Novelist Running Through Time - Chapter 171



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The Novelist Who Leapt Through Time Episode 171

In the dark, my body slowly shakes.

Starting with the shaking, my senses came back one by one. The sound of a car engine, the musty smell of air freshener, and Ki-hoon Ma holding the steering wheel next to him.

“Uh, are you awake?”

Apparently, he fell asleep in the passenger seat.

I opened my eyes and stretched to soothe my sore body. A squeak came out of her mouth.

He supplied the insufficient oxygen with a single yawn and briefly shared his thoughts on the short sleep in the passenger seat.

“ah… “I had a good night’s sleep.”

It was an amazing thing.

It’s strange to be able to sleep comfortably in an uncomfortable passenger seat, but novice manager Ki-hoon Ma’s driving skills are at a level that turns the passenger seat into a roller coaster.

I leaned over with a curious feeling and saw that the car was barely shaking. As I watched the car sliding smoothly across the ice, I realized that Magi-hoon’s driving skills had improved.

If this were a professional achievement, it would be an achievement.

I said a word of congratulations.

“Brother, your driving has improved a lot.”

“what? “What about this surprise compliment?”

Suddenly, when I saw Ki-hoon Mag’s driving skills, I felt the passage of time again. Now, Kihoon Magi has become a new manager who is good at driving in his own way, rather than a chick manager who bleats.

Lim Yang-wook, the underground parking lot owner, became a manager who was treated like an executive, Baek Seol, a new editor, became the president of Baekhak Bookstore, and Kim Byeol, an old man, became Kim Byeol, a space star.

What have I become?

A third-year student graduating from middle school soon? Or a fairly famous writer? well. These are all meaningless titles. It’s not something I achieved through my own efforts…

So, in the end, it is a book.

Write, write a novel, write a book, and build a tower by stacking each book.

That’s what I have to do.

But sometimes I wonder what lies at the end of the tower.

You never know.

So, like an office worker who has to go to work right away and do something, I should finish the tasks at hand one by one. Sometimes it feels like being a novelist is not a very different profession from an office worker.

In that sense, what you have to do today can be called a kind of ‘business trip.’

“Inseop, we have arrived.”

Beyond the windshield, Incheon Airport, surrounded by a hazy morning fog, was slowly revealing itself.

EP 10 – Starry Sky

Back to the Future, Doctor Who, Re: Life in Another World Starting from Zero (Min Hyo-chan’s recommended book), etc…

As an ordinary time traveler with a more sentimental, swarthy, and annoying personality than appears in other media, I have already defined my life.

My life is not two disconnected lives, but one continuous life.

Therefore, time is not in the form of lines and planes, but in the form of memories, and strictly speaking, the term ‘past life’, which is sometimes muttered, is also correctly expressed as ‘past’.

However, the ironic whirlpool of fate often made me, a time traveler, bored with commonplace and cliché things…

The ‘cliche’ is as follows.

Ah – you don’t know?

This…

‘A child writes.’

“WOOOOOOW – !!!!!”

As soon as I recovered from the fatigue of the 10-hour flight in my California hotel room, I was dragged around by Baekhak Bookstore, an evil black corporation, and pretended to be a K-genius boy.

Then, people with light skin from America, the world’s most powerful country, came rushing in, pointing their fingers at the young South Korean writer and being amazed.

I felt like a strange monkey on a circus stage.

Since I am not good at English, monkey keeper Lim Yang-wook was in charge of general communication.

“It’s truly amazing that such a young author has written so many books. “Is there any other secret?”

“Rather than having any skills… It seems close to talent. “From the moment I first met this guy, he was already a writer.”

“It’s talent! What a blessing. “But there must be a reason why you first picked up a pen. Can I ask you about that?”

Of course, it was really Lim Yang-wook in the middle of Times Square-

‘There is something fascinating to see here!’

‘Everyone, come and pat the head of the child who writes!’

‘One dollar at a time!’

-I didn’t do business like this.

We were meeting a reporter at a cafe near the hotel, and we continued the interview calmly while sipping Americano, a traditional American soup.

Of course, I also actively cooperated in the interview with Mr. Baek, a ‘professional interpreter’ dispatched from Baekhak Bookstore.

“The first time I started writing was… It was because I liked books. There are no special hobbies at the orphanage. It’s not like we don’t have TVs or computers, but those things are for the older brothers and sisters. So he was pushed into a corner of the room and read a book. Even now that I think about it, it’s kind of funny that he started his first reading that way. “Somehow, that’s how I developed a relationship with books.”

The interviewer smiled thoughtfully and wrote down my answers on his laptop. He also expressed sympathy and comfort about my past and even expressed admiration for how well I overcame the difficulties. He was a very kind reporter.

Of course, there are countless journalists who say this and get scolded in the pages of newspapers, but I did not doubt this reporter’s ‘good intentions’.

That’s because he was a reporter hired by Collins Press.

So even if I cursed at this reporter, the interview article would come out like an angel.

In other words, this entire process is a kind of formality. This was an advertisement, not an interview.

So, on the one hand, it could be said to be an act of soliciting customers.

Just before starting the magic monkey business, shouting ‘here is a magic monkey’…

It’s just a more sophisticated method.

* * *

“Hey, then when singers sing on TV, is it ‘There’s a miraculous parrot here’?”

“oh… … ”

“What is ‘oh-’ you bastard?”

Takkong-

Lim Yang-wook’s honey balm exploded.

I fell on the table with a thud, like a person whose head had been broken.

It’s like imitating someone who died so bitterly that they couldn’t even close their eyes.

“Hey, don’t play dead. “People around me look at me strangely.”

“… … ”

“It looks like a real corpse… Wake up! “You dead man!”

Cook – When Lim Yang-wook stabbed my side, life came back to my body.

I flinched from the tickling and got up as if nothing had happened.

Lim Yang-wook, who was handed two cups of cola by a waiter who happened to be approaching, handed me one and continued speaking.

“Anyway, you see everything in the world too structurally. But there is no warmth in the system. “How long are you going to live like that?”

“Useup… … ”

“Let’s change our analogy a bit. Instead of telling ugly stories about circus monkeys or something, how about a Korean Wave evangelist who spreads K-literature to the faraway American lands?”

“My novel is not national literature?”

“It’s not that K-literature is good, it’s that the writers are good, so you’re asking me to put a K on it, right? Yes, you did well. Keep living like that… joy!”

okay. I will continue to live like this.

Can not help it.

Money, fame, popularity… This is like sour grapes to me.

Not only because I experienced time travel, but also because I lived the life of a fox who had never tasted the sweetness of grapes in my life, I had no choice but to mutter that those were ‘sour grapes.’

So even now that I can eat grapes in abundance, they still taste sour to me. The moment I say that these grapes are sweet, I feel like I am denying my past self…

It’s kind of a complex.

It could be said to be similar to Lim Yang-wook who says, ‘College and that kind of thing is not that big of a deal.’

If I told him this analogy, Lim Yang-wook would understand how I felt, but I kept a significant silence because I didn’t want to shatter the handsome middle-aged man’s heart.

Lim Yang-wook, who was drinking cola like beer with french fries, glared at me.

“What you looking at?”

“Manager Lim.”

“That’s an unpleasant look… … “You cursed at me in your mind, right?”

“It looks like Gungye.”

Lim Yang-wook, who was grabbing me by the collar and shaking my head, spoke in a sly tone, fearing that I might be a middle-aged man with a touch of sensibility.

“Well, if it’s really that hard, just tell me. I’ll adjust your schedule… ”

“It’s not that difficult.”

“Then why were you complaining?!”

In that way, I tormented Yangwook Lim a bit, relieved my stress, and continued my schedule safely.

However, as my schedule in the U.S. continued, I began to notice some pretty interesting things…

It was the fact that there was more interest in Baek Seol and Gu Yuna than expected.

* * *

Among Baekhak Bookstore’s employees, there were (naturally) those who regarded Baekseol’s title of ‘The Booker International Nominee’ as a bubble.

Baekseol’s reputation as a translator is overestimated.

– Snow White? Booker Prize nominee?

– But he’s never actually won the Booker Prize, right?

– Now, it’s trash.

There are various reasons why this story started floating around. Like being more loyal to the vice president than the president, hating Baek Do-hyun’s scarecrow, Baek Seol, or when Baek Seol manually changed the water purifier bottle, a spark flew out and the boss scolded him until he was reduced to dust…

In any case, not all employees could defend their president to the death, so it was natural for various stories to arise.

However, the historical evidence for this claim itself is clearly wrong.

The Booker Prize is not a bubble.

The Booker Prize is one of the few literary prizes in the world, and depending on one’s perspective, some say it is a better literary prize than the Nobel Prize in Literature because it reflects readers’ opinions in the selection process.

Therefore, even if you did not win an award, being selected as a candidate functions as a kind of ‘award history’. It is not for nothing that the candidates are divided into long list and short list.

In particular, the Booker Prize is a literary award originally based on the English-speaking world, and the ‘Booker International’, which targets overseas literature, also honors translators.

Therefore, Baekseol, who was on the ‘Booker International Long List’, was a translator with an international reputation even if he took off the title of ‘Baekhak Bookstore President’.

Such a ‘renowned translator’,

He is the head of a large publishing company,

A chaebol?

Then, Baek Seol now gets the title of ‘celebrity’.

“CEO Baek! Please just accept one question!”

“Do you have any plans to translate works other than those by literary authors? In particular, do you have any plans to translate American novels into Korean?”

“Please tell me your SNS ID! You say you don’t? why?”

“Now, wait a minute… !”

Celeb Baek Seol instantly attracted media attention.

Although I am a celebrity, I also benefit from the fact that Collins Press secretly collected issues. This is the passionate love of Okdae University President Collins.

Baek Sul herself did not particularly want to be popular, but in the eyes of others, she was a typical Paris Hilton-type talent who tried to gain wealth and fame through her reputation and pedigree.

Anyway, in the United States, the attribute is a traditional stereotype like a hearty soup.

Examples include the original soup restaurant owner Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and Donald Trump.

In particular, the last example gained cult popularity by adding the attribute.

Wouldn’t it be more effective to make appropriate variations rather than just follow the original cliche?

So Baek Seol, with the added attributes of and , was a very attractive character.

Baekseol received cheers from people who were passionate about her ‘differentiation’, like a scene-stealing supporting character of color who was introduced around season 3 of a popular American drama.

Of course, I’ve heard ignorant Westerners who don’t know how to age Asians say that they look like they’re 17.

“I-I’m not seventeen!”

“Really?! “Then how old are you?”

“Well, that’s… … !”

Baek Seol (translator, 29) is afraid of her approaching 30s.

In any case, it was not unusual for Americans to be enthusiastic about , who was nominated for the Booker Prize.

Baek Seol has plenty of reasons for the American media to pay attention.

On the other hand, Gu Yuna did not have much of a reason to do so.

There is only one.

But that one was enough.

“Is the story true that she is the daughter of novelist Koo Hak-jun?!”

“… … ”

* * *

The world of media play is wide and deep. This is especially true in an era where the scope of public opinion beyond the reach of established media has expanded due to the development of SNS.

The size, shape, and complexity of public opinion…

The public mind has long been a ‘world of uncertainty’, like Mr. Schrödinger’s cat box, which likes to torment animals.

This is why local expertise is needed for accurate media play.

Isn’t it important to understand the geography and culture of the region, whether it’s military operations or media play?

Therefore, the ‘Baekhak Bookstore style’ media play, which manipulates the criticism world based on strong connections in the established literary circles and dominates the mass media by carpet bombing affiliates, does not work in the United States.

In California, there are no professional writers loyal to Baekhak Bookstore, and there are no reliable affiliates who will rush to Baekhak Bookstore’s buster call.

Therefore, it was Collins Press, a California-based publishing company, that took operational control of U.S. activities.

And Collins Press, which took on the role of control tower, began to dominate social media.

Articles and advertisements can be solved with money, but SNS cannot be solved with money.

Unlike Koreans, who happily ignore comments even when they are open, strict Americans ask questions about personal information and public opinion manipulation.

Therefore, Collins Press mobilized ‘celebrities’.

Bringing in the power of celebrities who can provide a powerful voice for California communities and the nation as a whole.

That was Collins Press’ media play strategy.

“These young people wrote novels?! This is truly amazing! Viewers will be very surprised!”

“The fact that excessive development and technological advancement alienates humanity is a self-evident fact that can be known even with the wisdom of a young child. Everyone who participated in this reading club knows that… ”

“I can’t believe Koo Hak-jun’s daughter debuted so quickly! Did she get that talent from her father? “What do you think, Miss Gu Yuna?”

The SNS-centered strategy is a way to directly contact the public. And the public is attracted to things that are stimulating, honest, and easy.

Therefore, Collins Press promoted the author rather than the novel, focused on issues, excluded professional stories, and even tied it to politics.

“… … “Why don’t we talk about novels?”

The reason why this question came out of Gu Yuna’s mouth was,

Perhaps it was natural.