Doom your immortal soul

Many of Saipan’s American residents found the road to the west Pacific by taking jobs as English teachers in Asia. For newly-minted college graduates looking to escape the gray tyranny of cubicle life in the United States, the English teaching gig is a time-honored means of escape and, sometimes, adventure.

I don’t know if writer Josh Muggins has ever been to Saipan, but in 1979 he left his native Minnesota to teach English in Japan, and in 2005 published [I]How to Pick Up Japanese Chicks[/I] and [I]Doom Your Immortal Soul[/I] (Author’s Press, 248 pages, $13.50). This is a hilarious yarn that will appeal to many folks in the Commonwealth.

No, it’ s not a pickup guide for dateless losers. It is a funny, self-deprecating, and ultimately pitiful story about being an American guy in Japan, besieged by the charms of his college-aged students.

We’re talking total overload here, a self-renewing smorgasbord of temptation. Unable to measure his portions, Muggins heaps as much as he can on his plate.

There is no high-minded narrative arc here, no literary tension or suspense. The book is basically a series of anecdotes, akin to a long evening of swapping off-color tales at your favorite bar.

But it proceeds in generally chronological order, and we witness the fact that the teacher is aging, but, of course, the flux of students is not. So there’s a slow and steady divergence to see, as the author goes from being young, spirited, and perhaps understandably reckless, to finding himself middle-aged and, well, what? Lecherous? Seedy? Or merely libidinous? Heck, don’t ask me to draw those lines.

Women who read the book can roll their eyes, sign heavily, and say, in unison, “men are such pigs.”

Men, who have ever been in Saipan or in Asia, and who have been seduced, swayed, or scintillated by the legendary beauty of Asia’s fairer offerings, will simply say “oink.”

Indeed, guys, if you don’t feel a bit of a kinship with Muggins, if you don’t feel a pang of empathy, and if you don’t feel a stirring of outright envy at some of his better conquests sometimes, well, then you’re just the kind of person I avoid.

Muggins knows how to use language effectively, and most of his tales keep rolling with action without getting bogged down with weighty description and adjectives. He’s also got a sharp pen for dialog.

Any tale of lusty maidens runs the risk of veering from scintillating to smutty, and I think the book could use a serious haircut from an editor, if nothing else for the sake of displaying manners that do justice to the underlying quality of the prose.

Likewise, all memoirs probably run the risk of getting a bit too dewy, maudlin, and even self-pitying. The best memoir essayist is Hunter S. Thompson, who could relate tales of shame and degradation without losing dignity, but Hunter has set a standard that nobody else will ever reach, so why set the bar that high?

Still, Muggins knows how to spin a good yarn, he’s good with humor, he knows how to keep prose tight and lively, and he had the guts to move to Asia and dig into a new life there. In other words, he’s got something to say, and he knows how to say it.

By contrast, most contemporary writers of first-person bent are trying to entertain us with gutless chatter about hum-drum suburbia and the soul-zapping vacuum of cubicle life; drone tales told by drones, to drones.

I doubt that the drones will relate to Muggins’ book, but I think it might become a favorite with the ex-patriot set in general, and some of Saipan’s cliques in particular.