Richard Hughes (2) (1906–1984)

I read this book maybe 17 years ago but I remember it being a wonderful collection of anecdotes, all of them fun, and full of the author's great voice. But more then that he captures the transition of from history into the modern era gracefully as he moves from colonial era to cold war throughout his career. This book stuck with me after all these years, I retell his seppuku story myself from time to time.

Going to Wikipedia for a little pre-review primer on this book and its author, as I sometimes do, I am surprised to find him entirely absent and the article entitled "Richard Hughes (Writer)" to deal with some toff poetaster. It makes me soften toward Dick a little bit, because when you consider the self-congratulatory tone of much of this ramshackle memoir, especially the final section which tries to play all "old Asia hands share their best tales" but comes across more smug show more fuck-the-hippies and -commies and let-me-tell-you-about-the-brothel-girls-in-Kowloon, you could get a little nauseated until you realize how little remembered a lot of these dudes are, and it's a shame, because whatever else you can say about them, they lived.

I mean, I have no idea whatsoever why I'm about to pick on Benjamin Spock here, but what the fuck is up when some doctor with some childrearing ideas is a--more or less--giant among letters, and the man who personally knew and investigated and wrote about Richard Sorge and Masanobu Tsuji and Burgess and MacLean is forgotten? It doesn't make sense. If Hughes's tone sometimes veers a bit to the aggrieved and aggrandizing, no wonder--look at all the shit he did. Why in hell would we fete just-another-hack like (I don't know why I'm about to pick on) Jack Hodgins just because he writes fiction, and look down our noses at Hughes for writing journalism and windy memoir?

And okay, he gets super Orientalist, and rabidly anti-communist in a weirdly insecure, self-justifying way, and there's that matter of the brothel girls . . . but there are some sweet stories in here, and a lot of them I was eager enough to pin down the truth of to look on the inet, and there was nothing, and that is criminal, and good for you, Richard Hughes. show less

Richard Hughes was a reporter in China Japan etc from shortly before WWII until the end of occupation. This is a collection of his tales. It does ramble and many of the stories have lost interest in time but, on the other hand, many are great tales.

An outstanding book!