Customer Reviews

Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream: A Novel

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I am the Boris in John Derbyshire's brilliant first novel. I have had the priviledge of having Mr. Derbyshire work in my Department at a Wall Street firm allowing him to write his novel at the office. What has John done? He has put together a masterful novel of a Chinese immigrant who comes to this country with his Chinese wife and as many of us do, fantasizes about a former girlfriend who has also immigrated to this country. Unlike many of us husbands, he visits her. He then weaves in the 30th president of the United States who helps preserve his marriage. It should be noted that Mr. Derbyshire is English, went to China to teach and fell in love with and married one of his students. He does have a genuine fondness for Mr. Coolidge. We have debated to what extent the book is autobiographical, which he vehemetly denies although his wife hates the book. So be it. If you want a good, thoughtful read, try this acclaimed book.

This one really has to be read on trust. Such an absurd concept - former Red Guard escapes mainland China to Hong Kong, eventually reaches New York in the banking industry and becomes obsessed with Calvin Coolidge - can only be translated into wonderful reading by a genuine talent - which Mr. Derbyshire obviously is. It's worth reading for the commentary on Chinese history. It's worth reading for the commentary on Mr. Coolidge. It's worth reading strictly for the penultimate scene - when the title scene is played out. It's worth reading purely for the craft of the author's art. It's just worth reading - proof that there are still precious gems out there amid the torrent of flotsam and jetsam that the main publishing houses turn out on a prolific and shameless basis.

Until recently, my only acquaintance with Mr. Derbyshire was in his role as a somewhat disagreeable controversialist in "National Review" magazine. Then, I noticed his most recent book (as of this posting), "Prime Obsession", a non-fiction account of the work of 19th century German mathematician Bernhard Riemann, whose prime number theorum remains one of the biggest unsolved problems in mathematics. Through the capsule biography of the author, I found out the existance of this book and consulted the reviews here.

Having read "Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream", I can say that it fully lives up to the sometimes-extravagant praise posted here. The book has a quirky charm all its own, not least because of the first-person voice of its hero, Chai, a winning and fascinating personality. Since the plot has been fully discussed in other reviews here, I will limit myself to a few random observations.

--Chai's account of his participation in the Red Guards as a teenager reads like a chiller out of Chen Jo-Hsi's book, "The Execution of Mayor Yin, and Other Tales of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" His witnessing of a gang-rape (which he feigns participation in) shames him and destroys at a stroke any loyalty to the Party he may have had. This starts him on his long road to America.

--Like Joseph Conrad in England, Chai masters the intricacies of English while in America. His ironic and insightful observations of the United States, China, and Hong Kong (before the PRC took over) are fun to read and dead-on.

--The long-dead Calvin Coolidge appears to give some dry and intelligent advice. Mr. Derbyshire manages to squash the old legend of "Silent Cal" as unintelligent and indolent. While the author perhaps spreads it a mite too thick, it is still a useful and entertaining corrective. (I hold with the political scientist who believes that Mr. Coolidge's apparent indolence was the result of a deep--perhaps clinical--depression at the death of his 16-year old son, Calvin Jr. from septicemia caused by an infected blister on his foot that had been raised playing tennis on the White House lawn.)

All of this is just by-the-by, however. The book was simply a delight and I urge anyone whose interest has been piqued by these comments to read it just as I did.

A delightful little novel about an Chinese immigrant who comes to idolize Calvin Coolidge. The author manages to portray a character who is quirky but eminently human, eccentric but likable. It is no surprise that one of the narrator's favorite authors is Samuel Johnson, himself a combination of the above-mentioned traits. It is also nice to see Calvin Coolidge getting some much-deserved credit in this book.

I understand this is the author's first published novel, and it is a masterpiece. The Englishman manages to capture the cadences of both Chinese immigrant and Yankee Puritan with aplomb. The use of language is breathtaking, the analogies awesome and the story itself charming, funny and totally uplifting. In the process he manages to paint a wonderful portrait of the most neglected President of the twentieth century, the magnificent Calvin Coolidge.

A quirky novel about how the ghost of Calvin Coolidge saves a happy marriage. This story is about China, about being an American, and about facing moral challenges. And it's humorous -- because the reader knows more than the narrator does. It also tells how community can step in to keep life in order. Finally, I like its portrait of marriage. So much of literature focuses on pursuit rather than maitenance, and now that I'm married I'm interested in the former rather than the latter.

Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream is a fine work, quite amazing in weaving together such different strands as the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the pain of regret and lost love, the terse, no-nonsense wisdom of a vastly underrated President and individual, and the question of making moral choices. A book very deliberately against the modern grain. In short, just what we need in an age when art so often fails to elevate.

Although Derbyshire is a bit of a pedant, he does not have one scurrying to the dictionary too many times. I happen to know the Author and the book is more than a bit autobiographical as Mr. Derbyshire is married to an Asian who is much like Chai's wife. The book stresses "family values" only because the hero was unsuccessful in consummating an extramarital relationship with a former love and rationalized that a "bird in hand....."

This novel is like no other book I know. It is a strange brew distilled from ingredients that would not seem to go together but that somehow add up to a rich and satifying mix. The story is that of a Chinese immagrant living in suburban America - an ex Red Guard whose current life is totally different from his past. The protagonist's tastes and sensibilities are delightfully unexpected and the gentle pace and almost wistful storyline belie what we expect in a modern novel. For reasons that I cannot fully articulate, I really loved this book. The main charcter's strange 'take' on America, the Englsh language, aspects of contemporary culture, family, life, love - and even Calvin Cooledge - are wonderfully presented and leave the reader (at least this reader) wishing that he could actually know and talk to this person.

John Derbyshire has done a wonderful job of breathing life into a character and providing the reader with something special and unexpected. I look forward to his next book.

I was telling a friend who was once my English professor at Cal Berkeley that Seeing was the best novel I'd read in a long time. (Unfortunately, there is currently little time for novel reading.) She asked, "Good book or good read?" I sort of went "Huh," but have been mulling over the question ever since. The answer: good read, emphatically. Swift, short and constantly entertaining in its transitions of place and time, and overlay of memory, Seeing is a true page-turner. Good book? I think the answer here is also yes. Derbyshire, who I presume from his name to be a Caucasian, does a pretty convincing job as an Asian narrator, even capturing Chai's reflexive smugness toward women, particularly his wife Ding. The pitch for the rehabilitation of Calvin Coolidge does not convince me; he still seems a simple man for simpler times whose values are of a more limited guidance than the author implicitly argues. At the same time, the observations on China, particularly the excesses of the Red Guard, and on a self-absorbed and often frivolous America as seen through a recent, successful immigrant's eyes ring very true. And you can't help but enjoy Ding's wiles as she brings Chai to live Coolidge's maxims.