The modernologistic observation of the city, society, and humans by using various cafes and waitresses is a characteristic of Park Tae-won’s narratives. And especially noteworthy in this investigations of customs is the cohabitation of a cafe waitre...
The modernologistic observation of the city, society, and humans by using various cafes and waitresses is a characteristic of Park Tae-won’s narratives. And especially noteworthy in this investigations of customs is the cohabitation of a cafe waitress and a male rumpen. It implies a number of social problems and at the same time expresses the collapse of a certain era and ideology. In addition, “Mary” and “Peace Cafe” of 『Scenery of the Stream side(천변풍경)』 show an example of that downfall, implying a real waitress named Kim Il-song who was a movie star, and the real place called Peace Cafe in Seoul.
Meanwhile, Park Tae-won also writes many texts related to the coffee shops. The tea rooms mediate Park Tae-won’s own life and various aspects of modernity through daily life. Furthermore, the coffee shop is a place that makes Kubo sharply distinguish between snobs who order “garupis(Calpis)” of “obscene color” and Kubo’s “friends”. The fact that Kubo rejects Calpis and chooses “tea or coffee” is important in that it implies an attitude toward the war situation in which eventually coffee will be disappeared even in the hotel, and Kubo would be recommended for “garupis” that doesn’t suit his taste.
In this way, tea houses, cafes, and waitresses appearing in Park Tae-won literature have politics. Therefore, it is noteworthy that Kyoungseong Modernism is analyzing the “a cup of tea” that Kubo says while examining the “hidden politics” of Park Tae-won’s texts.
However, the problem of this book is that it gives great meaning to the years stamped on the coins without comparing the three texts of <One Day of Novelist Kubo(소설가 구보씨의 일일)>, which respectively suggest different years. Another problem is that, Kubo’s “tea” is viewed as cocoa, and Ishikawa Takuboku’s <ココアのひと匙> is translated as ‘one cup of cocoa’ rather than ‘one spoon of cocoa’.
In short, Kubo’s desire to “share a cup of tea and be in the same thought” is not limited to “frustrated anarchist politics”, that is, “same thought,” as the author of Kyoungseong Modernism says. More importantly, Kubo tried to share “a cup of tea”. In other words, at the “darkroom” of ‘Great East Asia’, where only “garupis” will remain, Kubo and his friends who share “personality, culture, and hobbies” tried not to lose the “one corner of a tea house” that treats only “coffee and tea”.