Although Madeen is a fellow Returned Peace Corps writer, I never heard of him until he reviewed my latest book, The Guatemala Reader, and commented on my video about the book’s making. Initially, I thanked him and asked him how he liked living in Texas (his university is listed as TCU—Texas Christian University)—but much to my surprise, he’s an adjunct professor of modern literature at Tokyo City University in Japan.
I was impressed with a note from one of the great travel writers and a fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Paul Theroux sent him. He said he was mystified by Japan and:
…I have been to Japan several times. Still, to me, being there is baffling, obviously because I don’t speak the language and because the inner life of Japan seems to me highly complex, strenuously protected, a nesting box of secrets. I have only written about the surfaces there – and unlike other cultures, Japanese surfaces don’t reveal their inner state. So, I am counting on you to write the ultimate book on the inner life of Japan!
Madeen must have taken his comments seriously as he published a Japanese immigration book: Tennis Clubbed, Snubbed, and Rubbity Dub Dubbed. His most recent book is Tokyo-ing!
I’ve stayed in touch with Madeen and directed him to someone who can help with some marketing and website development needs. One of the joys of writing is getting to know other authors.
I started with his book, which is about Africa. I’ve worked and lived in West Africa, and it brought back memories of this fascinating part of the world. The book begins with a chance encounter between a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) and a stunning young local girl bathing nude in a pool. He is captivated by her water drumming, playing the stream as a drum. The PCV, David, is tasked with setting up a dispensary in the village where the young girl, Assam, lives. The descriptions of the challenges of cross-cultural relationships and health hazards of tropical Africa are unforgettable, not to mention some steamy love scenes and the tension between them that never dissipates.
Several hilarious scenes kept me laughing throughout the book, starting with his PCV “To Do” list:
- Remember that cement begins to set in its sack in only 1 week (the clock is ticking).
- So, haul ass
- Hands off, local ass
- Laugh (beats crying)
I had to chuckle when Assam served David a plate of manioc and monkey meat—his eyes widened. This must have looked like me in West Africa when eating monkey stew at the inauguration of a local school and, just as I was finishing, was confronted with a monkey hand.
Madeen’s graphic descriptions of various tropical ailments also struck home, such as when “I saw a filaria worm swim before my eye on a fantastic voyage through my body,” the ulcers and sores that polka-dotted his legs and “the rattle of loose teeth.”
I’ll never forget the distant drums and chants I heard up country in Sierra Leone. Madeen sets the stage for some of the local traditions, including fetishes:
She found the one with the mark on the trunk in the grove of trees. The fruit bats were silent as she used the machete to dig up the tin holding her fetish; she took out a prickly bundle of eagle feathers, stuck in a ball of wax, draped with red and white. Then, she held it up while calling down the line of ancestors to get to the spirit world, pleading that they help find him. She rocked back and forth, chanting the image of David’s face in her mind.
This unclassifiable author is worth checking out!
Book Details
- ASIN : B093SM4HVL
- Publication date : April 28, 2021
- Language : English
- File size : 412 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 218 pages
About the Author:
Eric Madeen is an associate professor of modern literature at Tokyo City University and an adjunct professor at Keio University. He’s an award-winning, unclassifiable author of six books, and his writing has been published widely — in Time, Asia Week, The East, Daily Yomiuri, Tokyo Journal, Kyoto Journal, Metropolis, Mississippi Review, ANA’s inflight magazine Wingspan, Peace Corps Worldwide, Japanophile, Yomimono, The Pretentious Idea, Tombstone Epitaph, several anthologies, academic journals, therein his seminal essay “Under Western and Eastern Eyes” jointly published by the Ministry of Education of the Western Federation, Russia, and the Joseph Conrad Foundation, USA, and so on.
For two-plus years he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Francophone Gabon, Africa, where he built a primary school complex in an equatorial village surrounded by rainforest, a mind-blowing experience which inspired his first book entitled “Water Drumming in the Soul: A Novel of Racy Love in the Heart of Africa,” resonating with the personal and passionate all the way through to the heart-wrenching end. His recently released sixth book, “Tokyo-ing! Three Novellas,” chimes with anyone even remotely interested in Asia’s most dynamic metropolis.
His Japan-immigration novel is set in historically rich Yokohama and entitled “Tennis Clubbed, Snubbed and Rubbity-Dub Dubbed,” which challenges an ancient culture’s barriers to the “gaijin” or outsider on and off the courts. Prior to that is the high-octane thriller “Massage World.” By turns erotic and exotic, but always zesty, its plot twists and linkage are tight and full of surprises … peopled as it is with a rogues’ gallery found in the nether reaches of a Dionysian dream. Finally, there’s the travelogue “Asian Trail Mix: True Tales from Borneo to Japan,” which scales down the sprawl of Asia by laser focusing on the unique and revelatory, from novice monks at play in northern Laos to cyclo drivers braving the mean streets of Saigon. Eric Madeen resides in Yokohama and invites you to drop in on him here: www.ericmadeen.com.
The Reviewer
Mark D. Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and graduated from the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin. He spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world. Walker’s three books are Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, named Best Travel Book, and The Guatemala Reader: Extraordinary Lives and Amazing Stories. He’s written 80 book reviews, and of his 30 published essays, two were recognized by the Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing. He’s a contributing writer for “The Wanderlust Journal” and “Literary Traveler.” His column, “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading and Why,” is part of the Arizona Authors Association newsletter. His honors include the “Service Above Self” award from Rotary International. He’s a Board member of Advance Guatemala, SEEDS for the Future, and the Arizona Authors Association. His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com