Introduction

Summary

THIS BOOK IS not an autobiography; I shudder at the thought for I am a private man. Nor is it a novel though much of the material is presented in story form; for I am not the flamboyant novel-writing type either. It is something in between, what I call, rightly or wrongly, a miscellany. It aims not so much at simple as symbolic truth, a kind of correlative to forty years of crosscultural experience.

I came to Korea in 1964. I came from an Ireland that was one of the poorest countries in Europe; outside toilets and houses without running water or electricity were still fairly common. I remember the marvel of the tilley lamp when I visited my aunt's house in what we termed ‘the country’, and my cousin, still visibly excited by the mystery of electricity, following me up and down the stairs to turn off switches I had extravagantly turned on. And I remember a confrere on Korea's East Coast telling me that a tilley lamp was a better reading light than any bulb. I remember the first oranges and pears in the shops after the war and the excitement of gum bubbles big as a football exploding in my face. I remember the adventure of crossing Glangevlin on the way to Bundoran. The talk for days before the trip was about the state of the road and the thickness of the fog on top of the mountain. Bundoran was a magic place for kids in the nineteen forties and early fifties. The Horse Pool, the Priests’ Pool, the Nuns’ Pool, the caves, the cliff walks, Shane House and the Green Barn are engraved indelibly in my memory. The Imperial Hotel and Shell House represented modernity and elegance. We didn't dare dream of the august heights of the Central or the Great Northern.

Despite great changes in the forties, fifties, and early sixties, Ireland was still a backwater when I left in 1964. I did not realize this for a long time because 1960s Ireland was a paradise compared to 1960s Korea.