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Loading... Woman with a Blue Pencil: A Novelby Gordon McAlpine
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Gordon McAlpine weaves together three stories, set in Los Angeles in 1941-42, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. (I) Japanese-American Sam Sumida ditches his art professorship to search for his wife's murderer as the police seem disinterested in solving the crime. (II) Korean-American Jimmy Park is recruited for a secret government mission to trap and eliminate the head of a Japanese spy ring, a deadly female assassin, codename The Orchid. (III) Finally, Maxine Wakefield is a book editor (i.e., the title character), who encourages the Japanese-American author, Takumi Sato, rewrite his book from (I) to (II) given the rising anti-Japanese sentiment as he is forced into the infamous Manzanar prison camp. I liked how the plotlines came together. A quick read and an interesting writing exercise in the noir mystery tradition. An editor (with a blue pencil) is the femme fatale to a Japanese American author and his character, who gets written out of his novel in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans in internment camps. The structure is fascinating, entirely excerpts from two draft novels -- the one the editor is asking for, and a revision of the one the author wrote, which interacts with the one the editor is asking for -- and correspondence from the editor to the author. What happens to characters that are edited out of stories? Gordon McAlpine explores this question in this playful noir metafiction. Takumi Sato is an aspiring novelist whose debut follows Sam Sumida as he seeks to solve the mystery of his wife’s murder. Unfortunately for Sato, his novel is rejected with advice for a major revision solely because he and his protagonist are both Japanese-Americans and this happens to be America following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese-Americans are all now suspicious and subject to overt racism in their daily lives. McAlpine cleverly exposes this unfortunate period by using three narratives in this entertaining novel: the original piece wherein Sumida and the prime suspect in his wife’s murder have literally been edited out of existence; Maxine Wakefield’s editorial correspondence with Sato regarding how best to package his story so that it would be more palatable to an American (read White) audience; and excerpts from the revised novel— “The Orchid and the Secret Agent”—whose protagonist is now an excessively loyal Korean-American and the bad guys are now a Japanese cabal lead by an evil Japanese woman who is vaguely reminiscent of Samida’s murdered wife. These Japanese spies are brutally homicidal, devious and intent on destroying America—reminiscent of how many American viewed all Japanese-Americans at that time. Don’t be discouraged if all of this sounds quite confusing because McAlpine does a masterful job of keeping all of these balls in the air and bringing everything neatly together in the end. The two stories are almost too pulpy to be seriously considered as worthy additions to the noir cannon. They might best be viewed as parody. However, the underlying theme of American racism toward Japanese-Americans during World Was II is particularly evident in both. This was a time when the rug was figuratively pulled out from under most Japanese-Americans: their property was confiscated—never to be returned; they were viewed as devious and suspicious; and they were interned at remote sites. Because the Japanese internment experience is not covered in this story, readers should consider looking at the marvelous recent book called “The Train to Crystal City” by Jan Jarboe Russell. Sato’s original Japanese-American protagonist is exposed to particularly vicious and overt forms of racism while doing routine things in LA. Likewise, Sato’s editor at Metropolitan Modern Mysteries feels no compunction about using code words and covert racism in her supposedly helpful recommendations, including applauding his use of the Caucasian pseudonym, William Thorne. Like most loyal Japanese-Americans, Sato submits to her racism for the good of the order. And like many young Japanese-American males, he volunteers for military service seeing action in the European theater. no reviews | add a review
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"On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Sam Sumida, a Japanese-American academic, has been thrust into the role of amateur P.I., investigating his wife's murder, which has been largely ignored by the LAPD. Grief stricken by her loss, disoriented by his ill-prepared change of occupation, the worst is yet to come.... Sam discovers that, inexplicably, he has become not only unrecognizable to his former acquaintances but that all signs of his existence (including even the murder he's investigating) have been erased. Unaware that he is a discarded, fictional creation, he resumes his investigation in a world now characterized not only by his own sense of isolation but by wartime fear. Meantime, Sam's story is interspersed with chapters from a pulp spy novel that features an L.A.-based Korean P.I. with jingoistic and anti-Japanese, post December 7th attitudes - the revised, politically and commercially viable character for whom Sumida has been excised. Behind it all is the ambitious, 20-year-old Nisei author who has made the changes, despite the relocation of himself and his family to a Japanese internment camp. And, looming above, is his book editor in New York, who serves as both muse and manipulator to the young author--the woman with the blue pencil, a new kind of femme fatale"-- No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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I'm complaining a lot about a book that I mostly enjoyed, and I realize I'm kind of missing the point, but it happened to be a particularly extreme example of the things I frequently find irritating in books about writers. ( )