On The Great Korean Novel "The Cho-Sen"

The theme for book club this month was stuff read in high school, or school in general, so we chose from The Scarlet Letter and Chaim Potok's The Chosen and two more I can't remember easily enough. We, uh, chose The Chosen. After reading The Chosen I didn't understand what the point of it was, and I couldn't really imagine what a teenager was meant to take away from it.

My recollection of shit we read in school was that very little of it was enjoyable. Most were taut symbol-laden "thoughtful" books. With a lot of value-added stuff like history, diversity or whatever else. Freshman year I think I "read" Nectar in a Sieve. Sophomore year I think I "read" Things Fall Apart. Junior year's Crime and Punishment seemed less bad. But for the most part it was all so, so deadly. I think there's an article about this that Jen showed me. I resisted it at the time but I'm sure I was wrong.

I had the opportunity to ask a friend who teaches English in a middle/high school why they teach The Chosen in her school's eighth grade and she at first said it was a good way to introduce the idea of symbolism — the main character is injured in the eye by his antagonist-then-friend. He "sees" differently afterward; get it? "What about To Kill a Mockingbird," I asked, "I read that in eighth grade." That was taught in her school's seventh grade, she explained. (I guess they're too good for Where the Red Fern Grows?)

Admittedly, her other point–that kids were able to identify with the tension in the book's child-parent relationships–made a lot of sense. Still doesn't make the book any less boring.

Ultimately, I think most of us just viewed the book as being really weird, and esoteric even if you're familiar with Judaism. It's interesting in that it's set against the backdrop of WWII through the birth of the state of Israel. An interesting era, for sure, but novels are not eras.

All of which is not to say that Chosen is not entirely interesting — not true. There's an imperfect sort of anachronistic/fascinating example of respectability politics at the outset with the interest in playing baseball to show that Jews were good Americans. That deep dive into different Jewish groups in Jewish neighborhoods in war- and post-war New York City was interesting. Don't know that I needed to learn about those things during a Book Club, but they were interesting, in a sort of "interesting" way. And then there's the arcana of Judaism — a lot of it is hard to follow. And oh by the way — Gematria? I don't even know where to start.

Otherwise, I'm kind of scratching my head. It's clearly geared toward young adults yet it's stubbornly heady. And then there's the ending: the one character has a lousy relationship with his dad in part because his dad refuses to talk to him in order to teach him something about suffering. Fine, whatever, but when he's asked at the end of the book whether he'll do the same for his theoretical child he's like, "probably." Point being? And how would you teach that ending to a teenager? Don't get it.