Lee Oi-soo’s Haa-ak Haa-ak: How a Writer Gets By

Even in later life, Lee Oi-soo kept up a conversation with readers decades younger than himself. He was happy to use their slang. Sometimes he even supplied the words they would use.

People called him an eccentric, a description he embraced on the talk show Knee-Drop Guru. He joked that in Korea, people warn aspiring artists they will be cold and hungry. He had managed to write for thirty years and keep his family fed. What could be more eccentric than that?

Haa-ak Haa-ak, or Lee Oi-soo’s Guide to Getting By

Lee’s reputation as an eccentric went hand in hand with a knack for hearing how people actually spoke. That ear gave his essays a way of catching the mood of the moment.

The book caused a stir when it came out in 2008. Its title, Haa-ak Haa-ak, was already going around the Korean internet as a written sound, like a pant or gasp.

The same informal language runs through the book. Some readers liked seeing the vocabulary of the internet make its way into print. Others were put off by it.

The Ease of Reading Lee Oi-soo

What I remember most is the pleasure of opening the book and settling into his voice. The humor is small and frequent. A line makes you smile, and a few pages later another catches you off guard.

The subjects change from one piece to the next. It feels as though he kept a notebook of passing thoughts until there were enough to make a book. One piece grumbles about the world, another offers hope, another has room for loneliness. He allows them all to be funny.

“If You Don’t Know the Taste of Words, You Can’t Give Them Flavor”

That is the line that stayed with me. You learn to appreciate a cut of meat by eating it. Perhaps you learn how to make a sentence work by reading enough good ones.

I have made a habit of reading widely and writing down what I find. This review is one small part of that habit.

I try to give a sentence time to register. There is a difference between swallowing a bite and chewing it long enough to know how it tastes.

Reading Lee, I felt I was borrowing a novelist’s eyes. Someone else can look at the same thing and describe it in a way that would never have occurred to me. The precise details and unexpected comparisons are the passages I come back to.

“A Turtle With a Dream Does Not Tire”

That line from another book stayed with me too. There is something to be said for making slow progress at a pace you can live with. Looking around to see who has gone farther can make you hurry when you could simply take the next step.

Lee had his own way of getting by. I will have to find mine.

There is a warmth to Lee’s writing that I often miss after closing the book. It comes through in the way he kept talking with ordinary readers. Literature can make a place for the words people are saying right now, as his did.

Book Information

Haa-ak Haa-ak: Lee Oi-soo’s Guide to Getting By

Author

Lee Oi-soo

Publication date

March 30, 2008

ISBN-13

9788973379507

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