Bangkok Days Lawrence Osborne. North Point, $25 (288p) ISBN 978-0-86547-732-2 Bangkok is the sponge that absorbs “those who have lapsed into dilettantism,” writes Osborne (The Accidental Connoisseur)
in recounting his time in the fabled city of recreational sex and
Buddhism. As he encounters characters questing for sensation and
knowledge, he muses on how easy it is for Westerners to remake
themselves in the East—much as the 19th-century English schoolteacher
Anna Leonowens did when she tutored the royal children of Siam and
fashioned herself into a mythologized literary figure. As he discovers
in an encounter with a Catholic missionary, it is the ideal place to
lose the burdensome grip of the “self.” In Osborne's narrative, Bangkok
serves as an existential crossroads for a cast of British, Australian
and Spanish expatriates who are haphazardly searching for and running
away from responsibilities; in the labyrinthine city, these tourists
have established a playground for adult pleasure. As their
documentarian, Osborne is at once incisive and romantic. He creates a
character-driven travelogue that reveals but does not exploit the
salacious subtext of Bangkok nightlife. It is a journey flush with
atmosphere but tempered with a subtext of lonely Western wonder. (June)
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