Paul Yoon talks about the danger of hope

This week’s story, “New Coast,” is set in a country recovering from war and is about two brothers who move to the shantytown of a small town that is gradually being rebuilt. When did this scenario come to you?

I’m in the middle of working on a novel called “Etna,” which will be released next summer, about a dog traveling through a fictional country recovering from war. There’s a part where the dog spends some time in the city, and I have this moment where he looks across the river and sees a lot of people in the shantytown. But the dog’s path doesn’t end there, not for long; However, I kept thinking about the identity of these people on the river bank, and so this story and the story of the brothers came to mind. I wanted to live in this corner of this imagined city, and stay in this universe a little longer, even if the dog was gone.

The story is told from the younger brother’s point of view. His older brother finds a job as a census taker of sorts, surveying the city’s population. One night, he hears his brother calling names as he dreams, but, in any case, it seems as if the narrator’s brother is protecting him from what he learns. Is this the case?

Yes, I think that’s true. But I also think this is the moment when the younger brother understands that, in some ways, they were living separate lives in the city. It’s as if they have become islands of their own, with their own stories and timelines and sets of experiences and memories, and it makes one wonder, I hope, if they were always this way, each in their own way, even if they were always together, alive together, before they came to town.

An older woman, Mrs. S, helps the brothers settle in. How important is it in providing some sort of stability at a time when so much seems to be in flux?

It’s a tough one: I think brothers really long for other human beings that they can trust and depend on and feel safe around—as anchors in their lives—but, at the same time, they realize that such anchors aren’t real for them. They know that their relatively stable life with Mrs. S could collapse at any moment. But instead of being overly cautious, I wanted the younger brother, in particular, to accept Mrs. S.’s presence and kindness. To come face to face in that space for a while, even if it is a fantasy.

The brothers’ parents were obviously dead, but they had a sister they were looking for. They learn that Mrs. S is looking for a granddaughter. How much hope do you want the reader to feel about whether the brothers will find their sister?

I have a feeling that most readers will suspect that this is a hopeless task, and that it has always been a hopeless task, but I think the general stability they experienced in their days in the city with Mrs. S opens the door to a bit of magical thinking. And a stronger hope, a deeper hope. For me, it wasn’t about finding the sister, the danger for them was about feeling that deeper hope and longing again — that longing for an answer, for a solution, for how far they could go before they reached the point of no return, a darker place.

The railway line between the city and the western coast of the country was rebuilt. Everyone has come to call it the “New Coast” and imagine it full of new buildings. When you started writing the story, did you know what the coast would look like?

I knew it would certainly be no different from the city in terms of how far it was from restoration, and I knew there would be one building that looked new, but I had no idea who that building was and who they would meet when I started the story. And I had no idea until the brothers got off the train and stood on the coast! But I think that’s where the CV comes in. My grandfather, as many know, founded an orphanage after the Korean War, and I’ve spent my whole life wondering who those children were – and never found out. It was natural at that moment to enter into this personal mystery, just as the brothers were about to face their own mystery.