Touted as “a rollicking high-seas saga” set in 1927 Hong Kong, I picked up FAN-TAN with expectations. Written as a somewhat weird collaboration between Marlon Brando and his sometimes-friend Donald Cammell and ultimately shelved by Brando more than two decades ago, I figured, “Hey, at least there will be pirates (check), booty (both kinds) and maybe a little fun.”
But I never expected the main character to piss all over a guy’s face for fun (page 54), the ridiculous pidgin English spoken by minorities (“Wondrous Bird fly fast by velly, velly small foot,” on page 18, or “Tly this drink, velly fine Chinese vino,” on page 79) or a totally gratuitous Cleveland Steamer (page 226). FAN-TAN is a craptacular carnival of ego, elitism and celebrity gone insane, and, strangely, that’s a bad thing.
FAN-TAN is the story of itinerant Scots-American South China Sea merchant sailor Anatole Doultry, a giant among mortals who has a “gray pampas” of a chest and is physically incapable of loyalty or truthfulness. He gets mixed up in a pirate heist, which gives the authors plenty of time to denigrate the Chinese, women and literature itself.
While the plot theoretically revolves around Doultry’s wild ride, the focus is really on his immense penis. Everyone who sees it is stunned by its size – they can’t look away, dazed by a member that is inhumanly huge and masculine. It’s even referred to as a “Scottish caber” at one point. These enchanted genitals, which must have been inspired by Brando’s own magic wand, are Doultry’s secret to living life on his own terms. His man-parts give him strength, vigor and the wisdom to know that the Chinese are all just opium addicts waiting to light up.
The novel heartily implies that Chinese men (mostly due to their small, small, genitals) are just a step away from blind, unreasoning rage and the women are shrill, greedy objects to be used as Doultry pleases (because they can’t do without the “cock-a-doodle-doo,” as the authors put it).
There is a pirate story here, and it’s not terrible. Unfortunately, the high seas romp I was promised is only about 35 pages long, interspersed with a kind of ignorant, egotistic propaganda that tries to convince readers that it’s okay to be disgusting as long as the story is set far away and long ago.
In the end, the Cleveland Steamer that wraps up the “novel” pretty well paints an accurate picture of the literary suicide that is FAN-TAN.
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