A review by glenncolerussell
The Cabinet by Un-su Kim

South Korean author Un-su Kim, born 1972

The Cabinet - mosaic novel containing elements of the absurd, fantastical , grotesque, the strange, freaky and kooky along with bits of science fiction, all orbiting at the far reaches of flaky weirdness - and that's mosaic novel as in composed of seemingly autonomous stories, but, upon closer inspection, all share themes and motifs that together form a cohesive, integral whole, most especially when the final chapter circles back to incorporate elements and threads from previous chapters.

Un-su Kim employs a three-part structure featuring a narrator by the name of Deok-geun Kong, a clerk in an unnamed research center. Kong begins by recounting the life of Ludger Sylbarious and then moves on to provide detail on what are called symptomers (oddities - more below), information he gleans from a secret cabinet containing 375 files. The novel's second part squeezes and torques everything in Part 1 as Kong becomes a more active player in the unfolding drama, a drama spiraling down into fear and repulsion. Part 3 of Kong's tale twists once again and the more we read, the more the title of this part, BOOBYTRAP, can be seen as disturbingly ironic since it will bring to mind a Venus flytrap with Kong taking on the role of fly.

Kong's job at the research center amounts to nothing more than logging in the institute's daily shipment of lab supplies, work that takes no more than ten minutes every day. He's free the remaining hours – the ultimate slacker job. However, Kong might be an ordinary kind of guy, a mediocre, a square but he isn't a slacker. He wants a little struggle in his life. Thus he sneaks into an area of the building generally off limits and discovers half-hidden cabinet 13 and reads through files containing bizarre transcripts and medical reports. All this leads Kong into a heap of trouble.

What's particularly fascinating and memorable in Kim's novel: Kong talking about what he found in Cabinet 13 and also Kong's account of Ludger Sylbaris where the clerk (and indirectly author Un-su Kim) leaven historical fact with generous helpings of fiction.

Oh, yes, Ludger Sylbarius, the prisoner who in Kong's version spent the last thirty years of his life writing a brutal history of Saint-Pierre while living in seclusion at the edge of a desert in Mexico. Kong's final reflection: “Then why, I wonder, after thirty years had the people of Saint-Pierre changed into monsters? What happened as Ludger Sylbaris walked endlessly through the labyrinth of his imagination? Why, Ludger Sylbaris, why?”

Are you serious, Kong? You just recounted how, at the tender age of sixteen, Ludger Sylbarius was locked away in a prison tower for twenty-four years, held prisoner on false charges of repeatedly sneaking into a convent to rape nuns, a ludicrous fabrication concocted because the teenager insulted a priest in public. Of course in Ludger Sylbarius' imagination the people of Saint-Pierre will be monsters living disgusting, stinking lives and walking around with degrading deformities - things like two penises, four testes, badger tails. What do you expect, Kong? Your words betrays a definite naivete. On top of this, your judgement that Ludger Sylbarius' life as a hermit farmer in Mexico was a miserable life amounts to nothing more than your own suffocating projection: just because you are easily bored with silence and solitude doesn't mean other people share your limitation.

What are symptomers? Kong provides ample examples: a London accountant drinks gasoline instead of water, in the last ten years even more gasoline than his BMW sedan; a Hong Kong resident eats nothing but glass; a guy in Australia snacks on steel, biting off bits of steel with his teeth as if enjoying a candy bar; a gal in Inner Mongolia eats more than a kilogram of dirt every day; in Finland, a man consumes 300 watt-hours of electricity for breakfast; a number of people have cactuses or grapevines growing from their fingers and others have lizard-like body parts, and still others can smell, taste, and see with their fingers.

Zeroing in on his own city of Seoul, Kong cites more of the freakish: one man grows a ginkgo tree from his pinky; individuals lose hours of the day as if time itself slides into a mysterious black hole; a man's life desire is to become a cat; people sleep for weeks or even months at a time (herein called torporers).

As readers we can ask: Where is all of this leading? At one point Kong reflects that our human remains will be put on display in a museum of some future species, assuming that future advanced species would show even a slight interest in humans; perhaps the beings of the future will use humans as a bad example, telling their children not to live like Homo sapiens, a truly pathetic species.

However, as we're reading, it becomes clear Kong is what some people refer to as a goober - and he seems to alternate between wide-eyed amazement and a dry retelling of events no matter how extreme. Above all else, Un-su Kim has given us a narrator with a unique voice, a narrator who at one point tells us about the symptomers:

"This is a story about a new species, one that has been hitherto considered an abomination, a disease, a form of madness. It is a story about people who have suffered from the side effects of that evolution. A story about people who have been ensnared in a powerful and nameless magical spell, unable to receive insurance benefits, proper treatment, or counseling. A story about people who have been physically and mentally devastated, and who have willingly or unwillingly lived a lonely and melancholic life away from the rest of the world. A story about people who - because they exist in an intolerant scientific world that brands anything that exists beyond its microscope as mysticism and heresy - must shut themselves in a cramped room to live a hard life, never having anyone to call for help."

When we finish the concluding chapter, would it be fair to consider Deok-geun Kong himself as one of the symptomers? A question to keep in mind while reading this highly unusual novel.