µ˙The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston SUMMER/ MFAH Book Club FALL 2018 Pachinko A novel by Min Jin Lee Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld. Lee’s complex and passionate charac- ters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history. —Amazon.com How to Use This Discussion Guide How to Book an MFAH Book Club Tour All art, whether literary or visual, arises from the context For book clubs and other groups of six or more of its time. Creating bridges between the literary and confirmed participants, tours related to Lee’sPachinko visual arts is what makes the MFAH Book Club unique. are available on select days and times July 1–October 31, 2018. Tours are led by Museum docents and feature This discussion guide features questions about broad excerpts from the book to drive discussion about works themes—home, beauty, death, family, and foreignness— on view at the Museum. all addressed in Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, as well as questions about works of art in the Museum’s collec- If you are not a member of a formal book club, but are tions and exhibitions. interested in participating in engaging art and literature discussions inspired by this book, consider joining the Read the book, discuss some or all of the questions MFAH Digital Book Club on the Goodreads web platform: with your group, and then reserve an MFAH Book Club mfah.org/goodreads. tour online. For more information, visit mfah.org/bookclub. Please email [email protected] with any questions. 1 Evolution of the House and Home The physical houses and edifices that the Baek family occupies throughout the novel are symbolic on a number of levels. As we trace the evolution of the home—from the small wooden boarding house Yangjin and Sunja operated in Yeongdo, to the sweet-potato farmer’s barn, the “roomy shack” in Ikaino, to the Westernized three-bedroom in Yokohama—we see the physical space and walls of the home transform and evolve to accommodate the changing family dynamics. Reflect on the physical details and considerations made for each of Sunja’s residences throughout the novel. In what ways do they mirror the internal state of her character in the different stages of her life? Consider the two passages below, both describing the Yokohama home in which Solomon grew up. How has the space evolved over time? Identify the aesthetic and cultural influences of both designs. How do you think Sunja’s relationships to these spaces differ from Solomon’s? “It was a brand-new three-bedroom in the Westerners’ section of Yokohama . The furnishings resembled sets from American films—upholstered sofas, high wooden dining tables, crystal chandeliers, and leather armchairs. Hansu guessed that the family slept on beds rather than on the floor or on futons. There were no old things in the house—no traces of anything from Korea or Japan. The spacious, windowed kitchen looked out onto the neighbors’ rock garden.” [year, 1968; p. 350] “The designer had removed most of the original interior walls and knocked out the small back windows, replacing them with thick sheets of glass. Now it was possible to see the rock garden from the front of the house. Pale-colored furniture, white oak floors, and sculptural paper lamps filled the vast quandrant near the woodburning stove, leaving the large, square-shaped living room light and uncluttered. In the opposite corner of the room, tall branches of forsythia bloomed in an enormous celadon-colored ceramic jar on the floor.” [year, 1989; p. 447] 2 Consider the two works of art shown below—Cagnes-sur-Mer by American artist William H. Johnson and the Italian work showing The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Compare and contrast the stylistic approaches to these two scenes. Left: William H. Johnson, Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1928, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by Charles W. Tate in honor of Dr. Frank Hadlock at “One Great Night in November, 2000”, 2000.578. Above: Italian (Ferrarese), The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, c. 1470–73, tempera and gold leaf on wood, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection, 44.574. Johnson was interested in ascribing a sort of lyricism and expressive energy to the old streets and neighborhoods of the French town Cagnes-sur-Mer, where he lived and worked in the early years of his career. He exerts his artistic freedom in the spaces and forms he paints. In contrast, the depiction of the popular biblical scene of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon is much more tightly rendered, showing deft mastery over the science of perspective. The artist has reconstructed the event to take place at a Renaissance court, much like the Ferrara courts of the 1400s. The piece itself was likely created as a gift in celebration of either a wedding or a birth. How would you describe the attitude of each of these paintings? Do they align with any of the characters’ personalities from the novel? If you were assigning characters to each scene, which would you choose and why? 3 Bodies, Idealized and Compromised Henri Matisse, Back I, II , III, IV, bronze, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, I: gift of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore N. Law in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Harry C. Wiess;II : gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gus Wortham; III: gift of the Cullen Foundation in memory of Hugh Roy and Lillie Cullen;IV : gift of The Brown Foundation, Inc. in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Herman Brown, 80.68; 80.69; 80.70; 80.71, © 2015 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 2018 Consider the above series of sculptural reliefs by Henri Matisse. There is a distinct progression at play as the series begins with a more realistic vision of the female form, and steadily changes, becoming more abstract in its later iterations. In what ways do these works represent Sunja’s physical and mental evolution throughout the book? The notion of idealized beauty as a fluid concept, subject to evolving tastes and cultural constructs, appears in many instances throughout the book. Identify moments in the book where these biases and physical preferences come to light. Throughout the book, the human body also takes on other classifications associated with pain, suffering, and ill circumstance: the body as laborer, body as child-bearer, and the deformed or afflicted body.Consider the physical descriptions of Sunja, Yumi, and Hana below. “The girl had a firm body like a pale block of wood—much in the shape of her mother—with great strength in her dexterous hands, well-muscled arms, and powerful legs. Her short, wide frame was thick, built for hard work, with little delicacy in her face or limbs, but she was quite appealing physically—more handsome than pretty.” [p. 21] “After two weeks of bed rest, Yumi felt like she was going out of her mind. Mozasu had bought her a television, but she had no interest in watching it, and heartburn kept her from reading. Her wrists and ankles were so swollen that if she pushed her thumb lightly onto her wrist, she could make a deep impression in her flesh. Only the baby’s movements and occasional hiccups kept Yumi glued to her futon and from fleeing out of doors.” [p. 337] “The doctors said there were only a few weeks or perhaps two months left at best. Dark lesions covered her neck and shoulders. Her left hand was unblemished, but her right was dry like her face. Her physical beauty had once been so extraordinary that it seemed to him that her current state was particularly cruel.” [p. 456] In what ways do these classifications translate to the male characters? How do the “laborer,” “child-bearer,” and “invalid” relate to the cultural preferences and beauty ideals described in the book? How do they relate currently to our own Western cultural biases and proclivities? 4 Family and Honor “Back home, having two healthy and good sons was tantamount to having vast riches. She had no home, no money, but she had Noa and Mozasu.” [p. 189] What forms do notions of honor take for the different characters in the book? What social, economic, and cultural factors inform their conceptions? How do you define honor for yourself? Consider the paintings below. How would you imagine each of these individuals defines honor? Far left: Charles W. Hawthorne, American Motherhood, 1922, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by the Houston Friends of Art, 27.8. Left: Vittore Belliniano, Portrait of Two Young Men, c. 1515, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection, 44.553. Min Jin Lee describes a number of different family units and constructs. Consider the passage below wherein Phoebe describes the differences between her family and Solomon’s. Do you agree with her perception of the Baek family? Reflect on your own family unit. How would you describe it? Is it organic and sinuous, or perhaps more patchwork in nature? “Phoebe loved being with Solomon’s family. It was much smaller than her own, but everyone seemed closer, as if each member were organically attached to one seamless body, whereas her enormous extended family felt like cheerfully mismatched Lego bricks in a large bucket.” [p.