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'Fixer Chao': Oh, That Cashmere Throw, It's So-o-o New York, No?
By JANET MASLIN
NEW YORK TIMES - April 5, 2001
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In this inventively
malevolent debut novel by an Off Off Broadway playwright and MacArthur Fellow,
a fake feng shui master makes waves among New York's rich, insecure and perpetually
advice-seeking elite. Feng shui: that's pronounced fung shwee and it translates
from the Chinese as "wind water." It concerns the spiritual improvement
of domestic energies and currents, for those of you who haven't had your auras
adjusted.
The book's hero, a gay Filipino hustler named William Narcisco Paulinha, hasn't
a clue about any of this either. Much of his indoor experience has been confined
to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. And when he first hears the words "cashmere
throw" and "Condé Nast," it is as if someone is speaking
a foreign language. That someone is an acquaintance named Shem C, who has his
own reasons for setting up William as a bogus sage. "You've gone low,"
Shem assures William, whom he promptly rechristens Master Chao. "You can
go low again."
"Fixer Chao" then follows its newly minted fraud into the households
of those who eagerly seek his services, watching him dole out dubious advice.
The Master, who will become greatly respected and will eventually earn $2,000
just for telling someone to install an altar made of frogs, turns out to be
a lot more qualified for his new role than he initially realized. For one thing,
his own sense of displacement as a Filipino drifter gives him both longing and
antipathy toward those he approaches. His emotional involvements thus turn out
to be intense. So does his affinity for social satire.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Ong aims some of his nastiest venom at the theater. (The
title of one of the author's plays, "Middle Finger," is not unrepresentative
here.) So William gets his first angry stroke of inspiration from a visit to
Lincoln Center, listening to dialogue he finds "cooked up to showcase the
author's having rehearsed lines in front of a mirror in anticipation of applause."
Later on, when his ancient Chinese wisdom is commissioned by a director of terrible
Broadway hits, William says of the man's trademark style that "the actors
looked like they were hooked up to an electroshock machine offstage which would
instantaneously jolt them if their joie de vivre went below a set level."
Of this kind of show, he thinks, "suddenly the word Technicolor seemed
a suitable anagram for the word Punishment."
Sentiments like these fuel what is essentially a spiteful story, leavened by
the cleverness of the author's satirical swipes and by the acknowledgment that
William is no less lost than anyone else here. Initially amused and a little
awestruck, he finds himself in the magazine-perfect orbit of Suzy Yamada, an
ultra- fashionable creature whose real name (Isuzu Yamada, like the star of
Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood") and assorted other attributes make her
tougher than she appears. Soon someone is suggesting a crime of feng shui sabotage,
which is the kind of thing William has previously practiced only for laughs.
When he meets a woman he loathes and tells her to put a mirror where she can
see it first thing in the morning, he thinks of that as mere poetic justice.
By the time "Fixer Chao" spirals into storytelling complications about
Suzy and her beautiful son, Kendo, it's clear that Mr. Ong's gift for quick,
acerbic caricatures and piercing observations about contemporary culture far
outstrips his plotting. The book sprawls, although it doesn't entirely run out
of steam. In the meantime there are enough tart observations to keep it vivid
as a running commentary, which is perhaps its true purpose after all. From Master
Chao's way of sizing up people from the contents of the medicine cabinets to
the scary ubiquitousness of a horror movie about a Godzilla- sized pigeon, "Fixer
Chao" seems entirely too well attuned to the wind and water of its times.
Mr. Ong writes in a scathing, near- solemn fashion redolent of both angry humor
and real alarm. He seems genuinely to wonder about a culture ruled by desperate
insecurities and talk-show wisdom, where a magazine might report " `the
hottest trends and addresses' from around `the world,' by which it meant Paris,
London, New York and Los Angeles."
His book is a droll, chaotic, catchall complaint about shallow success in all
its many forms, from "happy, hip homosexuals whose M.O. for societal acceptance
and whose primary idea of a civic contribution seemed to be to groom themselves
within an inch of their lives" to the very successful short black cabaret
singer and pianist whom Master Chao meets and sizes up at a wealthy dowager's
apartment one day. Within the book's sprawling, undisciplined framework, there's
quite a bit more where this came from:
"He had a reputation for attracting capacity houses in venues with names
like Carlyle, Algonquin, Oak Room, Rainbow Room — places with velvet interiors
like the lining of a coffin, and music to match: soporific and tinkly like an
airport bar sendoff to passengers bound for the after1ife. It was said that
he knew 500 songs by memory and could play any standard in the existing repertory
by request. And how was his voice? It was growly from overuse, but not in any
sense soulful. And it was neither melodic nor, for its unmelodiousness, particularly
interesting. But everybody seemed to love him because loving him was like scoring
points for `sophistication.' The songs he sang conjured a return to civilized,
mellower, certainly more elegant times — a respite from the confusing to-and-fro
of city life, which, with its emphasis on youth and speed, its rewarding of
both, had become a vulgarian's marketplace.
FIXER CHAO
By Han Ong
377 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $25.
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For more on Filipino/Chinese playwright and author Han Ong visit:-
http://www.inq7.net/issues/feb2001/feb17/life/lif_main.htm