Ransom (Paperback)

~ (Author) "When Christopher Ransom opened his eyes he was on his back, looking up into a huddle of Japanese faces shimmering in a pool of artificial..." (more)
Key Phrases: Buffalo Rome, New York, Miles Ryder (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Fast and sharp, like a newly synthesised stimulant, racing with high-density vernacular speed -- McInerney seems to have fitted some kind of catalytic converter to American prose' Observer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Ransom, Jay McInerney's second novel, belongs to the distinguished tradition of novels about exile. Living in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, Christopher Ransom seeks a purity and simplicity he could not find at home, and tries to exorcise the terror he encountered earlier in his travels—a blur of violence and death at the Khyber Pass.

Ransom has managed to regain control, chiefly through the rigors of karate. Supporting himself by teaching English to eager Japanese businessmen, he finds company with impresario Miles Ryder and fellow expatriates whose headquarters is Buffalo Rome, a blues-bar that satisfies the hearty local appetite for Americana and accommodates the drifters pouring through Asia in the years immediately after the fall of Vietnam.

Increasingly, Ransom and his circle are threatened, by everything they thought they had left behind, in a sequence of events whose consequences Ransom can forestall but cannot change.

Jay McInerney details the pattern of adventure and disillusionment that leads Christopher Ransom toward an inevitable reckoning with his fate—in a novel of grand scale and serious implications.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Comtemporaries; 1st edition (September 12, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394549953
• ISBN-13: 978-0394741185
• ASIN: 0394741188
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #344,365 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #9 in

  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( M ) > McInerney, Jay

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quiet, compelling, funny., March 19, 2000

By	"vitaminboy" (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

Very good, not brilliant, very rereadable. Ransom tells the story of a young American ex-pat living in Japan, who tries to lose himself in an ascetic existence, and the study of Karate. There's a certain inevitability to the story, but the end is no less forceful for being predictable. Like its protagonist, the book has a quiet, calm charm. The writing is simple and lucid, and carries you along easily. As always in McInerney novels, the sadder whole is leavened with plenty of humour. The ways in which East and West romanticize each others' cultures provide for some side-splitting moments. The Japanese in the novel are all trying for American cool, and the Americans are all trying to reach Nirvana. A quiet, compelling, entertaining read. Recommended.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The book I wanted to like but couldn't., August 23, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Shizuoka, Japan) - See all my reviews

Although I am a fan of the author's sense of humor and writing style, I'm often kind of embarassed about sitting down to read another book about a brooding, sarcastic, over-privilidged, young, white male. Ransom is in line with all of the above, which as I previously admitted, I tend to enjoy (albeit abashedly). But each time I turned a page of Ransom, I felt like I was staring at a bad accident. Americans in Japan walking around wearing top knots, kimono and carrying swords? Come on! The author worked in every silly notion about Japan that Americans love to generalize and exaggerate. Bath houses, martial arts, poisonous blowfish, yakuza tattoos...McInerny threw them all into this one, allowing us not a glimpse of Japan but a cross between a bad James Clavell novel and a comic book. Of couse there were a few of those classic quips that you have to read twice so that you can quote them at "the right" moments. Beyond that, this book represents an adolescent, often insensitive few of Japan that, if it wasn't so laughable, would be completely disappointing.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In modern Japan, Ransom learns about karate, life, and death, February 4, 1997

By A Customer

Jay McInerney does for karate what Robert Pirsig did for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book centers around the experiences of an American expatriate recovering from a tragic experience in the Himalayas. Ransom's chosen vehicle -- the study of karate under a sadistic sensei -- illuminates his own character and, through the use of flashbacks, how he became who he is. The book's slow and inevitable climax is no less intense for being utterly predictable. Well-written, by turns screamingly funny and achingly touching, this novel deserves a wider audience than it has