Hi! My Name is Loco and I am a Racist

Baye McNeil, 2012

(February 2012)

You knew this one was coming, sooner or later. I finally got a dead-tree copy and for once I’m not going to hide behind my usual ‘these are just some of my thoughts’ disclaimer. I’m going to try to do a proper review. Loco’s blog was a contributing factor towards my starting this one. A small one, admittedly, but a real one none-the-less. There’s also a decent chance he might actually read this, so I figure I should do us both justice and take it seriously.

Like others, when I initially bought this book I wasn’t really expecting much beyond a tidied-up collection of blog posts. Pleasingly it’s definitely not that, bar a couple of exceptions. There are recognizable posts in there, if you’re read them on his blog already, but it’s smartly structured and flows well. It definitely avoids the disjointed nature I was half-expecting. I finished it in two days, which you should take as a ringing endorsement on its readability.

But if it's an easy read in terms of style, the content is another matter. This is not a book you should read if you don't want to experience some uncomfortably honest thoughts about the author, wider society, and ultimately yourself.

Loco opens in Japan with some of his experiences with other ex-pats and Japanese women. This section’s pretty shocking in its own right. The race stuff is to be expected, obviously; this book does exactly what it says on the tin in that respect. The ugly misogyny is more of a surprise.

The more obnoxious views are expressed in reported speech from third parties, and are clearly presented to provoke thought (which they certainly do). However, with one exception, all the significant interactions with individual Japanese people described in this book are in fact interactions with Japanese women. The exception involves trying to visit a soapland. While the dehumanization of Japanese people is used to serve a very clear purpose, it is more often than not dehumanization of Japanese women, and that passes without comment.

I don't know if this was intentional or not. Sexual politics is one of the few human conflicts older than that of race, and you can only do so much in one book. It would require several more volumes to tease apart the interlocking stigmas and psychoses of Charisma Men, Yellow Cabs, and the like. But for someone who obviously thinks as deeply about his situation as Loco does, the failure to address this gender aspect specifically, even just to put it aside, seems like a fairly glaring omission.

So as much as I was predisposed to like the guy, I have to confess that as the first section was drawing to a close I was starting to feel that he was actually a bit of a prick. Then he delivers a round-house kick straight to your emotional gut and you wonder if you shouldn’t perhaps reserve judgment for a bit.

Following that we’re thoroughly into memoir territory as we shift back to Loco’s formative years in New York in the early 80’s. This is so far beyond my experience as to be completely alien, and is all the better for it. It’s why you read autobiographies, isn’t it? To get a feel of other people and environments as close to first-hand as possible, and this delivers. I have no way of knowing whether Loco’s voice here is genuine to the time and place or not, but it feels that way. ‘A real sense of place’ sounds like a stock phrase reviewers drop in when they can’t think what else to say, but it’s definitely true here.

You worry a bit for the shift key on his keyboard though. For all that it’s a memoir, there are occasional passages so littered with the first-person singular that they look like the aftermath of some frenzied caber tossing exhibition; like the fallout from a particularly genocidal cockroach extermination exercise. Maybe rephrasing a few passages to use ‘I’ less might have been an idea, is what I’m saying.

On which note, there are a couple of simile log-jams as well. On occasion he piles one into the back of another like a writer who has already used the word ‘like’ three times in the last two sentences and who should perhaps just cut to the chase and use a straight-up metaphor instead.

These are very much minor quibbles however, presented here because of Loco’s avowed preference for constructive criticism from uptight Brits, which only speaks well of him, I have to say.

More seriously, his description of Wordsworth and Coleridge as ‘European’ poets speaks less well. This simply will not stand, sir!

He ameliorates this insult/inaccuracy slightly by quoting at length from Kubla Kahn. The story goes that Coleridge started composing the poem in a drug-addled trance, only to be interrupted by a knock at the door after which he couldn’t get back in his zone. It’s why the first half of the poem reads quite differently from the second. I mention this because the final section of the book brings us back to Japan, and the quality of writing between the Japanese bookends and the American filling is markedly different. There’s more polish to the Japanese sections while the middle is looser, coarser. I mean that in a good way, as this suits the subject matter well. If Loco's early years are painted in bold primary colours, then later he acquires a better appreciation of the shades of grey, and the tone and language reflect this.

I know I’ve picked a couple of nits, but they really are no more than that. On the whole this is a very well written book, with a compelling narrative and important points to make. Loco’s humour is best when at its driest, and there are a healthy number of very funny lines. The 'harrowing sight' of a closed 24-hour McDonalds is a perfectly judged piece of bathos.

My only really significant criticism is that weakest section of the book is, unfortunately, the opening. This is one of those parts that does feel like a blog post, and that’s not a good thing. It seems hastily written; a rushed and insufficiently edited last-minute addition too close to deadline day. Unless ‘bug specie’ is what beetles use to pay for their provisions, it could have done with better proof-reading or typesetting. I suspect the former, as there's also far too much punctuation, which really could use some pruning (and I speak as someone who falls prey to over-punctuation only too often myself). There’s a caterpillar metaphor which teeters on the edge of clunky, and string of prison rape gags which fall right into the chasm of gratuitous. The title and other content are arresting enough by themselves; the story stands up on its own and the sphincter lines feel like a forced and unnecessary attempt to grab attention early on.

It’s only a light apéritif though, and once the main courses are served there’s real meat to be had. This is not one of those half-arsed ‘I Taught English in Japan, it was so Wacky!’ pamphlets that somehow seem to find an audience. This has intellectual, emotional, and (at nearly 400 pages) literal heft. This is the real deal.

Highly recommended.