BOOK REVIEW : Heart-Breaking Account of a Coming Apart in America

The Incorporation of Eric Chung by Steven C. Lo (Algonquin Books: $14.95; 199 pages.)

As a would-be scholar, I’ve been wondering for a long time what the term postmodern actually means; or what it is to be a deconstructionist. After reading “The Incorporation of Eric Chung,” I think I know at least one working definition of both literary terms.

They refer to the America that emigrant writers find when they come to this country, in which the imaginative “construction” they put together in their minds does not exist. The “modern” haven they’d expected has gone, vanished--disappeared completely in a mountain of plastic wrap and condoms and cars that don’t work.

“The Incorporation of Eric Chung” is a wonderful, wonderful novel. But it is billed all over the place as funny. “Very funny,” says one blurb. “I found myself laughing out loud,” novelist Amy Tan remarks. And the editor of Fortune magazine calls this book “wry and canny.”

Are all these people in an elaborate conspiracy with Steven Lo to pretend that this is a funny book? Or do they mean “funny as a crutch?” My own take on this one, despite the cowboy boots on the cover and the smiling Asian systems analyst on the back, would be “heartbreaking and profound.”

This (autobiographical?) novel is the story of Eric Chung, refugee from the People’s Republic of China before he’s even born, calling his home the island of Taiwan where he remembers kids playing in open ditches for diversion, and the cops coming by in the evening just to see if there’s someone around who might like to get arrested. Eric’s father spends his life savings to send his son to “America,” which in this case turns out to be Lubbock, Tex. (Sure, it’s wry, canny, funny.)

There are several other Chinese students at this strange Texan outpost: Victor Liu, George, Edward, Frank and Tang-I. These boys get in all kinds of troubles with the language, buying sanitary napkins for instance instead of regular napkins. Funny, funny. And when a round-eye attacks their beliefs, they retreat to their dorm, friendless and desperate, to sing the only three songs they all know the lyrics to: “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” and “Edelweiss.” It’s funny, but they’re crying.

Eric is eventually co-opted by an American hotshot who sells the idea of a Chinese-American Trade Corp. to another billionaire. Eric can help the project with his knowledge of his “countrymen.” But Eric is as baffled by the People’s Republic as he is by America.

Meanwhile, the Chinese students drift away from each other, cut loose in the meaningless American system. They rack up broken hearts, smashed careers, crimes, misfortunes, a suicide. Eric Chung goes home alone each night to his apartment. Night after night after night. He becomes president of the company, then presides over its dissolving. Why?

Why would an American billionaire go through this kind of meaningless exercise? “Don’t ask me,” the narrator seems to say. What he really does say--Chinese-fashion--is, “I don’t want anybody getting excited, at any time, thinking I am going into a great romance or drama or even something important here.” He’s right, of course. It isn’t important what happens to one man lost in America, where it used to be “modern,” but where now it’s falling apart? Where every “construction” is crashing down, and where it’s next to impossible to get “incorporated” at all.