No! in thunder.

(From The Korea Herald)

By Kim Seong-kon Like Zeus, who took an interest in human affairs and made his presence known as thunder, writers have often expressed a thunderous, "No!" against what they perceive as an erroneous ideology, social convention or institutional practice. It takes a lot of courage to stand up and shout, "No!" against a unified crowd calling, "Yes!" but that is precisely what intellectuals need to do, especially in times of crisis. Herman Melville once praised Nathaniel Hawthorne for his courage in writing "The Scarlet Letter," and wrote: "There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says No! in thunder: but the devil himself cannot make him say yes." This may be one of the best praises a writer has received in his or her lifetime.

Of course, Melville was also a man of courage, pronouncing, "No!" against the dominant discourses of his time. When his novel, "Moby Dick," came out, he confessed in a letter to Hawthorne: "I have written a wicked book," which was, to paraphrase his words, "baptized in hellfire." He meant this in terms of it being a provocatively pagan book created at a time when Christian discourse dominated society.

Indeed, Melville attempted to reveal the dreadful reality behind the romantic dream of his age; he expressed that there was something sinister and hypocritical in the ruling conventions and dominant ideologies of his age, that reality was far more unfathomable and chaotic than so-called civilized society cared to admit.

Melville's phrase, "No! in thunder" fascinated the late Leslie Fiedler, so much so that he adopted it as the title for one of his books. Like Hawthorne and Melville, Fiedler was a man who stood up and said, "No!" to mainstream American culture. He boldly advocated popular culture as opposed to highbrow culture in an age of conservatism, and consequently became an influential cultural prophet during the 60s. I admire these uncompromising individuals who were brave enough to declare, 'No!' against mainstream thought. Think of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Twain in the 19th century, or Faulkner, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald in the 20th: literary renegades, too, each in his own way challenged established notions and ideas. They said, "No!" when those around them shouted, "Yes!" In contrast, few Korean writers and ...