Week 8: Tripmaster Monkey

Wittman Ah Sing is a character who is searching, often in vain, for a practical use for this Berkeley English education, and he yearns for a community to call his own. He is technically part of many different communities: San Francisco, poets, Chinese, college students, and a group of friends with whom he parties. Still, he always feels out of place. He must learn to belong to a hybrid culture, one that encompasses both the individual and the community. Neither one can completely encompass the other. He must deal with the issue of his own visibility or invisibility. Sometimes he feels all important, and at others, he feels he can’t be heard by a single person in the city.

The title of the book comes from the ancient Chinese story “Monkey,” in which the monk Tripitaka brings the Buddhist scrolls from India to China. Monkey is one of his three companions, and the strongest and most unruly one. He is infinitely powerful, yet he is uncontrollable, rash, proud, and somewhat of a jokester. Much of this can apply to Wittman (except perhaps the infinite power). Wittman shares some of Monkey’s supernatural monk-ish powers. When on the bus, he sees a girl turn into a boar and speak to him. He seems to hallucinate, but his visions nearly always make some kind of sense and reveal important understandings to him.

The subtitle and chapter headings of the book are references to other types of works. The chapter titles are all phrases from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The connection here needs no explanation. “His fake book” might not imply that the story is fake; it is like a jazz fake book, or a springboard for new ideas and cultures that will require improvisation. On the other hand, it could be a direct response to Frank Chin’s accusation:

“Come All Ye Asian American Writers of the Real and the Fake,” he writes: "What seems to hold Asian American literature together is the popularity among whites of Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior (450,000 copies sold since 1976); David Henry Hwang’s F.O.B. (Obie, best off- Broadway play) and M. Butterfly (Tony, best Broadway play); and Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. These works are held up before us as icons of our pride, symbols of our freedom from the icky-gooey evil of . . . Chinese culture.

"Furthermore, Kingston, Hwang, and Tan are the first writers of any race, and certainly the first writers of Asian ancestry, to so boldly fake the best-known works from the most universally known body of Asian American lore in history."

The fact that Wittman is based on Frank Chin makes this a likely interpretation. It is a clever retort to that hurtful remark, and Kingston’s way of recreating the American canon, a goal she shares with Wittman Ah Sing.

Week 7: Hollow City

Hollow City brings up extremely interesting opinions and ideas about the gentrification of San Francisco. The idea of a hollow city at all is a very intriguing concept. Solnit and Schwartzenberg give so many examples of the types of people Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg write about as central to the San Franciscan culture being turned onto the streets or driven from the city entirely. It is a heartbreaking situation. If all the “angelheaded hipsters,” “men with burlap feet,” beatniks, and winos are expelled from the city, what is left but yuppies and empty buildings? It seems that those who made San Francisco great as a mythological and socially desirable places will no longer inhabit it. As the authors predict, there will be black culture, but no black people. This goes for all non-yuppie traditions. There will sushi bars with no Japanese, Latino restaurants with no Latinos, reggae clubs with no Rastafarians, etc. These are not the types of people who will commute into the city for the work like laborers or dot-com employees. They will take their art, culture, and social views elsewhere, leaving San Francisco (to borrow from Professor Wilson) a spectral city.

The photography with accompanying stories is what makes this book impressive and effective. Tracking certain trends is common enough, but she took the time to gather photos and personally interview hundreds of people about their experiences in the hollowing of San Francisco. This is what drives the points home. Seeing poor, elderly people and low-income families driven from their homes simply because there is more money to be made is heartbreaking. Stories like Ira Nowinski’s, being evicted the same day he was mugged for the four cents he was carrying from his long-time home, are especially poignant. This book is an incredible look into the changing city and what it might mean for the future.

Week 6: The Dharma Bums

One of the most interesting aspects of this book is the different explorations of religion. It is refreshing and entertaining to read their interpretations of the world and religion. While both focus primarily on Buddhism, there are different elements on which they choose to focus, and none is portrayed as more correct than the other.

Ray’s version of Buddhism involves a great deal of private meditation. He uses every opportunity to slip into the woods and be alone. Even when he returns to the east coast to spend Christmas with his family, he refuses to sleep in their house or spend his time with them. Later in the book, he begins to close his eyes and meditate while in a group setting, which unsettles many of his friends and their children. He also feels that celibacy is important since “lust [is] the direct cause of birth which [is] the direct cause of suffering and death” (29). He is repulsed at first by Japhy’s practice of yabyum and continually makes a point of staying away from girls. He is somewhat of a hypocrite, though, because he ends up appreciating his baths with Princess, and he bugs Japhy at one point for having so many girls and not sharing. He also doesn’t keep his body pure as many Buddhists do. He constantly drinks, to his friends’ chagrin. Japhy eats more purely, and he is more interested in actions than words.

The metaphor of climbing a mountain as a religious experience is one thing these characters have in common. When they climb the Matterhorn, Japhy makes it to the top by letting go and running while Ray fails because he is afraid of falling, so he clings to the rock. “Clinging” is a common word used in Buddhism to describe the inability to let go of the material world. Ray recognizes later that you can’t fall off a mountain. Their adventure helps to enlighten him.
At the end of the book, Japhy goes off to Japan so he can study with the great Buddhist masters while Ray works as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak. Each ends up finding his own way to personal fulfillment. The book ends with Ray descending Desolation Peak and giving thanks to the mountain for showing him enlightenment.

Ray is not a pure Buddhist; he doesn’t study in Japan or follow every tenet of the practice. He even mixes some Judeo-Christian belief into it, saying that Jesus preaches love, and he thanks God at the end. This mix of religion is the particular spirituality that suits Ray, so it is complete and perfect. We, as readers, hold nothing against him for this inventive conglomeration of beliefs.