Tripmaster monkey : his fake book

by Maxine Hong Kingston

Paper Book, 1990

Status

Available

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

New York : Vintage International, 1990.

Description

Driven by his dream to write and stage an epic stage production of interwoven Chinese novelsWittman Ah Sing, a Chinese-American hippie in the late '60s.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Crowyhead

A trippy, funny novel that moves along at a breakneck pace, going nowhere and everywhere all at once. Wittman Ah Sing, the protagonist, is at times infuriating, but he is a trickster and one can't help but love him.

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LibraryThing member mykl-s

Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book by Maxine Hong Kingston (1990)

LibraryThing member allyshaw

I love this weird book, which is tedious in parts, unlikable sometimes and ambitious. I love that it devolves into this meta-spectacle, a celebration of DIY stagecraft and political happenings. It seems very much to me a celebration of something we have lost, this ability to create reality in real

time, IRL with others, in a Temporary Autonomous Zone-- to make your own fun, without having to plug it in. Greasepaint, cardboard landscapes...

Also, the politics here, the meditation on the hybrid identity of the sons and daughters of immigrants, it is so different in the UK, which kind of stunted as far as these arguments are concerned. It makes me homesick for the vibrant identity politics of the US.

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LibraryThing member dbsovereign

Borderline 3-stars only because I'm in love with that timeframe in the Bay Area. However, I have to say a good deal of the book struck me as confusing and at times just simply bitter. There were moments of poetry, but overall it did not hold up for me.

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