Koffee & Kpop

(feature image taken from this article)

“A horse that wasn’t considered a horse was not allowed to continue living. A horse that couldn’t run had no compelling reason to remain on Earth.”

I had never heard of A Thousand Blues until I read an article about the rights being purchased by Warner Brothers Pictures. Though this doesn’t always end up with a film production, I had this in the back of my mind while I read the book–how might this be envisioned on screen?

I’m not a fan of the English language cover. I’m usually a fan of brightly colored book covers, but this one seemed garish, and the miniature pictures don’t really do justice to the themes of the book.

In the near future, human horse-racing jockeys are replaced by robot jockeys, who are lighter and more expendable, thus pushing the horses to run even faster than before. C-27 is one of those robot jockeys, only a mistake was made and the robot was equipped with a chip meant for future robots, that allows it to communicate and learn to a certain degree.

C-27’s inner monologue starts the book, and the books starts where it ends. Rather than using C-27’s perspective, however, the author chooses the third person, which dips heavily into the thoughts and emotions of the characters.

While I appreciated the insight into the characters and their unique backstories, I frequently found myself wanting to get back into the plot.

There wasn’t enough plot in the middle of the book to keep an average reader interested, in my opinion. I read a good chunk of the middle of the book while waiting for my laundry to finish in a laundromat on a rainy day, so I was forced to push through it a bit. Was it worth it? Absolutely. I think an editor could have touched it up a bit, though, and made the book a little shorter. I would also have liked to see more scenes where the characters did things, rather than merely think things.

Normally when a book is released as a film, a lot of information and plot is cut, but I think if this book makes it to a film, they might actually have to add more to the screenplay to keep the plot moving along for theater audiences.

That said, a musical version was performed of the book by two different troupes in Korea. A musical is perfect for a book like this, which delves so deep into its characters’ inner lives. Imagine the musical numbers where the characters can sing about their emotions!

“Yeonjae had to acknowledge that the ‘Earth incineration theory’ she had insisted on since kindergarten, in which the Earth would burn to its demise before the year 210, was looking increasingly unlikely. If the world wasn’t going to end in Yeonjae’s lifetime, the only option she had was to do her best to press on, which was an incredibly annoying prospect.”

You can read an article about both productions here on The Korea Herald, and a quick youtube search of the Korean title 천 개의 파랑 leads to some clips from the musical.

Attached below is set of clips from the Seoul Performing Arts Company’s production:

Another thing that I wish would have been more focused on in the book was the budding queer relationship between Eunhye and her friend Juwon. We are shown a lot of the relationship between Eunhye and the horse Today, and Eunhye and her physical relationship to our wheelchair inaccessible world, but merely a few pages on her relationship with Juwon.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. I sincerely hope the script doesn’t end up on the cutting room floor and sees its day as a film of some kind, and I look forward to discovering more of Cheon Seon-ran’s work.

“You didn’t have to be understood by everyone in the whole world. You just needed to be understood by the people you wanted to understand yourself.”