American expat makes a dog
the hero
in his comic novel "A Taipei
Mutt"
by Dan Bloom
Friday, December 26, 2003; special to the China
Post
Eric Mader-Lin has a thing about dogs, Taipei dogs in particular, and a novel he recently published in English here, titled "A Taipei Mutt," is making waves among expat readers. It's a long book, with many intricate passages, and comes with an interesting take on life in Taiwan's capital city.
A resident of Taipei since 1996, Mader-Lin (he is married to a Taiwanese woman, thus the hyphenated name) works as a teacher and curriculum writer. A native of Hartland, Wisconsin, Mader-Lin, 38, studied comparative literature and French at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and after finishing half of a Ph.D. program he decided to move to Taiwan with his wife and begin work as a teacher, he told Prime Time in a recent email interview.
"I'd traveled in Taiwan before and was
interested in working here," he noted. "So I moved to Taipei about 8
years ago and have worked and lived here since then. I teach English and
English writing and develop teaching materials."
"A Taipei Mutt" is an eccentric and
satirical novel, and readers in Taiwan will likely find much that resonates
with their own experiences here. When asked why he chose to write a book with a
dog as the main character, Mader-Lin replied: "As a writer I've always
been interested in anti-heroes -- lunatics, eccentrics, hopeless cases. And I'm
interested in satire, too; mainly in how these kinds of characters can reveal
something new or striking about the world. I set out to write such a character
in 'A Taipei Mutt'."
What's the novel about? The author explains:
"The novel is a satire in a comic-erotic mode. Because of a haphazard
sexual encounter with a woman who turns out to be a witch, the main character
is turned into a dog through a spell. This happens to him on his first day in
Taipei.
"Besides being a comic-erotic novel, it's
also something of an attempt to imagine canine perceptions, or how they might
be experienced by a human being. For example, what would happen to one of us if
we were suddenly given a sense of smell thousands of times more precise than we
have now as humans? It's difficult to imagine what it would be like perceiving
the world so acutely through smell. At the very least, it would be massively
disorienting since suddenly you'd be smelling things you previously didn't even
know existed.
"This is the kind of thing I tried to get
at in the narrative of my book. I was trying to project what it might be like
for a human to be forced into such a world."
And why did Mader-Lin choose to focus on dogs?
"Since I've always been close to dogs, my
favorite animal, and since I was depressed by the stray dog situation in
Taiwan, it was almost inevitable that I'd come to such a plot for a book,"
he said. "I started writing the first pages of this book back in 1997 and
worked on several drafts for the next few years. My final draft shortened the
novel by about a quarter."
Mader-Lin's book has been published by a small
press in Taipei, and it's currently on sale here in Taipei at Bookman Books on
Hsin-Sheng South Road near the National Taiwan University campus. In addition,
interested readers outside Taipei and overseas may contact the author by email
via his web page, www.necessaryprose.com, in order to get copies shipped to
them.
Although the novel is available only in English,
Mader-Lin has arranged for a Chinese-language translation and hopes to publish
that as well in the near future, although no date or publisher has yet been
set.
When asked who "A Taipei Mutt" was
targeted at, Mader-Lin said: "Given the plot and setting I think the novel
would most interest expats in Taiwan, who will certainly recognize some of the
confusion of my main character. I projected him as something of an
intellectual, something of a nitwit. He has to deal initially with the
confusion of Taipei itself, a place he was not ready for when he came here, and
eventually with the confusion of his canine senses, which grow ever stronger
and more disorienting as the novel progresses."
Mader-Lin says he plans to stay in Taipei, where
he enjoys his life and his job, in addition to building a vast personal website
that spotlights a large catalog of his literary work.
"I return to the United States every year,
although I think if I moved back permanently I would soon begin to miss
Taipei," he says. "But I've no plans to leave since I find Taiwan
endlessly fascinating."
Copyright 2003, The China Post. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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