East Is East

Rating:
Summary: Stereotypes taken to new heights
Review: Boyle is the author of The Road to Wellville, a chronicle of the Kellogg empire, among other books, which was my motivation for buying East Is East. This is dark comedy indeed. Hiro Tanaka jumps ship after being taunted and abused endlessly by his Japanese shipmates. He wants to make it to Philadelphia--the City of Brotherly Love, you'll recall--where he knows that his mother's transgression with an American will not be held against him. Unfortunately for Hiro, he manages to swim to the shore of an island, where his worst nightmares of stereotypical American degenerates come true--everyone has a gun and is out to kill him. He first scares an old black man into dropping his grease-laden frying pan into the fire, whereupon the man's house burns down. Enter the police, who label Hiro an arsonist and figure out that he's the guy who jumped ship. Hiro survives a manhunt by living in the swamp, unallured by an INS guy's certainty that Hiro will turn himself in if only a lot of loud disco Donna Summer music is played (all those Japanese are alike, you know, and can't resist disco music). Next, he comes across an artist's colony, where he is aided by Ruth Dershowitz, a writer who sees Hiro as a goldmine of story material for her publishing career. As an author, Ruth stinks, though, and all the story material in the world isn't going to help her. In reality, Ruth just wants to be adored by the public, and writing seemed to be a good way to get that. Hiro, meantime, has been stealing clothing, so the police have added burglary to the charges. And so it goes. Hiro eventually is sought for the arson, burglary, murder, assault and battery, etc. He is continually amazed by American inability to distinguish him from Chinese, Vietnamese, or any other oriental group member and passes himself off as Chinese usually. Hiro, of course, is as bigoted as the strange Americans are. When he finally makes his escape from the island, it is in the trunk of the car of a rich playboy (like all American white men). When the trunk is opened, alas--he's been transported from the island swamp to the Okefenokee swamp. Obviously, most of America is a swamp, and the rest of the world has been deceived by some great publicity. Boyle has made the most of bias--racial, cultural, and financial. Most of the characters are self-centered fools, regardless of occupation or setting. The book is written very well, even comically, but underneath all that comedy is some very sad stuff (a comment I'd make about The Road to Wellville also.) AND--it's a Penguin book.

Rating:
Summary: Boyle creates a world where we can laugh only at ourselves.
Review: Boyle's stunning novel about a Japanese merchant marine who heaves him himself off his ship and ends up in the world of micro america Georgia is engaging from begining to end. Boyle's characters represent the quirks and fears of everyone who has an encounter with another culture. Boyle goes beyond the language barrier and stereotypes that differentiate one culture from another to show us how our ingrained sense of nationalistic pride can detract our sense of understanding one another's cultures. He use's the Japanese man as a focal point while also pointing out our own predjudices that we have about other Americans. It reminds a lot of Russel Banks' novel "Trailer Park" in the way that it is written. The way boyle and Banks both seem to give the reader a sense of every character and where they are coming from...everybody that we meet in the story has a story of their own. Fantastic. Read and then re-read.

Rating:
Summary: America as an Alligator Pit
Review: East Is East had been billed to me as one of the finer books by one of the finer writers in America today. I have a great weakness for stories about writers, and as this book featured a writers' colony as its center stage, I chose it over some of T.C. Boyle's better known novels and collections of short stories.

At it's heart, this story proposes the anti-American dream as reality. A young man, Hiro Tanaka, jumps ship off a Japanese steamer and swims ashore on an island off the coast of Georgia. Instead of discovering a land where people reach out to embrace him, he discovers a land where he is a wanted fugitive and the only people who reach out to help are really trying to help themselves. As a "half-breed" born of a Japanese mother and an American father, Hiro had always seen America as the City of Brotherly Love where no one would care what kind of blood he had flowing through his veins. But in very little time he learns that America can be as vicious and unwelcoming as its inhabitants, and that the American Dream is nothing short of a sham.

At times, Boyle is so wrapped up in setting off literary fireworks that he seems to get sidetracked from his plot; however, the fireworks can be amazing at times, so it's hard to hold this against him. His characterizations are wonderful, and the story hardly ever loses its pace. I wouldn't call this the greatest contemporary American novel I've come across, but it's a damn good one.

Rating:
Summary: America as an Alligator Pit
Review: East Is East had been billed to me as one of the finer books by one of the finer writers in America today. I have a great weakness for stories about writers, and as this book featured a writers' colony as its center stage, I chose it over some of T.C. Boyle's better known novels and collections of short stories.

At it's heart, this story proposes the anti-American dream as reality. A young man, Hiro Tanaka, jumps ship off a Japanese steamer and swims ashore on an island off the coast of Georgia. Instead of discovering a land where people reach out to embrace him, he discovers a land where he is a wanted fugitive and the only people who reach out to help are really trying to help themselves. As a "half-breed" born of a Japanese mother and an American father, Hiro had always seen America as the City of Brotherly Love where no one would care what kind of blood he had flowing through his veins. But in very little time he learns that America can be as vicious and unwelcoming as its inhabitants, and that the American Dream is nothing short of a sham.

At times, Boyle is so wrapped up in setting off literary fireworks that he seems to get sidetracked from his plot; however, the fireworks can be amazing at times, so it's hard to hold this against him. His characterizations are wonderful, and the story hardly ever loses its pace. I wouldn't call this the greatest contemporary American novel I've come across, but it's a damn good one.

Rating:
Summary: Unfunny Cartoon
Review: Has American literature really come to this? T.C. Boyle thinks that he is a latter day Swift. No way. He is merely a bigot who has created an unfunny cartoon.

Rating:
Summary: Unfunny Cartoon
Review: I have now read all of Boyle's work, except "Riven Rock," which is next on my list. "World's End" was so great, I didn't think another of his books would be able to equal it. Yet, "East Is East" does. It's great, simpler than "World's End," and just as interesting.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Best
Review: I have now read all of Boyle's work, except "Riven Rock," which is next on my list. "World's End" was so great, I didn't think another of his books would be able to equal it. Yet, "East Is East" does. It's great, simpler than "World's End," and just as interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning. What this man can do with sentences...
Review: In "East is East," T.C. Boyle shows what amazing things writers can do with sentences. I have never read another novel with better point-of-view characterization. Forget you readers out there; if you're a writer, you HAVE TO read this book. Yes, the plot is entertaining, but watch how he gets inside the heads of his characters and portrays them from the inside out. Whenever I'm feeling down about my own writing, I pull this novel off the shelf and read from it. One of the most original novels I've ever read.

Rating:
Summary: Hype Leads to Huge Disappointment
Review: My feelings about this book are based on hearing a two-audiotape abridgment, and that is always a major caveat. Nevertheless, I've heard plenty of abridged versions of books on tape that have propelled me toward the whole book. This one repelled me. The characters are tired cliches, the situations aren't terribly original, and the writing (the expressions used, the occasional metaphor) is sub-par. The main character, Hiro Tanaka, is oddly inconsistent. (I suppose you could say that about a lot of people, but why waste your time reading about them.) The fact that much of the action occurs in the artists' colony on a Georgian island is particularly a source of displeasure. Please, authors, stop writing about yourselves and your craft and your trade! Two points off just for that. Don't buy this book without giving it a good look-over first. A word to the wise...

Rating:
Summary: Enthralling and hilarious
Review: Quite simply, one of the finest examples of character writing there is. Boyle takes an absurd situation (a native Japanese man washed ashore in a Georgian swamp) and turns it into a compulsive page-turner. His dialogue, use of characters and acerbic wit are an absolute joy. The scene in the shop with the Japanese 'hero' showing a commendable grasp of the English language (seemingly gained entirely from Clint Eastwood movies) had me crying with laughter (and got me some strange looks from other folks on the London Underground at the time). Although the lunacy of the situation is reminicent of Boyle's short stories, readers familiar with his novels will recognise the style and attention to detail he pays his characters. This book should be required reading for anybody interested in writing their own fiction. You won't find a better example of modern storytelling anywhere.