Review of Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream

If you like stories about smart women outwitting vain and foolish men, you'll probably like the novel Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream by John Derbyshire ($22.95, St. Martin's Press).  If you're Asian or Asian-American, however, you may not.

The book tells the story of Chai, a former Red Guard during China's Cultural Revolution, who is now living an immigrant's "American dream" -- complete with a banking job in New York, healthy baby daughter and happy marriage.   Happy, that is, until he learns that Selina, a lover from his youth, is now living in Boston with her husband and son.

Chai, convinced that Selina's son is his, is determined to revive their affair.  Chai's wife Ding, however, sees more than her husband does in the matter, and conspires with Selina to teach Chai some forgotten truths about love and life.

This classic theme, which is told in the context of a Chinese couple's marriage, dovetails issues that immigrants who must assimilate into American society face.

In Chai's case, "he's a guy who tries to be so American that he almost turns his back on all things Asian," says Derbyshire, a systems analyst for an investment bank in New York.  "Calvin Coolidge was the most essentially American of past presidents, and I wanted (a character) who could talk horse sense into Chai, an ordinary schmuck who's going off the rails at mid-life."

Derbyshire's interest in China began in the late '70s when he had a part-time job tending bar in a Liverpool pub.  One of his customers suggested he visit Taiwan, and he did.  Derbyshire, an Englishman, ended up taking a job teaching English at a small college in Manchuria in 1982.

"After I came back from the Far East in 1983, I wrote book reviews and freelance pieces for magazines, then decided to try my luck on Wall Street," saus derbyshire, who then decided to stay in the United States.

"On the whole, I think Western points of view about China tend to be very shallow.  I married a Chinese woman, eat Chinese food and hear Chinese around the house.  But I am resistant to some aspects of Chinese culture.   There's stuff that repels me, and I'm frank about it.  My wife didn't like the book because she thought it was too anti-Chinese."

Indeed the book makes sweeping comments about Chinese people that I, as an Asian-America, find offensive.  Derbyshire, speaking in the first person as Chai, writes, "Chinese society took a wrong turn somewhere, thousands of years ago, and is now too far lost in the wilderness of despotism to ever become worthy of the best in human nature.  That society can only promote the worst, and this will always be so."

To say this of Chinese people, Serbian people, Irish people, Jewish people or any society of human beings is ridiculous.  Governments rise and fall, and what's best in human nature can be found in people everywhere, regardless of the society they live in.

Then there's the use of the phrase, "us Orientals."  To many Asian Americans, which is the preferred term, the word "Oriental" has a negative and outdated ring when used in reference to people.   "Oriental" is commonly used as an adjective for inanimate objects, like Oriental rugs.

Derbyshire says, "I'm a foreigner in this country, but my children are Americans.  If anyone were to call them Asian Americans, I'd probably punch the person in the nose.  I'm not a big fan of multiculturalism."

"From a world view, there are Americans, English, French and so on.  Americans tend to obsess about their own problems and don't have to engage with the rest of the world if they don't want to.  If you could get Americans to see that they are much more like each other than they are different (racially), you'd have a more harmonious society."

Such a world view is admirable, but unfortunately it's not the reality in our multicultural society.

Just as Chai's dreams of the past are not as good as what he has in the present.