Japanese by Spring

by Ishmael Reed

Book Overview

Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black juior professor at the overwhelmingly white Jack London College, lusts after tenure and its glorious perks (including a house in the Oakland Hills). He spends most of his time trying to divine the ideological climate of the school and obligingly adapting his beliefs to it. When Puttbutt's mysterious Japanese tutor, who promises to teach him Japanese by spring, suddenly becomes the school's new president and appoints...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140255850
• ISBN13: 9780140255850
• Release Date: August 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Too hysterical to miss, despite its weaknesses

This book starts out as the story of professor "Chappie" Putbutt, a black man chasing the American dream, and frankly, kissing a lot of butt in that pursuit. After being denied tenure yet again at the fairly typical (albeit somewhat racist) Jack London College, Puttbutt takes up a self-instruction book that promises to teach him "Japanese by Spring". This sets off a series of highly improbably events that lead to Puttbutt reaching a position of such power that the rest of the faculty is now forced to kowtow to him. Renowned writer Ishmael Reed puts in what at first appears to be a brief cameo, and a rollicking good time is had by all. Puttbutt's story is both instructive and hysterically funny, but as Reed proceeds to insert himself more and more into the story, the book gets bogged down in preachiness. The characters get ignored in favor of Reed's analyses of issues, and the plot almost vanishes altogether. Still, an interesting look at race relations, the academic life, and the whole question of multiculturalism vs. ethnocentrism. While definitely a comic novel, Reed's serious insights into what's happening in college faculties these days makes this a must read for current and would-be academians.

wonderfully inventive

This book was much more than I had bargained for. I have a PC friend who had asked me to read it, and I thought it was going to be more PC affirmative-action driven drivel, and to some extent this was true. But it was hell-bent, crazy, hilarious, and it struck out in every direction at once, and was spot-on insightful concerning the Maoist Cultural Revolution in academia over the last twenty years. Reed is on the side of the Revolution, but he understands to some extent the mess it has made. He also appears to have studied Japanese and Yoruba, which is more than I can say for almost any other monoglot multicultural I have come across. He can order postage stamps and ask for directions in Japanese, as his main character could do, at least. This is way more of a second language than almost any "multiculturalist" (which generally just means anti-white male) actually possesses.The sheer brilliant mayhem of this novel, as Puttbutt is put through his paces, is spectacular. At some points I thought I was reading Shakespeare. The book is never mundane, and always does more than you could have ever thought of by yourself. Reed is obviously a genius.At other points, I lost track of the narrative. I couldn't figure out who was speaking. Sometimes, too, he would start a sentence talking about one figure, and then the next sentence would start with a "he" but it would be a different person he was talking about. In such a deeply important and major writer, this kind of obvious flaw should have been edited out. But the weird comic paranoia of this book is the first I've come across to really touch the comic paranoia of academia in which everybody is worried about the slightest shift of wind, and what it means. This book caught that. He also has some of the most inventive racist slang I've ever read. This book is like Celine in reverse. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and read it straight through. It had sat on my shelf for three years after the PC guy had given it to me. Then, I read it, and I can say that Reed is the best new writer I've come across in five years or more. Very playful, and beautiful book, especially when he gets off his high horse (he sometimes rants in his own voice but not for very long) and does the Puttbutt.I wish everybody caught up in the sick tensions and paranoia of academia would read this book. This is a very important novel, and will be on my syllabus for the next five years. Big fun here, and lots to talk about. What a brave and ingenious book! My real fundamental problem in the book is that he isn't critical enough about the Yoruba culture. This is the only culture that isn't ripped into the way he rips into white and Japanese culture. I myself don't know anything about Yoruba culture, but wonder if it is better than the American. Are women entitled to political representation? Is there freedom of speech? Where do they stand on the misery index regarding health, nutrition, sanitation, education for women, chi