Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: book review

  • Sunday Letter – 1

    Sunday, August 23, 2026

    Hi Freddo,

    I thought the heat had gone and had prepared for autumn clothes, but it was a vain hope. It was a trick of nature. The heat persists, and it is very hot. So, I have been staying in the living room with my cats because it is the coolest room and has an air conditioner. I hear that the heat wave has hit Italy, too. I hope you are okay.

    I just finished reading Elizabeth Taylor’s A View of the Harbour. It is about an English coastal village called Newby, where people’s lives are interwoven through weakness, treachery, and misunderstanding, for which they pay with loss and departures. It is written in the third person—an omniscient point of view that sees all and knows all. The perspective often shifts to that of the elderly, bedridden Mrs. Bracey, who watches people as if she were watching a television soap opera. But she can’t see the stories behind the people she watches, and, in fact, she doesn’t care. I wonder if God would be like her. He sees us from above but doesn’t want to interfere with our affairs, even when we want him to, because God couldn’t care less about them unless they relate to his worship.

    It seems that the sea always provokes the passion smoldering beneath conventions and norms, stirring the urge to let the flame ride the crest of the waves, clash furiously against wave upon wave, and then become one with the deep blue. In this regard, the sea alters none of it: human instinct, desire, the primitive id. The harbour is the superego because we know what we should and shouldn’t do under the community’s safe-harbor rule. Seen from the sea, the harbour is prudence.

    These are the things that came to mind after reading the book. I suspect that this multiplicity of interpretations is what Taylor wanted. In the post–Second World War era, people had lost their collective values and systems of belief, leaving them in an existential dilemma. But the sea doesn’t know it. The harbour keeps all of it inside, like a graceful swan with her legs paddling frantically beneath the water to preserve her poise.

    What do you think? Do you want to read the whole book? If you do, you will feel as though you are watching a British television drama, with various characters who seem ordinary yet harbor extraordinary secrets, and stories that unfold without ostentatious romance, extravagant affairs, or dashing bravado. For me, it’s viewable because it is relatable.

    Are you coming to California after the heat has subsided on both sides of the ocean? Let me know, and we can plan something together, like Prudence and Geoffrey in the book.

    Regards,

    stefania

  • On Reading “Student of Desire” — Adelle Waldman

    Saturday, August 22, 2026

    “Can intellectual recognition itself become desire?”

    Will an intellectual man fall in love with a woman of equal or greater intelligence? The question has become so entangled with sexism that it seems to invite textbook answers such as, “Beauty is only skin-deep.” But this is not about feminism or social activism. It is an intimate question: “Can you love me even if I am smart but not so pretty?” Waldman’s disappointmentpromptss her to ask about her existential value as a woman, not merely as a writer or intellectual, because the personal stakes are toohighg to ignore.

    Seeing her ex-boyfriend with a beautiful woman is painful enough to prick the pride of an intellectual woman who is supposed to believe that real love resides not in looks but in the mind. Or so it seems. Waldman extends the existential question into the erotic hedonism of The Professor of Desire, whose protagonist seems to vacillate between a whore and a virgin but never reconciles himself to the truth, always yielding to the pleasures of the senses. While I understand Waldman’s disappointment at seeing a smart man fall for a bimbo, she seems to explain his gorgeous new girlfriend as the result of animal instinct: Eros alone, without marrying Eros to Psyche.

    Call it the male subconscious urge to prove sexual prowess. Or immaturity. To me, a man’s intelligence or cultural refinement does not necessarily equate to his moral fitness. Think of the ancient Greek symposium and its beautiful and intelligent courtesans. Men, I think, are often more readily stimulated by the visual than women are. I remember reading that Updike had a voracious sexual appetite and engaged in sexual excesses. And that’s not the end. Arthur Miller’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe—even though she was herself intelligent, read books, and took literature classes at night—and his novella Plain Girl: A Life tell us that intellect does not necessarily determine physical attraction. After all, the plain girl finds her soulmate in a blind musician who loves her not with his eyes but with his mind.

    I know how Waldman felt when she saw him with such a beautiful woman. I think Waldman wants to believe that she is right: that a woman’s intellect can stand equal to beauty—par pari. I think Shakespeare is great because he recognized this human nature in everyone, including the rivalries of love:

    “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
    And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

    But remember: Cupid is blindfolded. He does not know whom his arrow will strike.

  • On Reading “The Thorn in the Flesh”

    Reading Day — Thursday, August 20, 2026
    On D. H. Lawrence’s “The Thorn in the Flesh”

    Lawrence must have hated the military. Well, more exactly, the rigid discipline used to tame the naturally untamed. It is against nature, against free will: the controlled mindset that conditions you to believe that if you fail, you are a loser to be put in the pillory. Not a man. Not man enough.

    Is that really so? Lawrence asks. No. A man is a man when he witnesses his desire being reciprocated in the body of his lover. Virility is true manhood because it requires no weapon of killing.

    The young German soldier in this story recovered his lost confidence through sensual passion, which collapsed the wall between institutional dehumanization and being fully alive. Naked with his lover, the soldier felt no shame in wanting and loving her. The erection of sexual passion restored physical vulnerability.

    We know Lawrence for his controversial Lady Chatterley’s Lover. So, it may be convenient to call him a sensationalist whose agenda was to challenge religious doctrine and restrictive social norms. Instead, he was a writer who stood at the heart of humanity and showed us the beauty of being human in the expression of passion, in wanting and being wanted.

    The Thorn in the Flesh is Lawrence’s version of Dostoevsky’s “Only beauty can save the world.”

    — Stephanie Joori Suh

  • Paul Gauguin: With Sixpences Beneath a Visiting Moon

    The Writings of a Savage by Paul Gauguin

    With sixpences beneath a visiting moon, Gauguin could produce wonder. He was an artist in an endless pursuit of the rising sun at the dawn of a day with a flaming glory in dazzling magnificence. He was an intellectual with a wealth of knowledge drawn from a wide range of reading and classical Jesuit education. Gauguin was a man of irony, with contrasting colors reflected in the soul’s spectrum, from the passionate red to the sanguine blue, hopeful green, and melancholic purple, which is why he left Vincent Van Gogh alone in Arles, in never-ending loneliness. He craved recognition in a grand salon, yet he longed for independence on an island beneath an ancient sun. So, naturally, I wanted to know about Gauguin from his own writings, not from another in the form of a biography. Hence, The Writings of a Savage by Paul Gauguin.

    The book is an attractive compendium of mostly letters to his select few friends and, occasionally, to his wife, as well as essays and articles on the arts and religion, demonstrating Gauguin’s erudition and introspection. While reading the book, I could not help but think that if he had been a professional journalist or an art critic, his artistic talent would have basked in the glorious dawn sun rather than a struggling painter always on the verge of starvation. But most of all, what I wanted to know was if Gauguin had cut off Gogh’s ear, as I heard the rumor. Before reading this book, I had already assumed Gauguin was a man of temper because his image was incompatible with the Dutch painter’s delicate, sophisticated, and sensitive appearance and temperament. But while my prejudice was not entirely faulty, Gauguin proved himself innocent as he talked about it before his impending death away from civilization. Besides, my reading of Gauguin’s writings convinced me that he was not culpable for the injury, even if some like to assemble circumstantial rumors to make the French pariah artist appear jealous and violent toward the suffering Dutch genius. Gauguin might have been passionate, but his passion is directed toward his artistic creation of the worlds he sees in his mind, while the snobbishness of critics and bureaucrats curates the works of painters who know nothing about the arts.

    Imagination, innovation, and independence are the jewels of Gauguin’s prime colors that create his artistic Elysium. Gauguin was liberal in social stance, especially against clericalism, but sovereign in his artistic philosophy that how to draw doesn’t mean an exact copy of the figure because that’s not the purpose of art for art’s sake. As the title suggests, Gauguin was a noble savage who, as a disciple of Rousseau, returned to a primordial state of humanity to escape the over-intellectualized inertia of civilization, which depreciated and ignored his art. I still can’t say the book converted me to the cult of his paintings, which differ from those of Renoir, Monet, and Pissarro. But the book is a medium of looking through the labyrinth Gauguin has built, leading to his secret garden, wondrously vibrant and dazzlingly radiant.

    If this review moved you, you can support my writing at Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/steph79650

  • The Housemaid by Freida McFadden – Book Review


    Being a housemaid is no easy job. Apart from daily chores, one has to ensure that one is not on the wrong side of one’s employer and family for job security. Who says it’s a lowly job for little women with no or little education when it requires guts and wits to endure all of these and those that will jeopardize her sense of existence? It would be best if you did not make your maid angry because once she is exposed to the unkindness of her employer, her ire becomes Rage, which will turn her into something of a she-hulk.

    Here comes Mille (Wilhelmina) Calloway in the house with a secret past, trying to pretend to be someone she isn’t. Never will she be the one she wants to be because normal is not normal for her. Security is insecurity, and love is betrayal, or is it ever such? That doesn’t mean she’s Devil incarnate, but a being between an angel and a human, something of a Valkyrie, trumpeting one’s death, bringing the soul to the Underworld. In this book, you will find it hard to dislike her because she will not harm you if you do not betray and hurt her. The plot is intriguing in how you see what she is and why she is the way she is. That is not to justify any wrongdoings, but the motive is free from guilt, like Robin Hood stealing treasure from the arrogant rich or, shall I say, Incredible Hulk helping the good against the wicked? You will want to know more about her and the characters who are not dull from the beginning to the end. What a twist of fate!

    A few books are written about protagonists whose livelihoods are not as glamorous or glossy as many featuring women or men with high incomes and fanciful lifestyles because being common is a trifle and, therefore, not worth writing about. But that’s a lack of imagination and creative resourcefulness, which inhibits creating a world beyond reality in the likeness of truth. In that regard, this book is a fresh breath out of stuffy air. It is a thrilling admixture of Harrison Ford’s The Fugitive, Bill Bixby’s The Incredible Hulk, and Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter wrapt up in a maid’s hide.

  • ‘Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard’ by Ben Crystal -book review

    Shakespeare on Toast: Getting a Taste for the Bard by Ben Crystal

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    During my undergraduate years as an English major at Rutgers, Shakespeare wasn’t my favorite figure of English literature. He seemed overly hyped and scholarly to tax the enjoyment of the simple pleasure of reading. The impression of the Bard has mellowed, but he’s in the upper caste in the constellation of writers. Crystal wrote the book with me and other kindred spirits in mind.


    Shakespeare wasn’t a stuffy academic writer whose ambition was to imprint indelible footprints in the path of humankind. Instead, he was a playwright, a modern-day screenwriter who was more interested in attracting audiences to his plays as much as possible. His characters are timeless and boundless, transpiring in every human face from all races and cultures because they are universal. The plays are dramatic portrayals of what it is to be human. King Lear, played by a Korean veteran actor, begets the same level of emotions as his English peer has demonstrated because it is the heart that spurs the mind to speak.


    Crystal is a knowledgeable writer who wears his knowledge on the subject from the studies lightly with the general public in mind. His endeavor to bring the figure of the literary giant is magnanimously noble and altruistic. Perhaps Crystal might have been the one who was disaffected with those elitist writers and pedantic academics claiming Shakespeare as one of their own, only to be appreciated by the literati. In sum, if you are interested in reading Shakespeare for the first time or discovering who he was, this book is a commendable read and a good primer for further reading about his plays and more.


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