Arthur Golden

Easton Press Arthur Golden books

Memoirs of a Geisha - signed modern classic - 2005

 

Author Arthur Golden

Arthur Golden, born on December 6, 1956, is an American author best known for his internationally acclaimed debut novel, Memoirs of a Geisha. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Golden grew up in a family with a strong interest in Japanese culture, and his exposure to this rich cultural background would later play a significant role in shaping his literary career. After completing his undergraduate studies at Harvard College, where he earned a degree in art history, Golden pursued a master's degree in Japanese history at Columbia University. His academic background and fascination with Japanese culture laid the foundation for his later work.

Golden's breakthrough came with the publication of Memoirs of a Geisha in 1997. The novel, a historical fiction masterpiece, chronicles the life of a young Japanese girl named Chiyo who transforms into the renowned geisha Sayuri amidst the backdrop of pre-World War II Japan. The book became an international bestseller, captivating readers with its vivid portrayal of geisha culture, intricate storytelling, and meticulous attention to historical detail. Memoirs of a Geisha earned critical acclaim for its immersive narrative and cultural insight. The novel spent over two years on The New York Times bestseller list and was adapted into a successful film directed by Rob Marshall in 2005.

Arthur Golden's debut novel marked a significant achievement in his career, but he has maintained a relatively private life, with limited information about his personal background and subsequent projects readily available. While he has not produced another novel of the same magnitude as Memoirs of a Geisha, Golden's impactful portrayal of Japanese culture and history in his debut work has solidified his place as a notable contributor to contemporary literature.

 

Memoirs of a Geisha

A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan's most celebrated geisha.

In Memoirs of a Geisha we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful and completely unforgettable.

This story is a rare and utterly engaging experience. It tells the extraordinary story of a geisha summoning up a quarter century from 1929 to the post-war years of Japan's dramatic history, and opening a window into a half-hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation.

A young peasant girl is sold as servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. She tells her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Her memoirs conjure up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice-paper screens, where young girls learn the arts of geisha dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the land's most powerful men.

Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. It begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old girl with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. We witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup, and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it.

Summoning up more than twenty years of Japan's most dramatic history, Memoirs of a Geisha uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation.

From a small fishing village in 1929, the tale moves to the glamorous and decadent heart of Kyoto in the 1930s, where a young peasant girl is sold as a servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. Telling her story many years later from the Waldorf Astoria in New York, each page exquisitely evokes another culture, a different time and the details of an extraordinary way of life. It conjures up the perfection and the ugliness of life behind rice-paper screens, where young girls learn the arts of dancing and singing, how to wind the kimono, how to walk and pour tea, and how to beguile the most powerful men.

According to Arthur Golden's absorbing first novel, the word "geisha" does not mean "prostitute," as Westerners ignorantly assume it means "artisan" or "artist." To capture the geisha experience in the art of fiction, Golden trained as long and hard as any geisha who must master the arts of music, dance, clever conversation, crafty battle with rival beauties, and cunning seduction of wealthy patrons. After earning degrees in Japanese art and history from Harvard and Columbia and an M.A. in English he met a man in Tokyo who was the illegitimate offspring of a renowned businessman and a geisha. This meeting inspired Golden to spend 10 years researching every detail of geisha culture, chiefly relying on the geisha Mineko Iwasaki, who spent years charming the very rich and famous.
The result is a novel with the broad social canvas (and love of coincidence) of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen's intense attention to the nuances of erotic maneuvering. Readers experience the entire life of a geisha, from her origins as an orphaned fishing-village girl in 1929 to her triumphant auction of her mizuage (virginity) for a record price as a teenager to her reminiscent old age as the distinguished mistress of the powerful patron of her dreams. We discover that a geisha is more analogous to a Western "trophy wife" than to a prostitute and, as in Austen, flat-out prostitution and early death is a woman's alternative to the repressive, arcane system of courtship. In simple, elegant prose, Golden puts us right in the tearoom with the geisha; we are there as she gracefully fights for her life in a social situation where careers are made or destroyed by a witticism, a too-revealing (or not revealing enough) glimpse of flesh under the kimono, or a vicious rumor spread by a rival "as cruel as a spider."

Golden's web is finely woven, but his book has a serious flaw: the geisha's true romance rings hollow the love of her life is a symbol, not a character. Her villainous geisha nemesis is sharply drawn, but she would be more so if we got a deeper peek into the cause of her motiveless malignity the plight all geisha share. Still, Golden has won the triple crown of fiction: he has created a plausible female protagonist in a vivid, now-vanished world, and he gloriously captures Japanese culture by expressing his thoughts in authentic Eastern metaphors.

"An epic tale and a brutal evocation of a disappearing world" - The Times

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read