Part
of the fun of any portmanteau book is taking issue with the author’s selection
criteria. I’m sure every reader of Romancing The East will think: if I’d been writing this I’d
have included / excluded so-and-so. Is it unfair to quibble with somebody
else’s deeply personal selection? Probably. So I won’t do it.
Instead, I’ll say that though I found some of Hopkins’ choices /
omissions a little odd, I found all his chapters interesting; my favourite was
the one on Sax Rohmer, the creator of Dr. Fu Manchu.
Hopkins does, clearly, love all things
pulp and Hollywood, which is joyous in that his book manages to make room for
both E.M. Forster and Eric Van Lustbader, but the movies’ dazzle does lead him
to some fairly provocative judgements: “Michael Crichton was a literary
colossus.” Really? Hmm…
Eric Van Lustbader, in case the name is
new to you, wrote of one of the many books featured in Romancing The East I’ve never read, namely The Ninja. Nor can I say I now have any intention
of reading The Ninja,
but if the success of Romancing The East rests on how many books it leaves the reader wanting to
read, or re-read, then this was, for me, a very successful book. I don’t think
I’ll be rushing to catch up on all those James Clavell doorstops I’ve thus far
avoided, but I do want to read André Malraux, and - oh no! - I’ve never read
Orwell’s Burmese Days,
or John Masters’ Bhowani Junction,
or Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth…
Romancing The East didn’t just remind me quite how badly
read I am at the level of individual titles, it also forced me to consider
there are entire genres I’ve never bothered with. The west has chick lit and mummy lit, but Asia has
prostitute lit. I’ve never settled down with either Suzy Wong, or with the love
entrepreneurs of Thailand, but now I’m going to give the Thai entrepreneurs at
least a try. One author included
in the discussion of this genre, Stephen Leather, wrote Private Dancer, in which, apparently, the male-sucker
character falls for a Thai Bar girl, and then finds out (surprise, surprise)
she’s married. But this is not
just your standard ripped-off-by-a-hooker story. No, “it is told in the voices
of everyone involved so you can see that everyone has a different opinion of
what is happening, but that no one really understands what is going on.” I’m all for no one having a clue; I’ve
added it to my reading list.
