity, some such "twist" is absolutely necessary in these movies.  So I waited until the last scene, still expecting Mr. Peacock to be a German spy, or Mr. Hatfield to be the child's actual father, etc..  But there was no such gimmick forthcoming.  As with anything that goes on for more than a few seasons, cinema's continued popularity is dependent on its ability to surprise us, and to that end is inventing ever more shocking spectacles and grand reversals.  But there was a time when all that was necessary was a solid script, nuanced performances, and an eye for scenery.

Catullus: Complete Poems.

Whether we have this work preserved to us by the idiosyncrasies of fate, of time, or merely of human nature matters not.  They are all equally fickle, and as likely to bring us a Catullus as a Plutarch.  The former, though seemingly adored among scholars of Latin, does not by my measure seem to deserve his reputation.  Those same scholars would argue that my appreciation for his verse is limited by my native English, but in doing so they would seem to be admitting that the form of his lines is their chief, if not only, virtue.  The content of those lines simply cannot stand on its own merit, and this reader cannot shake the impression that Catullus was his day's equivalent of Logan Paul.  He offers nothing in particular of value, but does so in such an entertainingly brazen way that his audience is mesmerized.  No doubt those who appreciate Latin will point to his masterful use of the language, but I reassert that without something underneath the language to recommend it, fate need not have bothered to preserve it for us.

박완서: 그 많던 싱아는 누가 다 먹었을까?

그 남자랑아무 연락한 지 벌써 6년 됐네.  그 잘 생긴, 말투가 부드러운, 나에 흥미가 없는; 박완서 소설가 좋아한다고했기 때문에 내가 이 책을 구매했던, 그 남자.  책을 구매하고 재목도 해석이 안 된 현실은, 나에게 그남자랑 연결이 안 된다는 징조엿나봐.

6년 그 후, 마침네 책을 읽어끝냈다.  그 때와 마찬가지로 홀로 살고 있다. 불운한 관계를 아직도 쫓는다.  그래도, 박완서와 비슷하게, 혼잣삶에 작아도 증언하겠다.