Fantastic Metropolis

We see Geraty as an impostor, a clown, a madman. He has traveled back and forth across the whole Far East, journeys he repeats in his head in moments of stress and from the depths of his drunken soul; he frequently cries out “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” Geraty has come to America to find two people, young Quin and the simpleton, Big Gobi, and also to sell the collection of pornography that is confiscated by Customs upon his arrival. His mission to the young men is mysterious and somehow relates to their origins in the East.

Quin accompanies Big Gobi to Japan at Geraty’s request and in order to seek out his own origins. Quin is presented as a seeker of truth, and is the only character not haunted by his memories. It’s what he doesn’t know about his past, and about his parents, that drives him. He is the dispassionate observer, the questioner, and the force that reveals the secrets of the main protagonists, linking them all to events during and after World War II in Japan and China.

Big Gobi, on the other hand, is tormented by his early experiences in an orphanage, by an early work experience and by a fearful secret. He desperately wants to be loved and has a terrible innocence similar to that of Homer Simpson in Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust. He is also driven by almost uncontrollably violent impulses. Not really essential to the plot, Big Gobi is a problematic character, employed as a vehicle for several extravagant scenes, including the funeral at the end of the novel, presaged throughout as the most magnificent since the death of the legendary Kublai Khan, with whom Big Gobi is associated.

Quin and Big Gobi travel to Japan by freighter. In passing, they meet the student Hato, who plays a small part in later events. The character of Hato typifies the numerous coincidences and intertwined relationships with which Whittemore peppers his novels.

Quin encounters the other main characters during his search for information. Among them is Father Lamereaux, a sad, gentle man, master of Noh drama, supposed pederast, and a mastermind behind a daring espionage ring, code-named Gobi, active during the Second World War, which activities ultimately saved Moscow from invasion by the Nazis and shortened the war in China. His couriers all suffer from a mysterious ailment comically known as “Lam ah rows Lumbago.”

Whittemore uses recurring motifs to depict his characters. The characters’ obsessions and long-term memories define them and give them depth. Father Lamereaux is haunted by events which occurred in the 1920s. Quin finds him living a solitary existence, watched over by Miya, his housekeeper. In the outside world he is believed to be dead, having not been seen in public since the war. The reader is eventually fully apprised of Father Lamereaux’s secrets, through both his own admissions and information conveyed by other characters. We glimpse his soul when Whittemore employs the special motifs of his character–a wistful refrain of cats, gardens, the Legion of Mary, the flowers of Tokyo, the temples of Kamakura, all of which represent moments of poignancy and fleeting happiness in his past.

Quin’s quest for the truth leads him to Mama, a former prostitute who had slept with 10,000 men before her twenty-fifth birthday. Now the madam of a high class brothel and nightclub, she is the most powerful woman in Japan and the incarnation of the Kannon Buddha. Quin also meets Kikuchi Lotmann, the world’s third-most-powerful-gangster. Through these encounters the reader learns more about other important protagonists who all have a part in the puzzle that is central to the novel’s endgame–the twin brothers Kikuchi (who both figure in Jerusalem Poker) and the traveler extraordinaire, linguist, and collector of pornography Adzard, each one with an fascinating story to tell. The novel touches upon the history of Japan and China from the thirteenth century to the post-World War II years and gives a skewed perspective of several historical events, such as the Rape of Nanking in 1937 (described in gruesome detail), the story of the last Manchu Emperor and his puppet kingdom of Manchukuo, and even a whimsical explanation of the origins of Mao’s Long March.

Extraordinary relationships are brought to light: The connection between Quin, Big Gobi, and Kikuchi Lotmann is finally revealed, and Quin discovers how his parents’ lives intersected those of the other protagonists and how they came to die.

And what of the circus for which the book is named? Generally a circus can be defined as a traveling show of performers, a lively scene, or an arena for sports with a space for action surrounded by seating for observers. Quin’s Shanghai Circus is all of the above, both metaphorically and literally. The novel is a bright cavalcade of colorful characters, and the entertainment it provids is as lively and interesting as a night at the circus. However, the real Shanghai circus is dark and bleak, and as it plays out its last scene in a warehouse, it symbolizes the tortured mind of the ringmaster.

Quin’s Shanghai Circus is by turns raucous, tender, comic, violent and wise. Despite the darkness and violence of some scenes, Whittemore clearly feels tenderness and compassion towards his characters–even the most depraved are given a human side. Geraty, for example, wicked old sinner that he is, finds redemption. The writer’s good humor pervades all the novels. Even in the bleakest or most farcical moments, a keen intelligence, teeming with invention, can be perceived.