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A review by tptrussow
Madame Butterfly by John Luther Long
2.0
I debated about rating this one star at first, because I'll be honest in saying that Long was not a good writer by any means. I understand he wrote this novella in 1898, but even then writers were not as oblique and garbled as he was. I made more inferences than actually reading "Madame Butterfly," and I didn't enjoy it. That being said, the story itself is not a bad one. It's a tragedy about an insensitive American naval officer who marries a geisha while in Japan, briefly toys with her by attempting to Westernize her, unknowingly impregnates her, and leaves, vaguely promising to return but clearly not meaning to. The geisha, Cho-Cho-San, is an extremely naïve girl who blindly believes in her husband's love for her, and for much of the novella she daydreams about his eventual return in order to see his child (who was born after he'd left). Cho-Cho-San is such an earnest, pitiful thing that no one has the heart to tell her the truth until it's too late, and of course her world comes crashing down when she does learn it. The last few chapters are where Long excels, and were good enough to elevate the story to two stars.
This is not writing that has stood the test of time, sadly; the obsessive Western fascination with Japan was what inspired this story to be written, and of course that's long since past. Long's attempt to mimic a Japanese person's heavily-accented English is embarrassingly awful and almost unreadable, but he didn't know any better, so it's to be endured (though through gritted teeth). There really is no reason for an average person to read this unless they were a university scholar (like me) or wanted to get a sense of how mythicized the Orient was to the West at that particular time. Better off seeing the Puccini opera, which itself is based on a stage adaptation of the story. Both the play and the opera make the story more melodramatic than it already is (and, truth be told, Long's original ending is superior), but it does save you the effort of reading Long's laborious writing. Maybe I'm being too hard on him, but I'm not rushing to read another of his works anytime soon, so my opinion of him will remain tied to "Madame Butterfly."
This is not writing that has stood the test of time, sadly; the obsessive Western fascination with Japan was what inspired this story to be written, and of course that's long since past. Long's attempt to mimic a Japanese person's heavily-accented English is embarrassingly awful and almost unreadable, but he didn't know any better, so it's to be endured (though through gritted teeth). There really is no reason for an average person to read this unless they were a university scholar (like me) or wanted to get a sense of how mythicized the Orient was to the West at that particular time. Better off seeing the Puccini opera, which itself is based on a stage adaptation of the story. Both the play and the opera make the story more melodramatic than it already is (and, truth be told, Long's original ending is superior), but it does save you the effort of reading Long's laborious writing. Maybe I'm being too hard on him, but I'm not rushing to read another of his works anytime soon, so my opinion of him will remain tied to "Madame Butterfly."