A View Of Fuji John Goodwin ( A Gay-Themed 'Madame Butterfly') Gay Themes,Literature

Octavo. 127 pp. Turquoise cloth in good order. Unclipped jacket, similar. A near fine copy of this delicate novella about a middle-aged American's affair with a younger Japanese man. A recurrent theme refers to Madame Butterfly and Pinkerton's abandonment of Cio-Cio San. Throughout, the American narrator struggles with his inconstancy and the cultural differences. He and his lover, Shigeji make their way to Fuji to view the mountain from many angles as recorded by Hokusai in his Thirty-Six Views. To be with his American lover, Shigeji has taken the irrevocable step of leaving his mother's home. His lover fails to understand that to return would cause a terminal loss of face. Their differences in the end and the American's failure to accept Shigeji's love lead to him, as he has always feared becoming a 'Pinkerton' and abandoning Shigeji. The author John Blair Linn Goodwin [1912-1994] is an enigmatic figure though he appears several times in Christopher Isherwood's diaries.