A Reminiscence
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Back in 1988, from June 13 to August 5, there was a gathering of 14 young scholars from various parts of the United States for a seminar on "American Cultural Criticism" in the University of Illinois at Chicago under the direction of Dr. Mark Krupnick. I was one of them. What made me a little different from the others was that I was the only foreigner who came thousands of miles across the Pacific from Seoul, Korea.
I was overjoyed at the news that I was chosen as a member of the seminar. There were several reasons for me to be particularly excited. My ego was immensely flattered to learn later that I was the first man in Korea ever selected for NEH (National Endowment for Humanities) program. And the timing of the seminar was perfect. It fell nicely into the two-month summer vacation of my university. And the place: Chicago, the "Stormy, husky, brawling, / City of the Big Shoulders," and the city of Al Capone, the legendary gangster, and of Sears Tower, the tallest building in the world. I felt I had become a child again who couldn't go to sleep before a school picnic.
There also was a sad reason for me to be pensive and even philosophical. This could be the best, but also most probably the last opportunity for me to be put into the special context of the American culture, and to be exposed to the rare atmosphere of academic life and activity in the United States . My age told me that.
To tell the truth, however, I was not an "Innocent Abroad." I had some experience with the United States and with the American people. I had been there 15 years before, and earned my M.A. in English at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. I knew how to approach them without much effort, how to join unobtrusively in their conversations, and ultimately survive among them. This does not mean that they are mean or hard people to get along with. On the contrary. Americans are much more frank, open, and generous than our people are; they are much less prejudiced, obstinate, and pretentious than we are. Futhermore, the persons I would meet in the seminar were all to be professors of humanities, not of computers.
My only concern before the seminar was how to save my "face" among the American friends as an oriental cultural representative. I did not have to necessarily be brilliant among them, but also I should not be remembered as a "nut" or a "weirdo" by them. I did not have to be conspicuous, but also I should not be conspicuous by keeping too low a profile. I could not contribute much to the seminar by talking much, but I should prove that I was not a dummy. In other words, I should try to give them or leave them an impression that the short guy from Korea was tolerable, if not indispensable; interesting, worthy of the money spent on me by the U.S. taxpayers. Americans are very generous people, but that they are very exact on money.
But, more than anything else, it was the people I would meet as individuals in the seminar that interested me most. It always thrills me to meet foreigners, and get acquainted with them, and to find that they have much more in common with me than I expect, although they look different, eat different foods, speak different languages, and live in a different style of houses. It is always the people I meet as individuals, not the tall buildings, nor fancy places, that really mean something genuine to me. Only through the individual contacts can we learn about the persons themselves, and also the culture in which they have been bred and nurtured.
Dr. Mark Krupnick, Director of the Seminar, was the first man I met. It was a real surprise and great honor to see him at O'Hare airport the day I arrived. He was kind enough to worry about my safety, a total stranger to that huge city, who arrived late at night all by myself. He took me in his car to the Guest Apartment where I was supposed to stay. I arrived late at night, and it seemed he himself did not know the place well. Having made some trials and errors late at night through the dismal and deserted Chicago back streets, we arrived at our destination safe and sound. He was soft in speaking and humble in manner all the time. He was never pretentious for his formidable academic background and achievements. Whenever I open his Lionel Trilling: and The Fate of Cultural Criticism, given to me by the author himself with his autograph, the honor and kindness he had done to me come to life with ever increasing vividness. Is he still teaching at University of Illinois? Is his office still on the 19th floor of that monstrous building called 'University Hall'?
Warren Harris was a young scholar of about 40 who shared the Guest Room 212 with me during the seminar. He was teaching at the Southwest Virginia College. I learned later that he had done his Ph.D. on T.S. Eliot at Northwestern University in Chicago. He seemed to know every nook and cranny of the city. For him Chicago was like a hometown, in a sense. From the night I arrived there to the last day of the seminar, I had to entirely depend upon him for my survival. I took the liberty of using his spoons, forks, knives, cups, dishes, and pans. He suffered all my improper appropriations of his property with tolerance, patience, and magnanimity, even with pleasure. He took me regularly to the 'Jewel' grocery store in his car, and he took me to almost all the famous cultural places and activities in Chicago during the seminar. He taught me how to make American pancakes and tuna sandwiches. He taught me how to use coin-operated laundry machines; all these throughly and systematically. He kept his room clean and tidy all the time. He wouldn't let me wash the dishes, because he was not satisfied with the quality of my work. He was not dramatic in his speech and manner, but he was never without charm and humor. His devotion to his wife and two young sons, Jeremy(8) and Colin(10), shown during their one-week visit to Chicago, was indeed exemplary and moving. He wasted nothing, not only his time but also paper towels. His diligence, temperance, and frugality shamed me a lot. Whenever I hear our people talk about Americans differently, as if they are all extravagant or something, I mutter to myself: "Not all. Look at Mr. Warren Harris!"
From the University of Michigan at Dearborn came Melita Schaum. I cannot remember her without recalling her beautiful large blue eyes and her waving blonde hair. She was so free and uninhibited. She freely asked a cigarette from Dr. Mark Krupnick, Director of the Seminar, at their first meeting. The title of her presentation in the seminar is still fresh with me: "H. L. Mencken and American Cultural Priapism." The word "priapism" was new to me, and I had to consult a dictionary. When I got the meaning, I was infinitely amused. I was not only struck by the aptness, the playfulness, and even the innocence of her metaphoric use of the word, but also by the reaction from the other seminar members. It seemed I was the only one in the seminar who was scandlized by the this word. They seemed to give it no more than the pathological meaning it originally has.
There was Jeffrey Segall from the University of California at Santa Barbra. From the beginning he was very thoughtful toward me. Once he took me to the baseball game between Chicago Cubs and New York Mets at the time-honored beautiful Wrigley ballpark, home of the Cubs. I remember him saying, "I can really feel democracy in America nowhere but in the ballpark." I thought that he was talking about the equality, the sense of being one, in the atmosphere that could be tangibly felt by the people gathered there. Literally they were one: young and old, men and women becoming one in cheering for their home-team. Unfortunately the home-team was losing. There arose a fist-fight between two spectators in front of me, which drew instantly a large crowd around them. Immediately after the incident, there was a wild roar and applause next to me from the spectators when a young man unfurled a placard which read: "New York fucks". Anyway, Cubs lost the game: 6 to 2.
Stephen Rinehardt from Westmar College in Iowa was a man of imposing physique with splendid beard and moustache. The moment I saw him he reminded me of the movie actor Orson Wells or Burle Ives. He spoke very fast, and I could not follow him well. I felt a little bit afraid to approach him at first. His questions in the seminar were sharp and pointed. It seemed he liked to challenge others. Later I came to exchange more conversations with him on American culture and politics in general, and I came to like him very much. He was so frank, to begin with. He told me many personal things about himself. He said he was 48 (same with me), divorced, and living alone. When we went to Seoul House, a Korean restaurant in Clark street, he complained that 'kimchi' was not hot enough for him. He was indeed a man of zest and gusto for life. He said he had been a taxi driver in Philadelphia for several years. He told me so many names of places in which had lived. Once he was in Europe in the airforce. He was one of the few who expressed deep regret as well as anger at the downing of an Iranian Airliner by mistake by the American warship. For me he seemed an embodiment of the American spirit come to life: free, independent, individualistic, constantly moving and wandering, seeking and questioning. I wonder how he is doing now. Especially I wonder whether his driving habit has changed since then. He was the most reckless driver I have ever seen or met.
During the seminar, even though it was a short period of time, everything happened that could happen to our life. Michael Davoras from Oakton College in Illinois bought his house and was happy and busy working on his new kitchen. William Lockwood from the University of Michigan at Flint had his 700$ bicycle stolen. Jeffrey and Melita fell in love. Deborah Wilson from the University of California at Irvine lost her job and looked very depressed, but soon got another one at the Illinois State University and resumed her cheerfulness. Jeffrey Folks from Tennessee Wesleyan College at Athens got ill and hat to go back home in the middle of the seminar. Jane Tumas-Serna changed her place of work from Berry College in Georgia to Hollins College in Virginia. She was very happy about her new place because she could teach there what she liked to teach: Mass Communication. Sohnya Sayres from Cooper Union in New York finished writing a book, a biography of Susan Sontag.
At the beginning I said that I was the only foreigner in the seminar. But as time went by, I realized there were many foreigners besides me. Americans are, strictly speaking, all foreigners to one another. The country is simply too big. You are greatly mistaken if you imagine that the farthest distance they live apart from each other is the distance between Seoul and Pusan. The State of Texas only is 9 times larger than our whole country. You cannot feel so close with a man who lives thousands of miles away, even though he speaks the same language with you. And look at the family names they have: Davoras, Folks, Harkins, Kivisto, Lockwood, Sayres, Tumas-Serna, Walhout, Wilson, Krupnick, Harris, Segall, Schaum, Rinehardt. Strangely enough, not one of our seminar members had the same family name with others. Suppose we had a gathering of the same number of people in our country. There surely would be 5 or 6 Kims and Lees, 2 or 3 Parks and Chois. For the Americans, I thought, family names denote not so much the families, as they literally do in our country, as the countries from which their fathers came. No one would have suspected or bothered to suspect if I had said that I was an American citizen during the seminar, if only I had changed my first name into John or Thomas or something. John Lee, how about that?
This foreignness in American people can be, I think, one of the sources of their typical tolerance. It seems that none of them are that sure of the things going on around them, and naturally they tend to tolerate and accept them rather than criticize and judge them as we often so cocksurely do. Italian table manners, for example, cannot be the same as the English or German ones, and when there is no agreement, one simple way out is to compromise: let it go as far as it is convenient, practical, not dangerous, and not harmful to others. They let others do what they like to do, even if they do not necessarily endorse or approve it.
There was one thing that I missed most in the United States during the seminar. In the constant talking with the American friends, I always felt that something was missing or lacking in the conversations. I did not realize what it was until I came back home. Gossiping. Yes, it was. I did not and could not have any opportunity of doing it during the seminar with anybody about anybody, even with Warren, my roommate. There was nothing like it in all the conversations and talkings I had with the American friends, something that required some depth of real intimacy, even the spirit of conspiracy. Without this seasoning, the dish of constant talking could not be so yummy. I think Americans are the only people on the face of the earth who are least affected by, and most free from the sin of gossiping. As a man born and bred in the land of gossips, and as a man who knew the taste of them, and who had practiced them all the time with considerable skill, I had to do without it for two solid months. That was the hardest thing for me to endure, not the absence of 'kimchi'.
In front of the Stevenson Hall where we had our seminar sessions, there was a stone sculpture resembling an elongated canoe. The title of the sculpture was 'Shallow Boat.' But not many people would probably have noticed its other name inscribed on the other side of the pedestal : 'Deep Well'. Whenever I passed it, I liked to compare our seminar to it. Yes, it was a boat, a small boat floating on the deep sea of learning. It was not a big warship equipped with all the sophisticated "modern" radar systems of fabulous literary theories, nor with the formidable manpower of "postmodern" academic big names. Our boat was small and modest in size, but it was manned by an extremely experienced skipper and 14 eager and robust rowmen. The skipper led the boat well, and each of us rowed hard with him. Some day, I think, I will be able to see the 'Shallow Boat' again, most probably as a tourist, but shall never, never be aboard the boat of the deep "Cultural Criticism" in which I rowed with the young, hearty, carefree American mariners again in my life. Where are you all? How are you doing? Answer me!
(January 2, 1992)
I was overjoyed at the news that I was chosen as a member of the seminar. There were several reasons for me to be particularly excited. My ego was immensely flattered to learn later that I was the first man in Korea ever selected for NEH (National Endowment for Humanities) program. And the timing of the seminar was perfect. It fell nicely into the two-month summer vacation of my university. And the place: Chicago, the "Stormy, husky, brawling, / City of the Big Shoulders," and the city of Al Capone, the legendary gangster, and of Sears Tower, the tallest building in the world. I felt I had become a child again who couldn't go to sleep before a school picnic.
There also was a sad reason for me to be pensive and even philosophical. This could be the best, but also most probably the last opportunity for me to be put into the special context of the American culture, and to be exposed to the rare atmosphere of academic life and activity in the United States . My age told me that.
To tell the truth, however, I was not an "Innocent Abroad." I had some experience with the United States and with the American people. I had been there 15 years before, and earned my M.A. in English at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. I knew how to approach them without much effort, how to join unobtrusively in their conversations, and ultimately survive among them. This does not mean that they are mean or hard people to get along with. On the contrary. Americans are much more frank, open, and generous than our people are; they are much less prejudiced, obstinate, and pretentious than we are. Futhermore, the persons I would meet in the seminar were all to be professors of humanities, not of computers.
My only concern before the seminar was how to save my "face" among the American friends as an oriental cultural representative. I did not have to necessarily be brilliant among them, but also I should not be remembered as a "nut" or a "weirdo" by them. I did not have to be conspicuous, but also I should not be conspicuous by keeping too low a profile. I could not contribute much to the seminar by talking much, but I should prove that I was not a dummy. In other words, I should try to give them or leave them an impression that the short guy from Korea was tolerable, if not indispensable; interesting, worthy of the money spent on me by the U.S. taxpayers. Americans are very generous people, but that they are very exact on money.
But, more than anything else, it was the people I would meet as individuals in the seminar that interested me most. It always thrills me to meet foreigners, and get acquainted with them, and to find that they have much more in common with me than I expect, although they look different, eat different foods, speak different languages, and live in a different style of houses. It is always the people I meet as individuals, not the tall buildings, nor fancy places, that really mean something genuine to me. Only through the individual contacts can we learn about the persons themselves, and also the culture in which they have been bred and nurtured.
Dr. Mark Krupnick, Director of the Seminar, was the first man I met. It was a real surprise and great honor to see him at O'Hare airport the day I arrived. He was kind enough to worry about my safety, a total stranger to that huge city, who arrived late at night all by myself. He took me in his car to the Guest Apartment where I was supposed to stay. I arrived late at night, and it seemed he himself did not know the place well. Having made some trials and errors late at night through the dismal and deserted Chicago back streets, we arrived at our destination safe and sound. He was soft in speaking and humble in manner all the time. He was never pretentious for his formidable academic background and achievements. Whenever I open his Lionel Trilling: and The Fate of Cultural Criticism, given to me by the author himself with his autograph, the honor and kindness he had done to me come to life with ever increasing vividness. Is he still teaching at University of Illinois? Is his office still on the 19th floor of that monstrous building called 'University Hall'?
Warren Harris was a young scholar of about 40 who shared the Guest Room 212 with me during the seminar. He was teaching at the Southwest Virginia College. I learned later that he had done his Ph.D. on T.S. Eliot at Northwestern University in Chicago. He seemed to know every nook and cranny of the city. For him Chicago was like a hometown, in a sense. From the night I arrived there to the last day of the seminar, I had to entirely depend upon him for my survival. I took the liberty of using his spoons, forks, knives, cups, dishes, and pans. He suffered all my improper appropriations of his property with tolerance, patience, and magnanimity, even with pleasure. He took me regularly to the 'Jewel' grocery store in his car, and he took me to almost all the famous cultural places and activities in Chicago during the seminar. He taught me how to make American pancakes and tuna sandwiches. He taught me how to use coin-operated laundry machines; all these throughly and systematically. He kept his room clean and tidy all the time. He wouldn't let me wash the dishes, because he was not satisfied with the quality of my work. He was not dramatic in his speech and manner, but he was never without charm and humor. His devotion to his wife and two young sons, Jeremy(8) and Colin(10), shown during their one-week visit to Chicago, was indeed exemplary and moving. He wasted nothing, not only his time but also paper towels. His diligence, temperance, and frugality shamed me a lot. Whenever I hear our people talk about Americans differently, as if they are all extravagant or something, I mutter to myself: "Not all. Look at Mr. Warren Harris!"
From the University of Michigan at Dearborn came Melita Schaum. I cannot remember her without recalling her beautiful large blue eyes and her waving blonde hair. She was so free and uninhibited. She freely asked a cigarette from Dr. Mark Krupnick, Director of the Seminar, at their first meeting. The title of her presentation in the seminar is still fresh with me: "H. L. Mencken and American Cultural Priapism." The word "priapism" was new to me, and I had to consult a dictionary. When I got the meaning, I was infinitely amused. I was not only struck by the aptness, the playfulness, and even the innocence of her metaphoric use of the word, but also by the reaction from the other seminar members. It seemed I was the only one in the seminar who was scandlized by the this word. They seemed to give it no more than the pathological meaning it originally has.
There was Jeffrey Segall from the University of California at Santa Barbra. From the beginning he was very thoughtful toward me. Once he took me to the baseball game between Chicago Cubs and New York Mets at the time-honored beautiful Wrigley ballpark, home of the Cubs. I remember him saying, "I can really feel democracy in America nowhere but in the ballpark." I thought that he was talking about the equality, the sense of being one, in the atmosphere that could be tangibly felt by the people gathered there. Literally they were one: young and old, men and women becoming one in cheering for their home-team. Unfortunately the home-team was losing. There arose a fist-fight between two spectators in front of me, which drew instantly a large crowd around them. Immediately after the incident, there was a wild roar and applause next to me from the spectators when a young man unfurled a placard which read: "New York fucks". Anyway, Cubs lost the game: 6 to 2.
Stephen Rinehardt from Westmar College in Iowa was a man of imposing physique with splendid beard and moustache. The moment I saw him he reminded me of the movie actor Orson Wells or Burle Ives. He spoke very fast, and I could not follow him well. I felt a little bit afraid to approach him at first. His questions in the seminar were sharp and pointed. It seemed he liked to challenge others. Later I came to exchange more conversations with him on American culture and politics in general, and I came to like him very much. He was so frank, to begin with. He told me many personal things about himself. He said he was 48 (same with me), divorced, and living alone. When we went to Seoul House, a Korean restaurant in Clark street, he complained that 'kimchi' was not hot enough for him. He was indeed a man of zest and gusto for life. He said he had been a taxi driver in Philadelphia for several years. He told me so many names of places in which had lived. Once he was in Europe in the airforce. He was one of the few who expressed deep regret as well as anger at the downing of an Iranian Airliner by mistake by the American warship. For me he seemed an embodiment of the American spirit come to life: free, independent, individualistic, constantly moving and wandering, seeking and questioning. I wonder how he is doing now. Especially I wonder whether his driving habit has changed since then. He was the most reckless driver I have ever seen or met.
During the seminar, even though it was a short period of time, everything happened that could happen to our life. Michael Davoras from Oakton College in Illinois bought his house and was happy and busy working on his new kitchen. William Lockwood from the University of Michigan at Flint had his 700$ bicycle stolen. Jeffrey and Melita fell in love. Deborah Wilson from the University of California at Irvine lost her job and looked very depressed, but soon got another one at the Illinois State University and resumed her cheerfulness. Jeffrey Folks from Tennessee Wesleyan College at Athens got ill and hat to go back home in the middle of the seminar. Jane Tumas-Serna changed her place of work from Berry College in Georgia to Hollins College in Virginia. She was very happy about her new place because she could teach there what she liked to teach: Mass Communication. Sohnya Sayres from Cooper Union in New York finished writing a book, a biography of Susan Sontag.
At the beginning I said that I was the only foreigner in the seminar. But as time went by, I realized there were many foreigners besides me. Americans are, strictly speaking, all foreigners to one another. The country is simply too big. You are greatly mistaken if you imagine that the farthest distance they live apart from each other is the distance between Seoul and Pusan. The State of Texas only is 9 times larger than our whole country. You cannot feel so close with a man who lives thousands of miles away, even though he speaks the same language with you. And look at the family names they have: Davoras, Folks, Harkins, Kivisto, Lockwood, Sayres, Tumas-Serna, Walhout, Wilson, Krupnick, Harris, Segall, Schaum, Rinehardt. Strangely enough, not one of our seminar members had the same family name with others. Suppose we had a gathering of the same number of people in our country. There surely would be 5 or 6 Kims and Lees, 2 or 3 Parks and Chois. For the Americans, I thought, family names denote not so much the families, as they literally do in our country, as the countries from which their fathers came. No one would have suspected or bothered to suspect if I had said that I was an American citizen during the seminar, if only I had changed my first name into John or Thomas or something. John Lee, how about that?
This foreignness in American people can be, I think, one of the sources of their typical tolerance. It seems that none of them are that sure of the things going on around them, and naturally they tend to tolerate and accept them rather than criticize and judge them as we often so cocksurely do. Italian table manners, for example, cannot be the same as the English or German ones, and when there is no agreement, one simple way out is to compromise: let it go as far as it is convenient, practical, not dangerous, and not harmful to others. They let others do what they like to do, even if they do not necessarily endorse or approve it.
There was one thing that I missed most in the United States during the seminar. In the constant talking with the American friends, I always felt that something was missing or lacking in the conversations. I did not realize what it was until I came back home. Gossiping. Yes, it was. I did not and could not have any opportunity of doing it during the seminar with anybody about anybody, even with Warren, my roommate. There was nothing like it in all the conversations and talkings I had with the American friends, something that required some depth of real intimacy, even the spirit of conspiracy. Without this seasoning, the dish of constant talking could not be so yummy. I think Americans are the only people on the face of the earth who are least affected by, and most free from the sin of gossiping. As a man born and bred in the land of gossips, and as a man who knew the taste of them, and who had practiced them all the time with considerable skill, I had to do without it for two solid months. That was the hardest thing for me to endure, not the absence of 'kimchi'.
In front of the Stevenson Hall where we had our seminar sessions, there was a stone sculpture resembling an elongated canoe. The title of the sculpture was 'Shallow Boat.' But not many people would probably have noticed its other name inscribed on the other side of the pedestal : 'Deep Well'. Whenever I passed it, I liked to compare our seminar to it. Yes, it was a boat, a small boat floating on the deep sea of learning. It was not a big warship equipped with all the sophisticated "modern" radar systems of fabulous literary theories, nor with the formidable manpower of "postmodern" academic big names. Our boat was small and modest in size, but it was manned by an extremely experienced skipper and 14 eager and robust rowmen. The skipper led the boat well, and each of us rowed hard with him. Some day, I think, I will be able to see the 'Shallow Boat' again, most probably as a tourist, but shall never, never be aboard the boat of the deep "Cultural Criticism" in which I rowed with the young, hearty, carefree American mariners again in my life. Where are you all? How are you doing? Answer me!
(January 2, 1992)
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