“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: ‘Here are our monsters,’ without immediately turning the monsters into pets” — Derrida
Multiply, cascade, explode: A theory of literary fiction
Isham Cook
American essayist and novelist based in China since 1994. Writing philosophy: downmarket, big concept, provocative, discriminating, outrageous. Ballard, Beckett, Borges, Dick, Kafka, Hesse, Melville, Mishima, Sade are influences.
Questioning China’s “5,000 years” master trope
When measured against other ancient civilizations, China is not 5,000 years old but more like 3,000-3,500 years old.
A modest proposal regarding sex work: Why all sex should be paid for
The sexual fees levied on hubby would compensate working wives for the housework they do on top of their day job.
A Shakespeare sex-and-violence starter kit
It was not just Shakespeare’s obsession; we can assume virtually the entire audience attending his plays was syphilitic.
On harpsichords and white pianos: The challenge of music in China
Our distaste for the white piano stems from certain associated stars of the Easy Listening school (Liberace, Clayderman, etc.): music for people who don’t like music.
Theatrics of Japanese Noh, Kabuki, and the mixed-bathing Onsen
A visit to a nude mixed-bathing Onsen revealed more than passing resemblance to the traditional Japanese dramatic stage.
The Chinese-Japanese cultural chasm on display at Starbucks
Profound cultural differences epitomized by Chinese and Japanese Starbucks.
The high priests of medicine: U.S. and Chinese hospitals
The USA and China both bear the distinction of having the worst health care systems in the world not attributable to national poverty.
Black forest cake blues: The customer service problem
The idea of cake, a jokester’s cake for flinging in the customer’s face.
From struggle sessions to public dressing-downs: China’s continuity of psychological control
At the Revolutionary University, students vie with another to express how much they enjoy hauling night-soil feces.
The old Chinese bathhouse, circa 2000
That Chinese bathhouses draw families and their children while operating simultaneously as brothels is a phenomenon found nowhere else in the world.
Advanced love: An essay
We are taught not to be misers with our money. But when it comes to the body, we are misers through and through.
Newsex. A dramatic farce
X-rated dramatic farce set in a sexual re-education camp in a future Liberated California Republic.
Gu Cheng, selected poems (trans. Isham Cook & Zhao Shufen)
China’s mad poet who savagely murdered his wife.
August Stramm, poems (trans. Isham Cook)
Poems like teeth grinding away grammar: Germany’s Expressionist poet who died on the front in WWI.
