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Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book
Wittman Ah Sing is an unstoppable hipster poet and playwright on the streets of San Francisco, after the Beats have left and before the hippies have arrived. He falls in love with Nancy the Beautiful, marries Tana, and chases his dream to write and stage an epic drama spanning America and China.
352 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 1989
71 people are currently reading
1719 people want to read
About the author
Maxine Hong Kingston
54 books645 followersBest known works, including
The Woman Warrior
(1976) and
China Men
(1980), of American writer Maxine Hong Kingston combine elements of fiction and memoir.
She was born as Maxine Ting Ting Hong to a laundry house owner in Stockton, California. She was the third of eight children, and the first among them born in the United States. Her mother trained as a midwife at the To Keung School of Midwifery in Canton. Her father had been brought up a scholar and taught in his village of Sun Woi, near Canton. Tom left China for America in 1924 and took a job in a laundry.
Her works often reflect on her cultural heritage and blend fiction with non-fiction. Among her works are The Woman Warrior (1976), awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and China Men (1980), which was awarded the 1981 National Book Award. She has written one novel, Tripmaster Monkey, a story depicting a character based on the mythical Chinese character Sun Wu Kong. Her most recent books are To Be The Poet and The Fifth Book of Peace.
She was awarded the 1997 National Humanities Medal by President of the United States Bill Clinton. Kingston was a member of the committee to choose the design for the California commemorative quarter. She was arrested in March 2003 in Washington, D.C., for crossing a police line during a protest against the war in Iraq. In April, 2007, Hong Kingston was awarded the Northern California Book Award Special Award in Publishing for her most recent novel Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006), edited by Maxine Hong Kingston.
She married actor Earl Kingston in 1962; they have had one child, Joseph Lawrence Chung Mei, born in 1964. They now live in Oakland.
Kingston was honored as a 175th Speaker Series writer at Emma Willard School in September 2005.
She was born as Maxine Ting Ting Hong to a laundry house owner in Stockton, California. She was the third of eight children, and the first among them born in the United States. Her mother trained as a midwife at the To Keung School of Midwifery in Canton. Her father had been brought up a scholar and taught in his village of Sun Woi, near Canton. Tom left China for America in 1924 and took a job in a laundry.
Her works often reflect on her cultural heritage and blend fiction with non-fiction. Among her works are The Woman Warrior (1976), awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, and China Men (1980), which was awarded the 1981 National Book Award. She has written one novel, Tripmaster Monkey, a story depicting a character based on the mythical Chinese character Sun Wu Kong. Her most recent books are To Be The Poet and The Fifth Book of Peace.
She was awarded the 1997 National Humanities Medal by President of the United States Bill Clinton. Kingston was a member of the committee to choose the design for the California commemorative quarter. She was arrested in March 2003 in Washington, D.C., for crossing a police line during a protest against the war in Iraq. In April, 2007, Hong Kingston was awarded the Northern California Book Award Special Award in Publishing for her most recent novel Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace (2006), edited by Maxine Hong Kingston.
She married actor Earl Kingston in 1962; they have had one child, Joseph Lawrence Chung Mei, born in 1964. They now live in Oakland.
Kingston was honored as a 175th Speaker Series writer at Emma Willard School in September 2005.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
March 5, 2012
The setting of Maxine Hong Kingston’s first novel seems as remote now as the rural China of her two earlier books. In mid-1960s San Francisco the women’s movement, gay rights and the lengthening shadow of AIDS were unknown. The city had not yet seen a computer, let alone a cell phone, and instead of tweeting and texting people were forced in those benighted times to meet face to face and talk.
Enter silver-tongued Wittman Ah Sing, just out of Berkeley and drawing his pea jacket closer against the fragrant autumn fog. Tall, skinny Wittman will talk the ears off anybody. He is a man with a vision. He seethes at the dullness engendered by so many people settling for so little. Born to traveling Chinese-American players, he dreams of theater: not genteel, polite, proscenium-arched theater, but the kind of theater that, in Artaud’s words, “is as beneficial as the plague, impelling us to see ourselves as we are, making the masks fall and divulging our world’s lies, aimlessness and even two-facedness.” That such an idea seems even more shocking now than it was in 1987 when Tripmaster Monkey came out is eloquent of how the world has turned--or perhaps failed to turn.
At the start of the book Wittman is working in a store and has just been demoted from management trainee to clerk in the toy department. “Insert hooks in pegboard. Down again. Up one more time with the bike. The hooks do not meet the frame; if part of the bicycle fits on one hook the rest of it does not fit on any of the others. Down. I have not found right livelihood; this is not my calling. Oh, what a waste of my one and only human life and now-time.”
Finding right livelihood is what a lot of Tripmaster Monkey is about. Perhaps that is why Kingston set it when and where she did. San Francisco has always attracted visionaries and seekers of the Grail. This is the city of Wittman’s heroes, the postwar generation whose footsteps echo through the fog--the San Francisco of Ferlinghetti and the City Lights bookshop, of Ginsberg and Snyder and Kerouac, all marching to a different drummer. “If some of us don’t live this way, then the work of the world will be in vain,” says one old beatnik. Following their example, Wittman pursues his dreams despite the indifference of those around him, with only his vision and collection of aphorisms to steer by: “Always do the most flamboyant thing … Do something, even if it’s wrong … Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path; those people are your people.”
In China Men, Kingston’s second book, she described how immigrants to the United States falsified identities to trick the Immigration Demons who stood between them and the Gold Mountain. Heir to a thousand ways of throwing dust in the eyes of bureaucracy, Wittman lists nonexistent potential employers to outwit the Unemployment Department: “If Unemployment were to say, ‘We can’t find that name in the phone book,’ you say, ‘You must have looked under Sao. Sao’s not his last name. Woo is his last name. We put the last name in front, see?’ And if they say they did look under Woo, you say, ‘Oh, it must be under Ng. In my dialect we say Ng instead of Woo. Sometimes he goes by Ng. Try looking under Quinto. They came up out of Bolivia.’”
But Wittman’s destiny--his right livelihood--is to build on another tradition, San Francisco’s tradition of Chinese theater. This is monkey business with a vengeance: taking flags and banners and tumblers and epic battles to talk story and try to right the wrongs done to Chinese Americans for the last hundred years. Wittman wants to be American but Americans want him to be Chinese--or rather, the way they think Chinese out to be. And when he drives through the Sierras, Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man blaring from the radio, he is haunted by the specter of “small towns with separate outskirt Chinese cemeteries full of graves with the dates of young men.”
Eventually, San Francisco being the city of dreams, he produces his play--a swirling, jabbing, iridescent tour de force of plague theater. Its main character and setting might be out of Kerouac, but the narrative of Tripmaster Monkey has a distinctly postmodern tang. Images dissolve, stories take unexpected twists and the narrator’s comments throw the action into sudden vertiginous relief. The tumult and the pace only deepen the the novel’s rich pungency.“As in real life, things were happening all over the place. The audience looked left, right, up and down, in and about the round, everywhere, the flies, the wings, all the while hearing reports from off stage. Too much goings-on, they miss some, okay, like life.”
From Wittman’s appearance in Golden Gate Park, through love affairs, parties, hallucinations and digressions to his final extended monologue, Kingston spins out her tale in a fiery cascade of images and exhortations. “Folk-lore, allegory, religion, history, anti-bureaucratic satire, and pure poetry--such are the singularly diverse elements out of which the book is compounded,” Arthur Waley wrote in his introduction to Wu Ch’eng-en’s Monkey. Tipping her hat to that sixteenth-century classic, Kingston has added a critique of consumerist culture.
I liked Tripmaster Monkey when I first read it, twenty-five years ago. I like it even more now, for its innocence and exuberance. If they seem dated, it’s not the book that time has made stale. It’s us.
Enter silver-tongued Wittman Ah Sing, just out of Berkeley and drawing his pea jacket closer against the fragrant autumn fog. Tall, skinny Wittman will talk the ears off anybody. He is a man with a vision. He seethes at the dullness engendered by so many people settling for so little. Born to traveling Chinese-American players, he dreams of theater: not genteel, polite, proscenium-arched theater, but the kind of theater that, in Artaud’s words, “is as beneficial as the plague, impelling us to see ourselves as we are, making the masks fall and divulging our world’s lies, aimlessness and even two-facedness.” That such an idea seems even more shocking now than it was in 1987 when Tripmaster Monkey came out is eloquent of how the world has turned--or perhaps failed to turn.
At the start of the book Wittman is working in a store and has just been demoted from management trainee to clerk in the toy department. “Insert hooks in pegboard. Down again. Up one more time with the bike. The hooks do not meet the frame; if part of the bicycle fits on one hook the rest of it does not fit on any of the others. Down. I have not found right livelihood; this is not my calling. Oh, what a waste of my one and only human life and now-time.”
Finding right livelihood is what a lot of Tripmaster Monkey is about. Perhaps that is why Kingston set it when and where she did. San Francisco has always attracted visionaries and seekers of the Grail. This is the city of Wittman’s heroes, the postwar generation whose footsteps echo through the fog--the San Francisco of Ferlinghetti and the City Lights bookshop, of Ginsberg and Snyder and Kerouac, all marching to a different drummer. “If some of us don’t live this way, then the work of the world will be in vain,” says one old beatnik. Following their example, Wittman pursues his dreams despite the indifference of those around him, with only his vision and collection of aphorisms to steer by: “Always do the most flamboyant thing … Do something, even if it’s wrong … Do the right thing by whoever crosses your path; those people are your people.”
In China Men, Kingston’s second book, she described how immigrants to the United States falsified identities to trick the Immigration Demons who stood between them and the Gold Mountain. Heir to a thousand ways of throwing dust in the eyes of bureaucracy, Wittman lists nonexistent potential employers to outwit the Unemployment Department: “If Unemployment were to say, ‘We can’t find that name in the phone book,’ you say, ‘You must have looked under Sao. Sao’s not his last name. Woo is his last name. We put the last name in front, see?’ And if they say they did look under Woo, you say, ‘Oh, it must be under Ng. In my dialect we say Ng instead of Woo. Sometimes he goes by Ng. Try looking under Quinto. They came up out of Bolivia.’”
But Wittman’s destiny--his right livelihood--is to build on another tradition, San Francisco’s tradition of Chinese theater. This is monkey business with a vengeance: taking flags and banners and tumblers and epic battles to talk story and try to right the wrongs done to Chinese Americans for the last hundred years. Wittman wants to be American but Americans want him to be Chinese--or rather, the way they think Chinese out to be. And when he drives through the Sierras, Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man blaring from the radio, he is haunted by the specter of “small towns with separate outskirt Chinese cemeteries full of graves with the dates of young men.”
Eventually, San Francisco being the city of dreams, he produces his play--a swirling, jabbing, iridescent tour de force of plague theater. Its main character and setting might be out of Kerouac, but the narrative of Tripmaster Monkey has a distinctly postmodern tang. Images dissolve, stories take unexpected twists and the narrator’s comments throw the action into sudden vertiginous relief. The tumult and the pace only deepen the the novel’s rich pungency.“As in real life, things were happening all over the place. The audience looked left, right, up and down, in and about the round, everywhere, the flies, the wings, all the while hearing reports from off stage. Too much goings-on, they miss some, okay, like life.”
From Wittman’s appearance in Golden Gate Park, through love affairs, parties, hallucinations and digressions to his final extended monologue, Kingston spins out her tale in a fiery cascade of images and exhortations. “Folk-lore, allegory, religion, history, anti-bureaucratic satire, and pure poetry--such are the singularly diverse elements out of which the book is compounded,” Arthur Waley wrote in his introduction to Wu Ch’eng-en’s Monkey. Tipping her hat to that sixteenth-century classic, Kingston has added a critique of consumerist culture.
I liked Tripmaster Monkey when I first read it, twenty-five years ago. I like it even more now, for its innocence and exuberance. If they seem dated, it’s not the book that time has made stale. It’s us.
February 13, 2015
I was led to this amazing novel by critic John Leonard, who called it “the Great American Novel of the Sixties,” even though it was written in the 80s. Although it is trying, and even, surprisingly, dull at times (hence a 4.5), this is a reading experience like no other, a controlled acid trip (hence the “tripmaster” in the title) through Chinese-American history and the protagonist’s anger, humor, imagination, lust, and retelling of Chinese tales.
Not a single one of my Goodreads friends has read it. And I realize that Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is slated as an August read for the Year of Reading Women. But this is the one that will blow you away.
Not a single one of my Goodreads friends has read it. And I realize that Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is slated as an August read for the Year of Reading Women. But this is the one that will blow you away.
March 5, 2010
I wrote my English thesis on this book and its connections to the jazz of the 1960's. I love this book with everything I have. I sincerely recommend it to everyone. Wittmann Ah Sing, the protaganist, is on a crazy journey of self-discovery throughout the novel and the world he creates for himself is beautiful and broken.
July 18, 2010
The question: is Wittman Ah Sing a) Chinese, b) American, c) a beatnik, or d) all of the above. The answer is, of course, d) all of the above, but that leads very naturally into the next question: which comes first? Is he an American of Chinese heritage? Is he a Chinese beatnik? Is he a Chinese man who happens to live in San Francisco? I suspect these are the sorts of questions about primary identity that many immigrants and children of immigrants ask themselves. Wittman was born in the U.S. and was named after Walt Whitman, but he grew up (and is still connected to) the Chinese community in Northern California. Parts of this community function essentially as an exclave of China...they follow their own laws, customs, culture, etc. rather than integrate into the culture of the United States. It is important for Wittman to allow both parts of himself to flourish naturally. Wittman is preoccupied with the question of identity. How does one retain his or her cultural heritage (i.e. not allow it to be melted into the great melting pot of the United States) but also integrate into American society? How does one avoid becoming a novelty or exotic attraction without totally assimilating? Wittman is disgusted by Chinese people who have seemingly abandoned their heritage (e.g. some female characters in the book had eyelid surgery to create Western-looking eyelid folds), but he is equally offended by Westerners who try to pigeonhole him into stereotypical "oriental" roles.
It seems perfect to me that Maxine Hong Kingston chose to set this book in the time that she did (the 1960s). Being a part of the beatnik movement allowed Wittman to comfortably straddle both worlds--the free-flowing jazz poetry of the beats has similar roots to the type of Chinese epic story Wittman longs to tell. Additionally, the sometimes-mentioned-but-rarely-focused-on war that we all know was going on at that time provided an interesting backdrop to the similarly Asian vs. American war that was going on within Wittman's soul.
Fittingly, this exploration of identity had equally insightful things to say about 1960s San Francisco culture and Chinese culture. Both facets of the book were written with verve and vigor, and deserve a wider audience than they apparently have. Therefore, I hereby heartily recommend this book to you (assuming you are interested at all in the topics this book covers).
It seems perfect to me that Maxine Hong Kingston chose to set this book in the time that she did (the 1960s). Being a part of the beatnik movement allowed Wittman to comfortably straddle both worlds--the free-flowing jazz poetry of the beats has similar roots to the type of Chinese epic story Wittman longs to tell. Additionally, the sometimes-mentioned-but-rarely-focused-on war that we all know was going on at that time provided an interesting backdrop to the similarly Asian vs. American war that was going on within Wittman's soul.
Fittingly, this exploration of identity had equally insightful things to say about 1960s San Francisco culture and Chinese culture. Both facets of the book were written with verve and vigor, and deserve a wider audience than they apparently have. Therefore, I hereby heartily recommend this book to you (assuming you are interested at all in the topics this book covers).
May 29, 2011
When I picked up this book it looked interesting. I love Monkey stories, especially Monkey stories that work into the modern world. (Yes, the 60s still count as modern.) If you want that book go read American Born Chinese, if you want a book written in stream of consciousness from a boring crazy person read this book.
I just got to where I was asking myself multiple times per page, "what exactly is going on?" I was answered with lists of buildings in San Francisco and judgments on the many people who piss Wittman off by existing. I really never found a reason to care.
If this gives you an insight into how much I hated this book: I was so happy that my break was over at work and I could go move the bio-hazard cadavers and various body parts floating in super-formaldehyde. At least I could get away from this drivel.
I just got to where I was asking myself multiple times per page, "what exactly is going on?" I was answered with lists of buildings in San Francisco and judgments on the many people who piss Wittman off by existing. I really never found a reason to care.
If this gives you an insight into how much I hated this book: I was so happy that my break was over at work and I could go move the bio-hazard cadavers and various body parts floating in super-formaldehyde. At least I could get away from this drivel.
April 9, 2009
Oy. Monkey Magic this was not.
November 9, 2009
Underlines and bookmarks tear through my copy. Every time I read it a learn or see something new...totally wonderful example of asian american lit and more than that...a damn fine magical realism that transcends racial cultural boundaries.
May 24, 2007
This book was crap. Mostly gibberish with a smattering of plot. Don't waste your time.
March 17, 2008
Read too much like Catcher in the Rye--overly jaded narrator, rather irritating.
January 25, 2023
this is a Fake Book because i read an as yet unpublished book written by a friend’s brother. it belongs to the rick riordan tradition of oddly casual urban fantasy but works with a twist on biblical/jewish mythology, which was refreshing! unfortunately also somewhat difficult to read as a Christian, but i’m curious to see where the series ends up as i think the author is also a Christian..?
anyway, this book is literally just a pdf right now, so you’ll have to ask me for details; i’d rather not put too much on the internet before it’s published LOL
that said i might actually read His Fake Book now, seems kind of interesting lmaoo
anyway, this book is literally just a pdf right now, so you’ll have to ask me for details; i’d rather not put too much on the internet before it’s published LOL
that said i might actually read His Fake Book now, seems kind of interesting lmaoo
December 17, 2011
In the '60s, a hippie poet, Wittman Ah Sing, quits his job, hits on girls, goes to parties, argues politics, kinda sorta gets married, and puts on a play based on Chinese novels and folktales. Part homage to Chinese culture, part apoplectic diatribe against Caucasians' exoticizing of Chinese Americans, the novel blends humor and rage, story and stream of consciousness.
At times, I grew bored by Wittman's endless rantings on American racism or his overlong tellings of Chinese tales; much of the novel is interesting and enjoyable, but not when the reader is repeatedly beaten over the head. Though Wittman rages against stereotypes at great length, Kingston chooses to make his parents two quite egregious Chinese-American stereotypes (mah-jongg with the aunties; a parsimonious, distant father). Also, Kingston's constant overuse of popular culture references is a bit grating (I open the book to one random page for an example: "I sat with them facing the sea, like Mondo Cane cargo cult"). "Look how well versed in pop culture I am!" she seems to scream. Stop me before I cross-reference again, Dennis Miller said. Take note, Kingston.
At times, I grew bored by Wittman's endless rantings on American racism or his overlong tellings of Chinese tales; much of the novel is interesting and enjoyable, but not when the reader is repeatedly beaten over the head. Though Wittman rages against stereotypes at great length, Kingston chooses to make his parents two quite egregious Chinese-American stereotypes (mah-jongg with the aunties; a parsimonious, distant father). Also, Kingston's constant overuse of popular culture references is a bit grating (I open the book to one random page for an example: "I sat with them facing the sea, like Mondo Cane cargo cult"). "Look how well versed in pop culture I am!" she seems to scream. Stop me before I cross-reference again, Dennis Miller said. Take note, Kingston.
October 2, 2012
just one of those books that beats you over the head with its point, no subtlety there. she has a good point about a relevant topic, but it could have been edited down significantly to make it more powerful. i really had to motivate myself to finish it.
September 1, 2007
I first read this in college, and have subsequently read it at least three times. It's held up.
November 4, 2008
I just could not get into the writing style of this coming-of-age-in-college-in-the-sixties novel. The main character is not a sympathetic guy, and I never found out if it got better.
February 11, 2010
There is so much to take from this book its probably not possible on just one time through. Alternately vivid and clever, and labyrinthine and dreamy, and consistently hilarious, it can be disorienting. I found myself skating through the nearly-nonsensical parts taking them for ambiance and enjoying the trip, and circling underlining copying some one-liners and paragraphs that were so crisp and wise.
July 10, 2025
Good books are well written. Great books have swagger. This is a great book.
September 27, 2023
The longest prose poem I've ever read. There were bits of plot here and there but mostly it was just feelings or impressions.
December 27, 2014
It's pretty hard not to dislike Wittman Ah Sing. You'd think he'll remember to not be racist or sexist since he's supposedly all about Kerouac and Ginsberg but nope! He will recite Rilke in the bus out loud, he is painfully paranoid, but with all the disorienting, experimental prose, everything falls flat for me. I couldn't feel anything; no sympathy, no sadness; it's not funny, it's just weird/absurd (in the really bad way.) The only thing that could have the slightest potential to redeem it might be the references to the classic Chinese literature. But still, after almost 400 pages, no real development/plot, no authentic characters.. Don't know why my prof calls it a masterpiece rivaling on Joyce.
April 4, 2012
Second try, years apart, abandoned again. But this repeated
sampling added to my appreciation of the author's recent and
wonderful "I Like a Broad Margin to My Life" where Tripmaster's
role is essential to the richness of that book.
But now (third try, spring 2012) I did read it all, and loved it, warts and all. (I have warts, it has warts, but we're OK.) Whatever she writes seems to deserve the phrase a reviewer used about her "The Woman Warrior":
"...a poem turned into a sword..."
sampling added to my appreciation of the author's recent and
wonderful "I Like a Broad Margin to My Life" where Tripmaster's
role is essential to the richness of that book.
But now (third try, spring 2012) I did read it all, and loved it, warts and all. (I have warts, it has warts, but we're OK.) Whatever she writes seems to deserve the phrase a reviewer used about her "The Woman Warrior":
"...a poem turned into a sword..."
April 2, 2008
maybe I should try again - I picked this up with fond childhood memories of The Woman Warrior and I simply can't get into it.
October 3, 2011
Jules gave me this book. I loved it like a mirror.
December 10, 2010
A really great book shows us how everything is great and worth to die for
Read
October 14, 2013Monkeys! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. They're pretty damn funny.
June 5, 2017
probably the most challenging book ive ever read!
December 12, 2020
DNF on page 12 (of 340 pages total)
Published in 1989, "Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book," is the third published novel of Maxine Hong Kingston. It is the Chinese American version of James Joyce's "Ulysses," and follows the stream-of-consciousness narrative of Wittman Ah Sing, a Chinese American man struggling to accept his ancestry and culture, and understand his own place in the world, as he wanders about in San Francisco in the late 1960s, getting up to shenanigans.
I picked this book up knowing nothing about it other than two of my good friends dearly love it. When I realized it was exactly like reading "Ulysses," and that Whittman was deeply bigoted and sexist, a (supposedly) lovable-doofus-type who has an endless awareness of pop culture, loves books, art, and theater, and is on a journey of growing his own self-awareness, I just couldn't keep reading. Everything about the details in the opening pages (the way Whittman is critical of "F.O.B.s"/fresh-off-the-boat immigrants passing by [pg 5], his sexist/bigoted assessments of women's skin tones [pg 12], his comments about a barfing pigeon he passes by [pg 4]) made me recoil. I'm sorry, but nothing about this book is pulling me in. Everything is actively throwing me OUT of this novel, and I have to stop reading.
Reading twelve pages of this novel felt like suffering. I read a number of 5-star reviews on Goodreads, trying to convince myself to keep reading. It didn't work. Next, I read the story synopsis on Wikipedia, trying again to convince myself to overcome my revulsion and keep going. But I fail to see anything in the plot of this book that merits the hours of narrative drudgery it would take to get there.
I can't force myself to read any more of this book. I have actively avoided reading "Ulysses," and I'm just not interested in reading the Chinese American version of that work. I especially do not enjoy what I've read of Whittman's interior monologue. I strongly dislike this character, and I have no desire to be in this man's head.
I'll leave it to people far smarter than me to sing this book's praises. I'm just not the audience for this book in any way, shape, or form.
DNF. Recommended for fans of Kingston and Joyce.
Published in 1989, "Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book," is the third published novel of Maxine Hong Kingston. It is the Chinese American version of James Joyce's "Ulysses," and follows the stream-of-consciousness narrative of Wittman Ah Sing, a Chinese American man struggling to accept his ancestry and culture, and understand his own place in the world, as he wanders about in San Francisco in the late 1960s, getting up to shenanigans.
I picked this book up knowing nothing about it other than two of my good friends dearly love it. When I realized it was exactly like reading "Ulysses," and that Whittman was deeply bigoted and sexist, a (supposedly) lovable-doofus-type who has an endless awareness of pop culture, loves books, art, and theater, and is on a journey of growing his own self-awareness, I just couldn't keep reading. Everything about the details in the opening pages (the way Whittman is critical of "F.O.B.s"/fresh-off-the-boat immigrants passing by [pg 5], his sexist/bigoted assessments of women's skin tones [pg 12], his comments about a barfing pigeon he passes by [pg 4]) made me recoil. I'm sorry, but nothing about this book is pulling me in. Everything is actively throwing me OUT of this novel, and I have to stop reading.
Reading twelve pages of this novel felt like suffering. I read a number of 5-star reviews on Goodreads, trying to convince myself to keep reading. It didn't work. Next, I read the story synopsis on Wikipedia, trying again to convince myself to overcome my revulsion and keep going. But I fail to see anything in the plot of this book that merits the hours of narrative drudgery it would take to get there.
I can't force myself to read any more of this book. I have actively avoided reading "Ulysses," and I'm just not interested in reading the Chinese American version of that work. I especially do not enjoy what I've read of Whittman's interior monologue. I strongly dislike this character, and I have no desire to be in this man's head.
I'll leave it to people far smarter than me to sing this book's praises. I'm just not the audience for this book in any way, shape, or form.
DNF. Recommended for fans of Kingston and Joyce.
May 19, 2024
I picked this up on a whim at a used book store because its premise sounded interesting. After making it most of the way through the first chapter, I decided to put it down and not finish it.
The author attempts to make her main character, Whittman Ah Sing, wax poetic, but it just comes across as half baked nonsense smattered together by a college student who just took their first creative writing course. Conversations were so convoluted, character descriptions so desperately cloying and needy so as to be seen as intellectual, that it never actually moved anything forward.
If you're going to write poetry, write poetry. If you're going to write a narrative, write a narrative. Trying to walk both worlds comes across as pretentious and rudderless and in the same vein as many fusion restaurants: you aren't good at either one, so why not smash them together and call it "art"?
Having just forced myself through one difficult to finish read, I will not be jumping headlong into another which is nearly 400 pages. If you want a story about a jaded teen who gripes about everything around them while trying to sound poetic, read Catcher In The Rye.
The author attempts to make her main character, Whittman Ah Sing, wax poetic, but it just comes across as half baked nonsense smattered together by a college student who just took their first creative writing course. Conversations were so convoluted, character descriptions so desperately cloying and needy so as to be seen as intellectual, that it never actually moved anything forward.
If you're going to write poetry, write poetry. If you're going to write a narrative, write a narrative. Trying to walk both worlds comes across as pretentious and rudderless and in the same vein as many fusion restaurants: you aren't good at either one, so why not smash them together and call it "art"?
Having just forced myself through one difficult to finish read, I will not be jumping headlong into another which is nearly 400 pages. If you want a story about a jaded teen who gripes about everything around them while trying to sound poetic, read Catcher In The Rye.
November 24, 2017
"I want the sky to never again cover my eyes; the earth, never again bury my heart. I want every living creature to know my will; I want all the gods to scatter like smoke".
-Wukong by Zeng Yu
Though this sounds better in Chinese , I feel that this applies very well with this novel by Maxine Hong Kingston.
When I first picked up this book, I thought this would be something similar to what I grew up with in my Chinese American household. Wow, how wrong I was. This book came at a time when I was really examining my identity as an American and as a Chinese person. This was in the early nineties and even though this book is set in the time of the late 60's and early 70's San Francisco, it still seems relevant.
Here was someone voicing things in my head that I've always wanted to say. What opened my eyes even more was that the author was saying it in the voice of a young man.
Some critiques that I've read says the author reiterates the rage and racism that was going on through out the book. But I don't think people remember the context of that time. People of color were waking up to what the possibilities of equality were open to them. That thing didn't need to stay the same and that lives could be made better and more equal.
That this was set in San Francisco where black studies and Asian studies were starting in the universities, shows that nonwestern cultures were being considered just as important as the dominant culture present.
Other critiques point to the rage and anger, if you know what Monkey King is about, he rebelled against the jade Emperor and the other gods because of how he was treated. In his rage at his status, he turned heaven upside down and gave several gods a comeuppance. In order to teach him humility and his place , he was made to serve a monk and go on journey to India.
This I think is what is so relevant to this story and how it is staged at that era. So , no, I don't think the outrage and anger is overdone and no I don't think it is bludgeoned on the reader time and again. Its one thing that this modern world has impressed upon me is that our attention spans and recollections are fleeting and if you want a lesson imparted and retained , it needs to be repeated.
So is this book so didactic, not at all. Its a pleasant read. A bit of San Francisco magical realism.
Again , this era was also the time of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's popularity in many college campus's and I think it fits well with the way this story is told. A bit of Carlos Castaneda,Teachings of Don Juan, too.
As to how one person stated that the story is meandering and appears to go all over the place, one should look at how the Chinese novel was done. There is a manner that is supposed to be picaresque. The Carnal Prayer Mat, The Outlaws of the Marsh, the 3 Kingdoms, Dreams of a Red Chamber, - all of these are classic examples of this type of narrative form. If this was a conscious choice of the author, I do not know. But I think that this fits well with this story. Some of the other reviewers have stated that this has a Jazz Improv feeling of story telling. Possibly, but it would be of master musicians doing amazing riffs and runs all in keeping with the theme.
I think one thing that the author attempted to show was what it was like being a young Chinese American man in the 60s. Some have commentated on the racist behavior of the protagonist, I think again we must look at the context of the times. You need to remember that those were incredibly racist times. Korean war had just finished up; gooks and war brides imagery still pervaded. The beginning times of the Red Threat with communist China, all made the Asian otherness something that was looked at with fear and fascination. But wasn't San Francisco more of the enlightened areas of the country. Possible due to the higher concentration of Asians present.
But I think if you can count that there is overt racism and there is the concealed type . Just look at the wonderful book by Matt Ruff Lovecraft Country. This was an America that was real and people had those attitudes around the country not too many years past what is set in this story.
So, yes the character is racist but again look at the era he was brought up in. BUT what is relevant is that he is changing and attempting to get beyond that. See who he finally ends up with in the end of the book.
-Wukong by Zeng Yu
Though this sounds better in Chinese , I feel that this applies very well with this novel by Maxine Hong Kingston.
When I first picked up this book, I thought this would be something similar to what I grew up with in my Chinese American household. Wow, how wrong I was. This book came at a time when I was really examining my identity as an American and as a Chinese person. This was in the early nineties and even though this book is set in the time of the late 60's and early 70's San Francisco, it still seems relevant.
Here was someone voicing things in my head that I've always wanted to say. What opened my eyes even more was that the author was saying it in the voice of a young man.
Some critiques that I've read says the author reiterates the rage and racism that was going on through out the book. But I don't think people remember the context of that time. People of color were waking up to what the possibilities of equality were open to them. That thing didn't need to stay the same and that lives could be made better and more equal.
That this was set in San Francisco where black studies and Asian studies were starting in the universities, shows that nonwestern cultures were being considered just as important as the dominant culture present.
Other critiques point to the rage and anger, if you know what Monkey King is about, he rebelled against the jade Emperor and the other gods because of how he was treated. In his rage at his status, he turned heaven upside down and gave several gods a comeuppance. In order to teach him humility and his place , he was made to serve a monk and go on journey to India.
This I think is what is so relevant to this story and how it is staged at that era. So , no, I don't think the outrage and anger is overdone and no I don't think it is bludgeoned on the reader time and again. Its one thing that this modern world has impressed upon me is that our attention spans and recollections are fleeting and if you want a lesson imparted and retained , it needs to be repeated.
So is this book so didactic, not at all. Its a pleasant read. A bit of San Francisco magical realism.
Again , this era was also the time of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's popularity in many college campus's and I think it fits well with the way this story is told. A bit of Carlos Castaneda,Teachings of Don Juan, too.
As to how one person stated that the story is meandering and appears to go all over the place, one should look at how the Chinese novel was done. There is a manner that is supposed to be picaresque. The Carnal Prayer Mat, The Outlaws of the Marsh, the 3 Kingdoms, Dreams of a Red Chamber, - all of these are classic examples of this type of narrative form. If this was a conscious choice of the author, I do not know. But I think that this fits well with this story. Some of the other reviewers have stated that this has a Jazz Improv feeling of story telling. Possibly, but it would be of master musicians doing amazing riffs and runs all in keeping with the theme.
I think one thing that the author attempted to show was what it was like being a young Chinese American man in the 60s. Some have commentated on the racist behavior of the protagonist, I think again we must look at the context of the times. You need to remember that those were incredibly racist times. Korean war had just finished up; gooks and war brides imagery still pervaded. The beginning times of the Red Threat with communist China, all made the Asian otherness something that was looked at with fear and fascination. But wasn't San Francisco more of the enlightened areas of the country. Possible due to the higher concentration of Asians present.
But I think if you can count that there is overt racism and there is the concealed type . Just look at the wonderful book by Matt Ruff Lovecraft Country. This was an America that was real and people had those attitudes around the country not too many years past what is set in this story.
So, yes the character is racist but again look at the era he was brought up in. BUT what is relevant is that he is changing and attempting to get beyond that. See who he finally ends up with in the end of the book.
Read
May 6, 2015Absolutely loved this! Why didn't I read it ages ago (whenever it was that I bought the book)? The aspiring writer Wittman Ah Sing roams San Francisco and the East Bay a year after graduating from Berkeley, in around 1963 (Kennedy is still president), being a beatnik and the trickster monkey of Chinese legend (The Journey to the West).
Sure, Wittman Ah Sing isn't always admirable, but he's a pretty irresistible character. There's an energy in certain characters and in certain books, which is a youthful, lyrical, sometimes bratty energy. The book sizzles and vibrates with it. I remember feeling that energy animating me when I was 21, that intoxicating sense of being really really high on life even when annoyed or having stayed up all night, that sense of being very literate, having big plans, wanting to experience everything. Perhaps this only occurs in certain locations; I was surprised how familiar the descriptions of the Bay Area were despite my not having gone there until much later. Wittman Ah Sing adds to this mix the experience of being an American of Chinese descent, which is a major theme.
It's a great book that carries the reader along like a rollercoaster or a wild wave.
Sure, Wittman Ah Sing isn't always admirable, but he's a pretty irresistible character. There's an energy in certain characters and in certain books, which is a youthful, lyrical, sometimes bratty energy. The book sizzles and vibrates with it. I remember feeling that energy animating me when I was 21, that intoxicating sense of being really really high on life even when annoyed or having stayed up all night, that sense of being very literate, having big plans, wanting to experience everything. Perhaps this only occurs in certain locations; I was surprised how familiar the descriptions of the Bay Area were despite my not having gone there until much later. Wittman Ah Sing adds to this mix the experience of being an American of Chinese descent, which is a major theme.
It's a great book that carries the reader along like a rollercoaster or a wild wave.
April 6, 2012
(this is a blurb. for full review, click here: http://wwonderholic.blogspot.com/2012...)
Tripmaster Monkey was at once fascinating and thought-provoking. Although it was a bit long-winded and certainly difficult to get through--with long sections of prose that really seemed to describe nothing at all--I loved the references to popular culture, literature, and most of all, the Chinese-American experience. Kingston's style was hard for me to get used to, but I eased into it after the first couple of pages. It's both stream-of-consciousness and Chinese talk-story. And through it, Kingston asks--and partially answers--the quintessential question: who am I?
Wittman is Chinese. He's American. He's a hippie. He's a pacifist. There were times when I wanted to reach into the book and punch him in the face (the scene in the department store comes to mind). But what I loved the most about the book was how it really brought us to Wittman--by the end of it, I felt as though I'd known Wittman all my life, like he was one of my own (many) uncles, sitting in the backroom, telling me this story in storytalk.
Tripmaster Monkey was at once fascinating and thought-provoking. Although it was a bit long-winded and certainly difficult to get through--with long sections of prose that really seemed to describe nothing at all--I loved the references to popular culture, literature, and most of all, the Chinese-American experience. Kingston's style was hard for me to get used to, but I eased into it after the first couple of pages. It's both stream-of-consciousness and Chinese talk-story. And through it, Kingston asks--and partially answers--the quintessential question: who am I?
Wittman is Chinese. He's American. He's a hippie. He's a pacifist. There were times when I wanted to reach into the book and punch him in the face (the scene in the department store comes to mind). But what I loved the most about the book was how it really brought us to Wittman--by the end of it, I felt as though I'd known Wittman all my life, like he was one of my own (many) uncles, sitting in the backroom, telling me this story in storytalk.
May 16, 2007
I picked this book up because the title caught me. I'd already read Warrior Woman in my Multicultural lit class, and I think there was a list of other books by the author in the copy the school set us up with (or we were encouraged to buy our own copy so we could notate in it, either way) and I know it was mentioned in class this unusually titled book. I decided to hunt down a copy.
The main character is an artist, and as such his life becomes caught in the middle of reality and day dreams. It's fun how you can't always tell where one leaves of and goes into the other, but it's a wild little ride. It starts with the dead end retail job to support until making it big, then moves into the joys of the unemployment dance, and eventually makes its way into a crazy stage production. There's also romance, relationship trouble, crazy relatives, and the stage production weaves into the day dreams.
I ended up pairing my copy of the book with a monkey bookmark I bought because it seemed to suit. :)
The main character is an artist, and as such his life becomes caught in the middle of reality and day dreams. It's fun how you can't always tell where one leaves of and goes into the other, but it's a wild little ride. It starts with the dead end retail job to support until making it big, then moves into the joys of the unemployment dance, and eventually makes its way into a crazy stage production. There's also romance, relationship trouble, crazy relatives, and the stage production weaves into the day dreams.
I ended up pairing my copy of the book with a monkey bookmark I bought because it seemed to suit. :)
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