Word: golden
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Clearly Madonna isn't the only one whoidentifies with Golden's strong characters. TheBoston Public Library's auditorium was filled toits capacity, and the crowd of roughly 400overflowed into the aisles. The crowd, like themajority of Golden's characters, was predominantlyfemale, spotted here and there with a reluctanthusband, an enlightened male or an entire bookclub. Instead of filling the hour by readingexcerpts from his book ("We're all literatebecause our parents read to us every night," hequipped, "read us to sleep!"), Golden chose totell about the ten-year odyssey that lead to thepublication of Memoirs of a Geisha...
After graduating from Harvard in 1978,concentrating in Japanese art history, Goldenearned a Master's in Japanese history at Columbiaand then worked in Tokyo. It was after his returnfrom Tokyo that Golden began writing a novel abouta Japanese friend. While researching the characterof his friend's mother, a retired geisha, Goldenfound he was writing about the wrong subject andswitched his focus completely. 750 pages went intothe trashcan, and he wrote 800 pages about 35years in the life of a geisha that were declared"dry." Golden then threw out another 750 pages, anact which he called "exhilarating," and then aftera week...
...creation of such a confident narrativevoice attests to Golden's diligence and skill as afiction writer. While Golden's name and the words"a novel" appear on the cover of Memoirs ofa Geisha, the novel begins with a translator'snote, convincingly signed by "Jakob Haarhuis,Arnold Rusoff Professor of Japanese History, NewYork University." The story begins from there asthe ever hopeful, bitterly realistic voice ofSayuri takes over, and the reader finds himself sotaken by the enveloping prose, quietly blendingthe "superlative degree of comparison" present inDickens's opening in A Tale of Two Citieswith the seducing party-haze of wealth...
...woman was so convinced of the story'srealism that at a Denver reading she raised herhand and, looking directly at Golden, asked "Isthat you on the cover?" Golden chuckled in obviousenjoyment as he told this story at the Bostonreading and wondered aloud whether "it was me on agood day or a bad day?" He then added that thename of the supposed translator was a pun,"Haarhuis" substituting for "whore-house" inrecognition of the darker side of the geisha'sworld. "Arnold Rusoff," far from endowing aprofessorship at NYU, is actually a dear friend ofGolden's, eager for his 15 minutes...
...Rusoff and Goldenhave gotten far more than their 15 minutes offame, and with the huge popular appeal of thenovel--ranging from Madonna to local book clubs toGaultier--one can hardly help wondering what it isabout this 428 page novel that has generated sucha fervor. The answer is simple, and Golden himselfarticulated it best when he said "I read because Iwant to live other lives."Photo Courtesy of Vintage BooksThe man behind the madness: Arthur Golden...