God's Dust

...Even though he doesn't buy the mythology involved, it never seems to occur to the author that spending so much time on the subject is akin to doing a doctoral dissertation on The Waltons...

...He got that right...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1989 Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan...

...They are also alive in a way that God's Dust, and its author, are not...

...As elsewhere, however, Buruma quickly slides back into the easy cliché rather than dig below the surface of his observations ("three hundred years in a Spanish convent and 40 years in Hollywood have left Filipinos culturally dispossessed...

...T]e, those who believe in reviving, or preserving, minority cultures," the missionary may even be repugnant, "the arrogant white man imposing his values on the economically dispossessed," writes Buruma...

...Before he gets to the countries themselves he declares against two clichés about Asia popular in the travel literature: First, that its cities are too Westernized...

...As he explains in his preface, the reason the question is so compelling in these places is that "they are alive in a way that old Europe, complacently bearing the burden of its long, miraculous continuous history, is not...

...It is but another reminder that behind the British facade of this capitalist enclave lies a Chinese soul...

...And at one point there is even the glimmer of a long-buried sense of humor when he relays Marcos's reply to Imelda's complaint that the assassinated Ninoy Aquino was "all sauce and no substance...

...Like most in search of a sermon, it doesn't take Parson Buruma long to arrive at Patpong, a garish, two-block area of Bangkok boasting the most explicit sex shows in the world...

...Am I a man of international culture...

...Not admitting to a side, of course, 46...

...Lacking any philosophical glue, his observations never hang together.is the one unquestioned dogma of his faith...

...second, that the "spiritual East" stands in contrast to a "materialist West...

...The longing for the white messiah and the childish belief in American omnipotence—communism will never succeed, one is constantly told, 'because the Americans won't allow itshow how thoroughly colonial Filipinos still are...

...The book starts out with promise...

...In conformance with the directives of a fung shui priest, they are slightly askew, to please the spirits...

...No surprise then that the author's most patronizing tone is reserved for those Asians who have attempted to sort out their loyalties and get on with life, as imperfect as their decisions may be...

...But then, sensing he has given an opinion, he quickly covers the other side as well...

...why Taiwan and not Hong Kong...

...He opens with Burma, a once-beautiful and prosperous land debilitated by more than three decades of a peculiar, home-grown version of socialism forced on its people by General Ne Win, still thought to be in control despite his ouster last year during the pro-democracy demonstrations...

...In writing of Taiwan, for example, he takes on the safe target of foreign missionaries...

...The British outlawed widow-burning in India...

...What a pleasure to learn a few pages later in the chapter that some sensible 45 Thai has lifted Buruma's wallet during an interview...

...18.95 William McGurn In the middle of Hong Kong's central district stands the most expensive building in the world, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank...

...If I seem, sometimes, a little harsh in my judgments of other people's illusions," he writes, "I can only say one thing in my defense: To the extent that I have not found a clear answer to my own loyalties, I shall never condemn others for not finding an answer to theirs...

...It is those who presume to impose their answers on others who ought to be condemned," he says at the outset...

...Is there really such a thing as an international culture...

...T hus, Buruma takes the cheap way out every time, never coming down on the side of anything save indecision...

...But what if the minority culture is so weak, so fragmented, so demoralized that it cannot survive in the modern world, except in cultural reservations, where it becomes a fake culture catering to the tourist trade...

...In short, what we have in God's Dust is an exercise of self-doubt with all the arch sophistication of an undergraduate editor-inchief...

...In the course of his work he seeks answers in Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, William McGurn is Washington bureau chief of National Review...

...Forget for a moment that he hasn't posed the question fairly...

...why Malaysia and not Australia?—he takes the East to be simply a matter of geography...

...He still never answers it...

...He invokes the Filipino word palabos ("meaning ostentatious show, combining the flamboyance of a fiesta with the solemnity of Hollywood melodrama") to explain much of this behavior...

...What questions...

...The Orient is chock full of such compromises, and in God's Dust A Modern Asian Journey, Ian Buruma is obsessed with the region's struggle "to be modern without losing your cultural sense of self...

...As for the West, his view is no higher than the most backward peasant who sees it only in terms of Sony walkmans, UCLA tee-shirts, and discos...

...Americans imposed monogamy on the Mormons...

...The problem here is that for a man bent on contrasting East and West he has no hard definition of either...

...The apparent ease with which Thais appear able to adopt different forms, to swim in and out of contradictory worlds, is not proof of a lack of cultural identity, nor is the kitsch of Patpong proof of Thai corruption—on the contrary, it reflects the corrupted tastes of Westerners, for whom it is specifically designed...

...The same girl who dances to rock 'n' roll on a bar top, wearing nothing but cowboy boots, seemingly a vision of corrupted innocence, will donate part of her earnings to a Buddhist monk the next morning, to earn religious merit...

...The pity is that instead of exploding these old clichés he posits his own, that of a "secular European" whose very lack of commitment somehow qualifies him as objective...

...Completed just a few years ago, the modular, glass-andsteel skyscraper is all gray high-tech—with one exception: the ground-floor escalators...

...Judging by his promiscuous assortment of places—why Burma and not Vietnam...

...His section on the Philippines initially holds out more hope, given his premise of an elite made irresponsible by American largesse...

...At one point he puts it this way: Can one be truly cosmopolitan...

...Yet he leaves this observation alone, turning instead to the stale conflict of his chapter heading ("The Village and the City...

...Or simply a man of several cultures, drifting in and out of them, influenced by upbringing, by travel, by reading, and doomed or blessed—depending on my mood—to be culturally self-conscious...

...We ended slavery...

...H e takes up this same theme in Thailand, where the clash is between the pure Thai village and the wicked city of Bangkok, which with its large population of ethnic Chinese represents cosmopolitan corruption and greed...

...In the Buruma canon the worst sin of all is to reach a conclusion...

...Early on Buruma notes that far from eliminating materialism, Ne Win's "Burmese Way to Socialism" has fostered "a kind of fetish for Western goods...

...Sweetheart," said Marcos, "that is the essence of all Filipino politics...

...What answers...

...Then it's time to dust off the old Hooker with a Heart of Gold motif...

...It is this vague sense of alienation with his own culture that dooms his book to be no more than an uneven collection of rehashed vignettes (some have been published in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times Magazine) punctuated by the occasional insight...