Saint Jack
by Paul Theroux
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Description
An American pimp in Singapore finds his life of pleasure turning against him in this comic novel by the acclaimed author of The Great Railway Bazaar . ? Once a small-time American hustler, Jack Flowers found his calling when he jumped into the Straits of Malacca and hitched a ride to Singapore. Deftly identifying the fastest route to fame along the seedy port, Jack started hiring girls out to lonely tourists, sailors, bachelors ?anyone with some loose change and a wandering eye. Some show more years later, he ?s running two pleasure palaces and something of a legend among those in the know. ? But just as Jack is riding high, a shocking tumble toward the brink of death leaves him shaken, depressed and vulnerable. Desperate to pull himself back up, he ?s quick to do business with Edwin Shuck, a powerful American working to take down an unsuspecting general. Marked with Paul Theroux ?s trademark biting humor, Saint Jack is an audacious tale of sex, faith, guilt, innocence, middle-age, and the meaning of it all. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
I hadn't read any of Paul Theroux's books in many years, but I'm glad I grabbed this one off the library shelf. Bostonian Jack Fiori jumps ship in Singapore and invents a new life for himself as Jack Flowers, procurer extraordinary. The novel explores his coming to terms wit the false personas that he and his bar mates cultivate.
Men have no double standard to hold them back from doing things like going to a foreign country and staying on there, thinking at first they'll just stay awhile, long enough to make their fortune, and then go home, settle down and live the good life. But what if they never make their fortune at anything, and just kind of limp along, their inertia growing. Until they realize they're old. An American pimp and ship Chandler in Singapore tries different ways of making his fortune.
Captures almost exactly what it feels like to live in SE Asia as an expat. Never went to Singapore, but I actually did meet a few people in Bangkok who reminded me of Jack Flowers.
Fiction, and life in Singapore, as was. Paul Theroux is, as always, a writer who, IMO, draws in the atmosphere of the places he's writing about. There are times when reading this, I'm transported back to Geylang Road, although it's not now althing like the Singapore of old. I read about this book somewhere, and, after initially borrowing it from the library decided that I had to buy it. Thank you, eBay.
For fans of debauched expat fiction. Poor Jack.
One of Theroux's better novels.
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ThingScore 75
Paul Theroux's touch is firmer, funnier and truer with each novel that he writes. Once again the broader frame of reference is transcultural and the inflections are perfectly pitched -- so is the scene (Singapore this time) set, or rather overheard, in the ""papery rustle"" of palm fronds or rattan or whirring dung beetles. Here an American Jack Flowers has spent fifteen years odd-jobbing for show more a ship chandler Big Hing while also doing some ""conscientious shepherding"" of tourists from offices and clubs to the city's bars and brothels. During this time a man called Leigh who comes to audit Big Hing's books and views Jack's poncing with pinch-nosed disapproval suddenly dies -- reminding Jack of himself -- summoning up his whole past as well as the shaky rationale of his present. From a figure of genial, glad-handing bonhomie (""a finger in every tart"") he becomes a caricature of crumpled middle age. But, gratefully, not for long. Innocence and confidence return -- even a certain probity. After all, are not his catered services more justifiable than the ""anonymous savagery of the new pornography"" threatening to make him obsolescent? show less
added by SnootyBaronet
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Fiction with Men's Given Names in the Title
302 works; 11 members
Author Information
112+ Works 32,280 Members
Paul Edward Theroux was born on April 10, 1941 in Medford, Massachusetts and is an acclaimed travel writer. After attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst he joined the Peace Corps and taught in Malawi from 1963 to 1965. He also taught in Uganda at Makerere University and in Singapore at the University of Singapore. Although Theroux has show more also written travel books in general and about various modes of transport, his name is synonymous with the literature of train travel. Theroux's 1975 best-seller, The Great Railway Bazaar, takes the reader through Asia, while his second book about train travel, The Old Patagonian Express (1979), describes his trip from Boston to the tip of South America. His third contribution to the railway travel genre, Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China, won the Thomas Cook Prize for best literary travel book in 1989. His literary output also includes novels, books for children, short stories, articles, and poetry. His novels include Picture Palace (1978), which won the Whitbread Award and The Mosquito Coast (1981), which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Theroux is a fellow of both the British Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Geographic Society. His title Lower River made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012. Currently his 2015 book, Deep South , is a bestseller. (Bowker Author Biography) Paul Theroux is the distinguished author of numerous award-winning books, including "The Mosquito Coast," "Kowloon Tong," & "Half Moon Street." (Publisher Provided) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Important places
- Singapore
- Related movies
- Saint Jack; Saint Jack (1979 | IMDb)
- Epigraph
- Action will furnish belief—but will that belief be the true one?
A. H. Clough, Amours de Voyage - First words
- IN ANY MEMOIR it is usual for the first sentence to reveal as much as possible of your subject’s nature by illustrating it in a vivid and memorable motto, and with my own first sentence now drawing to a finish I see I have ... (show all)failed to do this!
- Quotations
- Death rephrases the life of everyone who's near.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)“Lady, believe me,” I said, and a high funny note of joy, recovered hope, warbled in my ears as I pronounced the adventurous sentence, “I’ve got all the time in the world.”
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Statistics
- Members
- 285
- Popularity
- 112,988
- Reviews
- 6
- Rating
- (3.17)
- Languages
- Dutch, English, German, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 18
- ASINs
- 6
