[REVIEW] Terry Gould's Paper Fan
Feb. 4th, 2005 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldTerry Gould's recent book Paper Fan is a tremendously compelling read, all the more so because it's a work of non-fiction, tracing the author/protagonist as he searches for Steven Wong, a Chinese-Canadian Triad gangster reported dead under mysterious circumstances in 1992. This crime book reads like an entertaining postmodern crime novel, down to the finest details of characterization and plotting. It's this detail
Consider Gould himself. He starts Paper Fan by presenting himself as a New Yorker, brash and arrogant but also intelligent and street-smart, and goes on to mention his gangster background: his disgraced grandfather was an enforcer in a Jewish organized crime network, and as a child of ten his own appearance as a clean-cut youth let him hang on the fringes of aspiring gangsters. Having assimilated the culture, as an adult he moved to Vancouver to work as a journalist and to teach English to that Canadian metropolis' large population of immigrant youth.
Consider Steven Wong. Chinese-Canadian, at the age of 20 he dropped out of school to quickly ascend through the rangs of the 14K Triads, becoming involved in shakedowns of young immigrants and heroin smuggling. Gould investigated Wong at length, building up something of a personal relationship with the man throughout a series of police investigations. He was surprised by Wong's sudden death in a motorcycle accident in the Philippines; as he investigated the circumstances of Wong's death (supposedly reported by a district policeman who later signed an affadavit, and supposedly producing a body that turned out to have been cremated by an undertaker who didn't own a crematorium), Gould became increasingly suspicious.
Consider Gould's search. Starting in the mid-1990s, Gould traveled across Southeast Asia, investigating the Triad networks of organized crime which permeated many of the weaker polities of the region, like a Macau dominated by gambling interests, a Cambodia run shambolically by regimes concerned with perpetuating their own power, and a Philippines that was simply and completely corrupt. As Gould explored the region at some personal risk, he discovered first-hand how notions of justice had become completely degraded, whether by mony or by the preponderance of force, always in the hands of the rich. There is no lack of horrific anecdotes, whether of the child prostitutes who eagerly await their first menses so they can have time off, or the foreign businesspeople who buy off local officials to dump PCBs
Gould never finds Wong, although he makes a very good case that the man has survived and remains active in Southeast Asia. Paper Fan is alarming enough on its own terms. The Triads, he concludes, are only the symptom of a deeper problem of the perceived (or actual) illegitimacy of states and unjust societies. Dealing with the Triads won't only require effective policing, but effective societies, with economies that function and governments that work and societies that aren't starkly inegalitarian. Fat chance of that, it seems.
For more, start by reading this interview at Scarlett and this excerpt from the first chapter at The Globe and Mail.
Consider Gould himself. He starts Paper Fan by presenting himself as a New Yorker, brash and arrogant but also intelligent and street-smart, and goes on to mention his gangster background: his disgraced grandfather was an enforcer in a Jewish organized crime network, and as a child of ten his own appearance as a clean-cut youth let him hang on the fringes of aspiring gangsters. Having assimilated the culture, as an adult he moved to Vancouver to work as a journalist and to teach English to that Canadian metropolis' large population of immigrant youth.
Consider Steven Wong. Chinese-Canadian, at the age of 20 he dropped out of school to quickly ascend through the rangs of the 14K Triads, becoming involved in shakedowns of young immigrants and heroin smuggling. Gould investigated Wong at length, building up something of a personal relationship with the man throughout a series of police investigations. He was surprised by Wong's sudden death in a motorcycle accident in the Philippines; as he investigated the circumstances of Wong's death (supposedly reported by a district policeman who later signed an affadavit, and supposedly producing a body that turned out to have been cremated by an undertaker who didn't own a crematorium), Gould became increasingly suspicious.
Consider Gould's search. Starting in the mid-1990s, Gould traveled across Southeast Asia, investigating the Triad networks of organized crime which permeated many of the weaker polities of the region, like a Macau dominated by gambling interests, a Cambodia run shambolically by regimes concerned with perpetuating their own power, and a Philippines that was simply and completely corrupt. As Gould explored the region at some personal risk, he discovered first-hand how notions of justice had become completely degraded, whether by mony or by the preponderance of force, always in the hands of the rich. There is no lack of horrific anecdotes, whether of the child prostitutes who eagerly await their first menses so they can have time off, or the foreign businesspeople who buy off local officials to dump PCBs
Gould never finds Wong, although he makes a very good case that the man has survived and remains active in Southeast Asia. Paper Fan is alarming enough on its own terms. The Triads, he concludes, are only the symptom of a deeper problem of the perceived (or actual) illegitimacy of states and unjust societies. Dealing with the Triads won't only require effective policing, but effective societies, with economies that function and governments that work and societies that aren't starkly inegalitarian. Fat chance of that, it seems.
For more, start by reading this interview at Scarlett and this excerpt from the first chapter at The Globe and Mail.
