Review of Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream

By J.C. Martin

If you like an affable comedy that balances some fairly serious political observations between its humorous episodes, then Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream (St. Martin's Press, $22.95) by John Derbyshire is the book for you.  It is filled with cheerful bounce and deadpan humor that elevates 'Silent Cal', America's famously uncommunicative 30th president, to the status of moral and ethical guru.

On the other hand, Derbyshire's slim volume is harsh in its judgment of modern China.  And it has a few stern points to make about dealing with midlife crises.

The hero of Calvin Coolidge is T.C. Chai, a survivor of Mao's Cultural Revolution.  He is a former Red Guard who decided he and his companions were "just a bunch of gangsters," and swam three miles across Deep Water Bay from the mainland to Hong Kong to begin life anew.

When we first meet up with him, however, his revolutionary life is 20 years in the past.  Now he is married to the lovely Ding, living on Long Island with their healthy baby, Hetty.  He is a financial analyst for a New York investment bank, a favorite of his fellow workers.

Ding is 14 years his junior.  "I am glad I married so late," he declares smugly.  "My first wife is my Second Wife.   This is very satisfactory.  I have all the advantages of a Second Wife without alimony or visitation problems."

But, Chai acknowledges, he is, at 48, a man "with a checkered past."  And he begins to tell his story in chapters alternating between flashbacks and current activities.

A Good Samaritan act landed Chai his first bank job in Hong Kong.  A stomach ache introduced him to his first love, Selina, the doctor's receptionist.  Theirs was a stormy, passionate romance.  When Selina left Hong Kong to come to a pre-arranged marriage in America, the bottom dropped out of Chai's world.  But once again he survived.  He improved his banking skills.  He went to college.  And now, 20 successful years later, he shepherds along Ding's English proficiency with challenging games of Scrabble.  They eat moon cakes.   They visit friends and he has his hobbies.  Life is good.  It's also a little humdrum.

That's where President Coolidge comes in.

Chai has become obsessed with Calvin Coolidge after reading in a book of contemporary American history that Coolidge's presidency represents the country's "last Arcadia".  And deep in his heart, this is what Hong Kong meant to Chai:  The great days of his middle youth, reckless love and endless promise-- although perhaps he was unaware of it until the miraculous reappearance of his early love, Selina, now a buyer for a Boston department store.

Seeing Calvin Coolidge is one of a half-dozen books "that came out of the unknown and gave me pleasure beyond measure," wrote Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley.  Author Derbyshire, by the way, is an Englishman who lived in China and "married into a Chinese family," according to his biography.

The title of Seeing Calvin Coolidge, you may be surprised to learn, is not simply a flight of whimsical fancy.  And a person you may find yourself wondering about after you lay the book down is one Mr Ruggles.  What a story he will have to tell his grandchildren, if he already hasn't.