In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry steamed into Edo Bay and "opened" Japan to trade with America. As entertainment for the treaty-signing ceremony, Perry brought a white-men-in-black-face minstrel show--and thereby confirmed the widely whispered Japanese belief that trade with the American "barbarians" could only lead to cultural ruin. Yet the pawns in this clash of cultures--the minstrels, Ace Bledsoe and Ned Clark, and the Japanese interpreter, Manjiro Okubo--are just slightly more curious than cautious. Within the minstrels Manjiro sensed "the subtleties of spirit that reside in all good men." When Ace and Ned are unwittingly made part of a Japanese plot to undermine the American presence, Manjiro helps them escape into the countryside. Pursued by samurai, torn between treachery and loyalty, Manjiro and the minstrels (along with family, friends, and lovers) make their way across Japan, fleeing a showdown with the samurai that gradually becomes inevitable. Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show is the long-awaited prequel--more than a decade in the making--to Richard Wiley's PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel, Soldiers in Hiding. A sword-swinging page-turner infused with a heady mix of Japanese etiquette, American ideals, and Machiavellian philosophy, Wiley's latest novel sparkles as it shapes history into an enlightened drama of the earliest moments of globalization.
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In 1854, when the U.S. Navy's Commodore Perry sailed into Edo (now Tokyo) with the grand goal of opening Japan to trade, he brought major change and minor entertainment—a black-face minstrel show that amazed and perplexed its audience. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Wiley, shifting perspectives with deft ease, follows two fictional white minstrels, Ace Bledsoe and Ned Clark, as they confront Japanese society, while he subversively engages the reader in a deeply allegorical reading of cultural exchange. Ace and Ned come under the wing of interpreter Manjiro Okubo, whose powerful family is locked in an old clan rivalry. The rivals' plot to kidnap musicians sets off a train of events romantic and tragic, with touches of Keystone Kops: with tantalizing authorial discretion, lovers enjoy one another, villains flash lethal swords, beauty balances bawdy, and rivalries and enmities explode. (Readers need not have read Wiley's PEN/Faulkner Award–winning Soldiers in Hiding, for which this novel is a way-back prequel.) This absorbing and immensely pleasurable book achieves momentum through Wiley's fluid style, the lightness with which he bears his learning, and the vitality and wit with which he brings a vanished world to life. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show is world-class historical fiction. It takes us to a place, mid-nineteenth-century Japan, that's long ago and far away, and makes it contemporary and intimately familiar. It's a wryly told tale, full of wonders and surprises, written with grace and authority. Richard Wiley is one of the few American novelists with the will and the ability to penetrate a culture not his own with the requisite alacrity and intelligent respect. If there is such a thing as global fiction, Richard Wiley is writing it. (Russell Banks )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clear sailing with Commodore Perry,
This review is from: Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (James a. Michener Fiction Series) (Hardcover)
The novelist Richard Bausch once remarked that a reader is always guaranteed to learn something new in any novel written by Richard Wiley. Wiley shepherds us into a foreign landscape and introduces us to a culture that is strikingly remote from our own yet is so intimately and recognizably human that we close the book with the realization that not only are we more savvy about the workings of the world at large, but we have a rich new insight into ourselves as well. These two feats can be achieved only by a literary master capable of topnotch entertainment who also has his thumb firmly on the pulse of humanity. In Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show, Richard Wiley outdoes himself. The novel abounds in characters who will live in the reader's mind long after finishing that last page; a plot that is riveting in terms of tragedy, comedy, and samurai action; if that's not enough, this novel is one of the most poetically rendered achievements I've read in the past year. Each sentence is carefully crafted and is in full service to a compelling story about the cultural clashes, tribal rivalries, and familial conflicts that occur when Commodore Perry and his unlikely crew sail into Japan's Edo Bay in 1854 to open trade with the United States. Along the way we are treated to sex, romance, swordplay, deapitation, high and low comedy, and a sense of history whose heartbeat resounds through the ages to make it all feel insistently modern. I recommend this book without reservation to anyone who cares about excellent storytelling.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Strange and Wonderful Delight,
By Robert F. Pope Jr. (Akron, OH) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (James a. Michener Fiction Series) (Hardcover)
I've read all of Richard Wiley's books, and like anyone else, I have my favorites. Soldiers in Hiding is, of course, a fine book. Fool's Gold is a beauty, and Festival for 3,000 Maidens is a great little Peace Corps Novel. I have to ask myself whether Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show is now my favorite because I've just finished it, but it's a strange and wonderful delight.
Who else would write about such an unusual subject? And what makes the book such a pleasure? It has to do with the beauty of the characters and the language, both light as a feather and yet capable of great and sudden strength. I've rarely seen a book with such a texture, bright and dark, comic and serious, distant and close, ridiculous and urgent. At times I found myself wondering why I became so involved with this odd bunch of characters from the mid 1800's Japan, but generally I was too involved to ask the question. Of course, it's no wonder, since Richard Wiley has lived in, visited, and obviously loved Japan over the years. But what surprised me the most was the book's ability to make me gasp now and again. And to curse the writer for having received, worked for, and developed such a gift.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful, breathtaking - Japan in 19th Century,
By
This review is from: Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show (James a. Michener Fiction Series) (Hardcover)
Richard Wiley's novel takes you to a time of great change in Japan, the opening to the west. You will see history through the eyes of memorable vivid characters - and you will feel attached to these people - their strengths and foibles - their love affairs, rip-roaring bloody battles and roll on the floor laughing scenes as well.
It's got something for everyone and just beautifully written.
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