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Gangsters, Geishas, Monks & Me

Name: Gangsters, Geishas, Monks & Me
Author: Gordon Hutchison
ISBN: 978-1475158939

by Gordon Hutchison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 30, 2012

A walk on the wild side in provincial Japan from a skillful narrator and infiltrator.

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This fascinating memoir unveils a hidden, nontouristy Japan to Western readers, not unlike a James Clavell novel.

In 1974, sickened by a crime- and drug-ridden USA—being mugged and repeatedly mistaken for gay in San Francisco were the last straw—Hutchison took a cue from author Phillip Kapleau, who became a Zen master after studying in 1950s Japan. With no prior immersion in the culture, Hutchison flew to Japan and began training at a centuries-old Zen monastery in the coastal town of Obama, a process that included hours of zazen (seated meditation) and repetition of the koan, “Who am I?” He also eked out a living teaching English to locals, but as the most visible gaijin (foreigner) in the ultraconformist community, “Gooodon” was an object of equal parts interest and revulsion, with some inhabitants going to extremes in rudeness. But one group—after an initial curiosity about American penis size—accepted Gordon-san: the local yakuza, gangsters led by the imposing Murata (who, of Korean descent, knew much about being outcast). Hutchison spent an interval as a doorman and factotum at a yakuza-run cabaret, witnessing both boorishness and street-level ethics among the thugs, as well as the noir-esque affairs he had with several women. Despite his candor—particularly regarding his own romantic prowess—Hutchison remains a sketchy figure, and the question “Who am I?” nibbles at the reader. He obliquely refers to multiple marriages and musical pursuits and doesn’t say much about his politics or the factors that subsequently earned him a long, successful advertising career in Tokyo and America. Nonetheless, the unerringly descriptive prose testifies to his copywriting chops. Twenty-first-century provincial Japan has proven itself to be more cosmopolitan than the era Hutchison experienced, so his unique account may be as valuable as it is entertaining for Orientalists.

A walk on the wild side in provincial Japan from a skillful narrator and infiltrator.

Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2012

ISBN: 978-1475158939

Page Count: 446

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: April 4, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.