Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3804602 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 209 pages

Synopsis
When a young Asian American man becomes involved with a male prostitute in Bangkok, he learns that there is a fine line both between passion and exploitation and between cultural and personal identity.

From the Publisher
What Some Reviewers and Writers Have Said about This Book

"Set in present-day, anything-goes Bangkok, LawrenceChua's mean, lean Gold by the Inch unfolds in a rush of edgy, brilliant images and and dances on the dark side of love, loss, sexual passion, cultural conflict, and hard commerce." -- Jessica Hagedorn

"Chua's searing, lushly written first novel stylishly explores the shifting boundaries between sex and commerce, East and West, culture and identity. . . . Thanks to Chua's humidly erotic, imagistic prose, the narrator's eventual awakening is almost as provocative as Bangkok's tawdry lures." -- Entertainment Weekly

"[M]ean in rhythm, urgent in imagery. . . . [A] narrative that's as unpredictable as it is engaging. . . . [H]is prose soars; so do his stories." -- Seattle Weekly

"[S]ensuous, often feverish, studded with vivid images. . . . A clever challenge to Marguerite Duras's The Lover. . . Chua updates the time-honored themes of empire and eroticism." -- Publishers Weekly

"Like the narrator in The Lover, Chua ferries us on an intimate journey and I had absolute trust in his savvy compass. There is a reckless truth that Chua keeps a hard eye on and I learned that place and position is a power we cannot escape, only navigate. Love and fear live side by side in this bold, beautiful book and Chua's muscular prose, his seductive vision and the vigor in his compassion took my breath away." -- Fae Myenne Ng

"In his first novel, Lawrence Chua demonstrates a keen eye and even sharper ear for the exigencies of life. With dead-pan humour and lightness of touch, this book makes us aware of everything we haven't seen. It also makes Mr. Chua a very necessary kind of author: a reporter on the edge." -- Hilton Als

Customer Reviews

A bequiling illusion
Mr. Chua's novel is both compelling and jarring. One thread of the narrative is a coy, enticing peek into the underbelly of Thailand's sexual trade that invites as it sickens. Simultaneously, another thread accusingly points out the rape of the country and its people by both Western invasion and internal greed. The narrator's native land is not what he wants it to be, nor can it ever be. As he bitterly discovers -- aiming his distaste at his prostituted homeland and, through manipulations of narrative structure, his prostituted self -- one can never go home. One can, however, discover some rather ugly truths about oneself on the trip. Written in an clipped, disturbing style, Chua's vivid images of the world the narrator finds abroad are haunting and beautiful, falling easily across the pages like shiny marbles one wants to gather together but finds recklessly spilling onto the floor. Some reviewers have complained that the novel is not satisfying enough in reaching its ambitions, leaving readers wanting more. But I feel being intentionally deprived in this sense only underlines Chua's point: the culture of purchased sex and plentiful drugs is only a limited, temporary satisfaction for a person/nation being lead into self-destruction while searching in vain for lost foundations.

Pretentious racialist trash
The colonizer here is a Malaysian-born New Yorker pursuing the inscrutable orientalized (Thai) hustler and taking out some of his aggressions on a European (Danish) tourist. Of course, the unnamed narrator considers himself a victim--not how most Malaysians regard families like his.

Wine turned blood, fantasy made real in brown flesh.
"Its those vines. They always bring you back to the forest" (59). This book is the wine turned blood, fantasy made real in flesh. Vulgar. Hard. My ever-shifting diasporan world contextualized through Lawrence's haunting precision of an eye: Plaridel, Nueva York, Daly City, Maui. Violent Empowerment. Colonial Violence. History's infinite expanse recycled into stolen tongues, brownlands, coca leaves. Queens, prostitues and manlovers are humanized. Borderless maps drawn with history's desires. Lawrence constructs a blueprint for my kind's existence by narrating our real encounters. He is an architect of souls. I too am in love with his badboy, Thong. Thong can devour my dreams anytime. Lawrence is my twin. The only difference is he writes in pages, i live in them. The language of the book has got this beat. It brings me back to the ghetto lifestyle, WUTANG slicing their tracks and Nas verse-writing. Utang means debt where am from. Props. My newyorkcity summer feels like home as I pull the book away from my face. Browner!