by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I used to think that great stories would somehow find a way to be told and now I don’t think that’s true anymore. Though, in fairness, I am using the greatest story I know as inspiration for a six novel series. So, I guess, in a sense it is being told — just not in the way I always thought it would be.
But the story I’m thinking about — what happened with me and Annie Shapiro in Seoul while we were working on our little expat rag ROKon Magazine — would be a great character study for someone at, say, The New Yorker to write about.
It was all so long ago that many of the main figures are dead or strone about by the four winds. But you could probably find enough people involved to tell what happened all those many moons ago. The passions associated with the magazine are long gone and you might get people who otherwise wouldn’t talk to you, to talk to you. (After they stopped laughing about how anyone would care about the short life of a zine in Seoul.)
So, I think I’m probably getting the best I’m going to get on this front. I’m using what I personally remember from those days to write a six novel series that ostensibly has nothing to do with what happened when I was in Asia, but actually is directly connected to it.
And any continued hope that the literal story of what happened with the magazine will ever be told says more about my lack of closure, long after everyone else has moved on, more than anything else.
