Pachinko (original notes from February 2017)
I was very interested to see how this exercise would play out with Pachinko for two reasons. First, of course, is the timing – I reread Pachinko within two years and I suspected I might discover my notes hadn’t changed much during the relatively short intervening period. The second reason was that I took the book very seriously the first time I read it and therefore thought about it a great deal. Given all this effort, I wondered if I had left myself with room for any fresh insight to note during my reread.
The difference in my notes was subtle but significant. I noticed that my first set of notes described the book with a very wide lens, focusing on larger structures such as industry, religion, or society. In short, these notes imply I read the book at arm’s length and suggest I interpreted Pachinko with a certain sense of inevitability as the characters acted out roles imposed on them by forces far beyond their control. My second set of notes differed in how it was based on the day-to-day activity of the book’s characters. These notes suggest that I saw agency, empowerment, and purpose where I had initially seen only destiny. To put it another way, I think in my reread I interpreted the story with greater empathy because I understood the alternatives to every decision and recognized the strain these choices placed on the characters.
Here’s an example – in the first set, I noted that ‘insurance is a way to make money from fear, loneliness, and chance’. It’s a thought that casts Pachinko’s poor, fearful, and lonely characters as inevitable pawns caught on the wealthy man’s chessboard. My second set expanded the thought – ‘insurance and gambling are chance industries driven by their customer’s fear and loneliness’. It’s undoubtedly the same concept as before but there is added nuance here because the note places insurance alongside the ostracized industry in which some of Pachinko’s main characters ‘choose’ to play prominent roles. The comparison underscores the constant tension felt throughout the book by the main characters between maintaining unity through their group identity and pursuing individual ambitions at the risk of isolation and exile from that group (1).
The price for insurance, like for a turn in the pachinko parlor, is set by whoever has the means to fund the payouts. These people do not sit alongside their customers and share their same concerns. Rather, they devise products that appeal to those whose fears are driven at least in part by isolation from a larger community. The courage required to walk away from these glittering offerings takes more than individual resolve – it requires the strength of a group, for if the group can walk away from the table then the owner loses the means to fund the game. It is this very form of strength that Pachinko’s main characters tried to maintain despite the many setbacks and challenges they faced throughout Min Jin Lee’s multi-generational epic.
Footnotes
1. Of course, the downside here is the size of the payout…
I thought this small change in my note about insurance demonstrated a larger shift in how I reread the book. I’m not sure exactly what caused me to read the book differently this time. One possibility is that in the intervening period I read another of Lee’s books, Free Food For Millionaires, and read about a system among the book’s Korean-American characters that resembled an unofficial form of insurance. In this system, each participant contributed a regular sum that was then aggregated and awarded to one member of the group in a regular rotation. This is a version of insurance with one exception – the unity of the group enables it to share the profit rather than send it to an outside administrator.
