Chai's past is alternately heroic and despicable. As a member of the Red Guard he was a pawn in Mao's purges and movements. He was a bully at best, and at worst was complicit in a particularly heinous act against an innocent for which he is convinced he will pay dearly for in this life or the next. (Ironically, it is also the beginning of his yearnings to emigrate.) When disillusion and hopelessness set in deeply enough he manages to summon the courage to swim though four miles of ocean straights to freedom in Hong Kong.
As a young man in Hong Kong he becomes infatuated with, and successfully pursues, a demure beauty, Selina, who is already betrothed to another. Although she remains committed to her pre-arranged marriage, their affair turns to love. After their inevitable break she lingers in his memory as the only epic and passionate love of his life, even after twenty years time, a completely agreeable marriage to another beautiful woman, and the arrival of an infant daughter.
Upon coming to the U.S., Chai decided to totally embrace America, in contrast to many of his immigrant cohorts, including his wife, who seem to keep their new country at arm's length. In the interest of thorough assimilation Chai has immersed himself in the literature and history of the West, and the U.S. in particular. He has passed through an obsession with Samuel Johnson, among others, and is now on to President Coolidge, the plain spoken, optimistic, Yankee moralist. In a minor way, this makes Chai is a bit of a tedious fellow; there is a touch of condescension in his tendency to frown on those of differing sentiments.
From a chance encounter he suddenly finds that his Hong Kong paramour now lives nearby, or at least within driving distance. Despite the years that have passed Chai finds himself courting infidelity and seeking out the lost dream of his youth. Luckily for him, his subtly perceptive wife connives to save him from himself with a little help from the ghost of Calvin Coolidge. The plot is slight and common (a wise woman saves a man from himself) but serviceably, if not gracefully, rendered.
The real treats here are Chai's ruminations on culture, immigration, fidelity, history and aging. (We actually don't get to the whole mid-life crisis plot until halfway through the book.) Derbyshire excels at calm and steady descriptions of disturbing emotion. His depictions of the horrors of the times of Mao are so even keeled that when you cringe at the events, you know it's the event and not the prose doing it to you. Equally heartfelt are the feelings of gratitude that Chai, and a number of the Chinese characters, express in having escaped the horrors of Mao and living the comparatively idyllic middle-class American life. In the character of T.C. Chai, Derbyshire has created a man in full -- good and evil, joy and despair, pride and regret, yin and yang. To wit, here is a brief self-reflection:
Perhaps I should begin to cultivate one of those long wispy beards. But I have lived some, I have not led a bookish life. I have watched helpless as my mother died. I have been a peasant, a soldier, a factory worker, and an intellectual. I have swum for my freedom, I have said farewell forever to a girl I loved beyond all reason. More: I have fought in battle, I have killed a man - or at any rate, tried to. I have committed rape, I thing I recall reluctantly, and with deepest shame. May Heaven forgive me for that.
Well, my pedant's cap came to me not from a life spent in libraries and lecture halls, but after suffering borne and suffering inflicted. I can wear it with dignity and humility, as it should be worn, not with the empty arrogance of the merely credentialed.
That's a beautiful passage. Profound and rather dark sentiments presented with refined neutrality so as to cause the reader no easy judgments.
Chai is certainly one of the most fully developed characters I have encountered in a novel. He doesn't really fit into a literary pigeon hole. In fact, as one enters the second half of the book and the plot goes from observations of Chai to the emotional mechanics of infidelity, the mid-life crisis aspect of the story seems a bit out of place, as if it is unworthy of the depth of the preceding topics. I would have been happy just to follow Chai's extended observations on how the Chinese and Western worlds differ as it is played out before him in the course of his day-to-day life.
Occasionally Chai can be a bit annoying with his habit of treating trivial events to be highly indicative of national culture -- both U.S. and Chinese -- but by and large his opinions are genuine and original, which makes the book worthwhile in and of itself; the product of a mature open-mindedness as opposed to low-rent moral relativism. It's a very intelligent and well thought out read, told with great clarity and excellent humor.
I give Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream my highest praise of the month: I finished it. You will too.
(Marginally related aside: I am looking for a copy of a book entitled The Ugly Chinaman, by Bo Yang. I have only seen English translations sporadically around the web and they are running round-about $60-90. There is no way I will pay that much for a book (without the chance of hocking it on eBay for twice that in the future) so if anyone knows where I can get a copy for a reasonable price, please drop a dime.)
