Lee chang-rae's Native Speaker

Lately I have been sorting out and attempting to sell or give away books that are in my collection that I have read but would most likely not read again.

One of them was Lee Chang-rae's Native Speaker.

Before I placed it in an envelope to sell it to a Amazon.com book buyer, I flipped through some of the underlined portions, which were underlined because they must have touched me in some way.

These include a description of Arirang, the Korean folk song.

Lee wrote that "like any good folk song it makes the voice of its singer sound lost, or forlorn, incomplete."

And one of the characters added: "Imagine, that that could be the spirit of an entire nation."

I cannot help but sigh at the vivid yet poignant description of Arirang being "lost", "forlorn" and "incomplete", and "the spirit of an entire nation."

Another character in Lee's novel said: "Koreans don't take their own lives, at least not from shame. My mother said to me once that suffering is the noblest art, the quieter the better. If you bite your lip and understand that this is the only world, you will persist and endure."