“Valley of the Moon”
by Paul Yoon
from the July 3, 2023 issue of The New Yorker
The author of two novels and two short story collections, Paul Yoon has has been a critically acclaimed author from his earliest book, his 2009 short story collection Once the Shore. This is, I believe, his first story to appear in The New Yorker. I believe it will turn out to be a story from his forthcoming collection The Hive and the Honey.
Here is how it begins:
Two years later, he left the settlement.
He took the bus heading north and then hitchhiked on the back of a repurposed U.S. Army truck that was filled with others like him who all said the same thing: they were heading home. They all said this knowing that there wasn’t much left for them to go home to. Still, it felt good to say this to one another, to say without saying that they had survived, and as the truck made stops they exchanged cartons of cigarettes, small sacks of grain, shoelaces, pieces of cloth. Then they asked one another where home was and how far from the border they would be living. They asked what refugee settlement others had found themselves in or how many settlements and for how long or if they had been in one at all. They asked one another what they had done before the war, and they asked one another their names and how old they were.
Please feel welcome to comment on the story below!
I prefer to read a story before reading commentaries. Likewise, I prefer not to write comments with spoilers, unless spoilers have already been introduced into the discussion. However, to introduce this story and my issues with it, and entice others to comment, I must tell something, but no more than is often on an inner sleeve. So…
A South Korean soldier named Tongsu, after the war, says farewell to his fellow soldiers and retreats to his former home in a remote spot not far from the North Korean border. His parents and family are gone, presumably dead, and their small thatch-roofed farmhouse is abandoned and run down. He fixes it up, acquires some animals, and lives and farms there in almost complete, voluntary isolation. Occasionally, a tinker comes around to sell him things. An unexpected encounter with someone trying to reach the North Korean border haunts his future, and this seemed to be the central issue to be resolved somehow, for better or worse. But was it?
Next, two young orphans, Unsik and Eunhae, enter the picture and remain with Tongsu until suddenly, in the middle of the story, incited by an incident between Tongsu and Unsik, the third person focus shifts from Tongsu to Eunhae and leaves Tongsu and Unsik behind, their incident unresolved. Unsik and Eunhae had scarcely been developed as characters. There’s little more I can say without significant spoilers.
My central issue is this change of point of view. I read the New Yorker interview with author Paul Yoon in which he claims that while writing his first draft it suddenly seemed “natural” to shift the focus to Eunhae, so he “went with it”. He argued that there was no more to say about Tongsu, anyway (?!). He cited Alice Munro and William Trevor in defending this move. Well, I haven’t read all of either of these authors, but I don’t recall anything comparable in their work that upset my reading experience as this did. So, is Yoon a genius or a hack? Time for me to reread…
Hmm. Eunhae must have overheard this remark: “The moon rises and falls and shatters. And then it builds itself back up again.” What is the significance of this?
Why did Yoon move our focus away from Tongsu? Did he, through Eunhae, reveal anything more about Tongsu or otherwise meaningfully finish the story?
I have some thoughts on these questions, and I’d like to say more, but only if I find I’m not discussing it alone with myself.
Now that a new story by Paul Yoon, “War Dogs”, has appeared, I’m drawn back to this previous one. I’m hoping some of you will now come back and comment on it. I want to expand on what I said above. There may be a few slight spoilers:
In the author interview about “Valley of the Moon”, Paul Yoon tells us that in the middle of writing the story:
” …I blinked, and I was suddenly in Eunhae’s point of view, following her path and leaving Tongsu behind. I really embrace and cherish the surprises while drafting, so I took the leap and went with it. Looking back on it now, this pivot makes total sense to me, and I think it has to do with what I mentioned above about Tongsu retreating and vanishing into himself. It’s almost like his path had gone static, but I knew there was more story here, a lot more …”
Rereading the story recently, then listening to his reading, of it, I wanted to see whether I would better appreciate Yoon’s choice… It still bothers me. It strikes me as a lack of writing discipline, taking the easy way out when he didn’t immediately know how to complete the story representing Tongsu’s point of view.
How exactly does suddenly abandoning Tongsu and jumping into a character we hardly know make “total sense”? If Yong felt that Tongsu was “retreating and vanishing into himself”, he could have made that part of the story, rather than retreating from Tongsu, vanishing him from us, leaving us with only vague impressions.
Of course, as a writer, he is free to do as he chooses. But just because his mind suddenly took off in this direction doesn’t mean it “works” for the reader, at least by my sensibility. Yoon may have lost interest in Tongu, but I did not.
Eunhae’s adventures could better have been a sequel story, incoporating some reflection on her life with Tongsu and Unsik, and concluding with her return “home”, as it did in “Valley of the Moon”. I also don’t think Yoon’s narrative provided us any way to make sense out of Unsik and Eunhae suddenly leaving separately without any apparent consideration for reuniting, even if only temporarily. Would they, or at least Unsik, really have willfully ended their lifelong connection just because of what Tongsu did? Whatever the case, yet another story could follow Unsik…
Picture this: Here I am, in person, telling the story of Tongsu, and we come to a dramatic moment which is surely going to have a profound effect on his life, and suddenly I say, “well, enough about Tongsu, let’s follow the girl, I’m more interested in her, aren’t you?…” and so we follow her and the audience eventually gets a bit anxious and someone says, “but what about Tongsu, what happened to him?” “Well, okay, let’s give him a call, yes, Eunhae and he have a nice chat on the phone…”
This *almost makes sense, doesn’t it? The difference is here I’m a body telling a story, maybe I’m even making it up as I go. In the printed short story, the narrator is disembodied, a pov, hovering in the consciousness of Tongsu, until….
So, why does Yoon’s pov change bother me so much? Maybe because he as the writer/narrator has conspicuously insinuated himself into the story. We are not only suddenly jumping into Eunhae’s pov, we are now effectively joining the author at his desk deciding to do just that, and seeming not to care about Tongsu anymore—but without revealing why, unless/until we read his later explanation apart from the story. It turns almost into some kind of metafiction—a writing method I actually do like, when it is done creatively; but this seem to me more a flaw than an effective example, .
Maybe I’m still missing something. I’d love to read other readers’ views on this. Does anyone like Yoon’s choice here?
Other than this complaint, I love Yoon’s writing. I wholly appreciated his recent story, “War Dogs”. I’ve just ordered his last two collections through eBay. Reviews, awards, make them sound great! I’m hopelessly susceptible….