Word: theroux
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Novels do not ordinarily dabble with too much exactitude in current events or upcoming headlines; fiction writers hope, after all, that their work will outlast the rapid stream of passing fancies. But Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong (Houghton Mifflin; 243 pages; $23) arrives as a noteworthy exception to that rule. On June 30 Britain will end its long-term ownership and control of Hong Kong and hand over the colony to the People's Republic of China. Hot off the presses, Kowloon Tong offers Theroux's imaginative version of how some Hong Kong residents have fared--and will fare...
This paraphrase of Margaret Thatcher's comment after meeting Mikhail Gorbachev pretty much tips Theroux's hand in Kowloon Tong. He is aiming at broad political satire, and nearly any target will do. Both the Mullards are contemptible. She is a snob about all things British who calls the Chinese "Chinky-Chonks" and tells her host at a Chinese restaurant, "Nothing personal, but we don't touch Chinese food. Never did. All the grease, all the glue. And it's always so wet. Makes me want to spew." Bunt, for his part, is a pathetic mama...
Readers who like to take sides will not find palatable choices in Kowloon Tong. Theroux's distaste for everyone involved in his tale registers clearly and often brilliantly. But it seems reasonable to hope that his vision of the near future is unduly dyspeptic, and that fiction will be stranger than truth...
BOOKS . . . KOWLOON TONG: On June 30 Britain will end its long-term ownership and control of Hong Kong and hand over the colony to the People?s Republic of China. Hot off the presses, Paul Theroux?s ?Kowloon Tong? (Houghton Mifflin; 243 pages; $23) offers Theroux?s imaginative version of how some Hong Kong residents have fared -- and will fare -- in the face of such a monumental and imminent change, writes TIME Literary Critic Paul Gray. Neville Mullard, 43, lives with his widowed mother Betty in a Hong Kong house called, in honor of their native land, Albion Cottage...
...Writers often disguise their lives as fiction," Leavitt tells Ben near the end of the novella. "The thing they almost never do is disguise fiction as their lives." This is not quite true. Paul Theroux offered an invented autobiography last year in My Other Life, and Philip Roth did much the same in 1993 in Operation Shylock. The Term Paper Artist is as playful as those works and every bit as good...