문학과 지성사

Unremarkably but steadily, our daily lives are carried on and scattered away.

The novel is told from three perspectives: “I,” a first-person narrator, and two other characters, Woo-kyung and Byung-joon. First is the story of "I," an aspiring author working on their father’s stories about their grandmother—trying, but failing, to get them right. Byung-joon, meanwhile, is in intensive care after a terrible accident. On the wall of the room where he lies is a world map dotted with the names of other patients in intensive care around the globe. The map serves as a reminder of their whereabouts—what city they are currently in or passing through.

Meanwhile, Byung-joon is visited by Woo-kyung, an ex-girlfriend who broke up with him five years ago. Woo-kyung has no idea how she ended up as Byung-joon’s emergency contact. She knew he was estranged from his family, but she herself hadn’t been in touch with him for years either. Woo-kyung comes to visit him every day—the man lying unconscious, “without a trace of personality, capability, malice, or pettiness”—unsure of her own motivations. While she “no longer felt as moved by him as before, it was not as if she had no feelings for him either.” Woo-kyung decides to spend the weekend using one of Byung-joon’s old maps to trace his steps, starting in a small neighborhood in Busan.

Headfirst, Slowly is the story of “those who drift away,” like roaming dots on a map, unsure of where they stand. They are not bothered if their trajectories never cross; for them, it is enough simply to exist in their own stories. Truth be told, it feels incongruous to throw around hefty words like “generation” or “era” in relation to Bak Solmay’s writing.

The characters in her novels live out their everyday lives, uninhibited by tense, place, or time. People and objects appear like shop signs or epitaphs, their memories serving as testimony to their personal histories and positions in time and space—all conveyed in clear sentences, remarkable for their “completely ordinary and level” quality. This is what marks Bak Solmay as a truly contemporary writer.