[Current & Culture]The Moments of "Firsts"

The one-person publishing company I run, Jeongmiso, has two publishing policies. One is to support personal confessions, and the other is to prioritize publishing someone’s first book whenever possible. People are polished and strengthened by discovering and transcribing the words engraved on their own bodies. I believe that these individuals, even if just a little, change the world. Over the course of publishing several books, I have encountered many first moments of others. The author of the upcoming book next week, Reading Gym Clothes in the Morning, is also publishing their first book. He is a teacher in his 30s, and after receiving the manuscript, he says he has been so excited that he keeps looking at the book. Seeing him reminds me of my own first moment a few years ago.

It was October 2000. At eighteen years old, I stood at the new releases shelf in Kyobo Bookstore in Gwanghwamun, looking at my first book. My father once came with me to the Kyobo Bookstore in Gwanghwamun and said, “Minseop, if a book isn’t here, it doesn’t exist in this world.” My father was a man with very strict standards. Beyond meaning a place with many books, it probably also meant that if a book wasn’t here, it wasn’t really a book. Looking at my book on the shelf, I thought of my father and also remembered my hunched figure, constantly writing on PC communication boards and internet forums, wanting to become a writer.

It was probably the most uplifting moment in the life of an eighteen-year-old high school student. The illustrations in that book were drawn by my friend. We were both eighteen, and he was my first love. We had many similarities, but I remember the thing we resembled most was each other’s language. When talking with him, our words always overlapped. I lightly thought that maybe everyone in the world spoke similarly, but much later I realized that was truly a miraculous thing. Like first love and first snow, the prefix “first-” remains a lifelong memory. Clumsy, tender, and endlessly lovable. Someone’s first book is the same. There probably isn’t anything as lovable and embarrassing as that. You want to boast about it to everyone but don’t want to show it to anyone. Even after that, I often visited the new releases shelf at large bookstores. Just seeing my book there was enough, and when someone started reading my book, I would anxiously watch them nearby. It felt like being the beggar in Pi Cheon-deuk’s novel Eunjeonhanip. “Please, please take a look at whether this book is okay.” But I never saw anyone actually buy the book. When they put the book down, my heart sank like a crumpled book. People wandering the new releases shelf at large bookstores might be the authors of one of the books placed there without even knowing it.

After the excitement of the first wears off, a forgotten feeling suddenly resurfaces. Why did I start this work in the first place? A first book contains all the language a person has brought. It is based on that to take one step further. The teacher publishing his first book says he wants to continue being someone who reads the hearts of students at the school gate. The title Reading Gym Clothes comes from what he said: “Students who cannot receive proper care end up wearing crumpled gym clothes. Reading that heart is my job as the head of student affairs.” He is making bookmarks to give to his students. On them, he writes, “Wherever you are and whatever you do, I will stand firmly as your teacher.” I support his confession to lead this world to a slightly better place. Isn’t some first moment of yours also pulling this world somewhere?

Kim Minseop, Social and Cultural Critic