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T A B L E+T A L K

How often do you actually finish the book? Is it really necessary to read all the way to the end? Dilly-dallyers discuss in the Books area of Table Talk.

F E A T U R E

The role model syndrome
By Jake Lamar
Two new memoirs by talented black women show how hard it is to reconcile good writing and racial politics
(10/13/97)

R E C E N T L Y

The Party
By Sally Quinn
Nonfiction
(10/28/97)

The End of the Novel of Love
By Vivian Gornick
Nonfiction
(10/27/97)

A Calendar of Wisdom
By Leo Tolstoy
Nonfiction
(10/24/97)

New York Mosaic
By Isabel Bolton
Fiction
(10/23/97)

The New Men
By Brian Murphy
Nonfiction
(10/22/97)

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392 PAGES

BY DAN CRYER | Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha" is as exotic as a moonscape and as accessible and old-shoe comfortable as "Pride and Prejudice." The ritual culture of the geisha seems utterly alien, as remote from contemporary experience as foot-binding or arranged marriages, yet Golden pegs his first novel to such a recognizable set of dilemmas that its initially foreign landscape is made utterly familiar.

Being a geisha, as Golden explains it, is akin to being an Austen heroine. Men have power and money; women have beauty and charm. It's up to the geisha to learn how to use her wiles if she wants to have any hope of keeping body and soul intact. For Austen's English maiden, the aim was a husband and the financial security he provided. For the geisha in pre-World War II Japan, marriage was usually out of the question, since the powerful men who enjoyed her company often already had wives. And to remain a geisha she could not be married. So the geisha's goal was to make him her danna (patron) and she would become his mistress.

Golden ushers us into this decidedly non-PC territory with exemplary finesse. The geisha, he makes clear, is not a prostitute but an entertainer. Trained in conversation, tea ceremony, dance, song and the shamisen (a stringed instrument), she soothes careworn men in evening gatherings at teahouses. These women may not be men's equals, but they are not their sexual slaves. Flunking out of the system may lead to prostitution, but playing by the rules requires that you avoid it.

The novel's narrator is Nitta Sayuri, a poor fisherman's daughter sold at the age of 9 into the Kyoto geishahood. The girl is blessed with beauty (her unusual gray-blue eyes elicit many compliments), intelligence and wit. She will need every one of these assets as she struggles to find her place in a world controlled by men. As one of her elders informs her, "We don't become geisha so our lives will be satisfying. We become geisha because we have no other choice."

Golden's storytelling is rich and slow-paced. Like Austen, he lavishes attention on the minute details that regulate and define social distinctions. In the raising of a teacup or an eyebrow there are worlds of implication. The prose style is simple and strangely satisfying, perfectly attuned to its time and place. Golden manages to find the simile for every occasion. "That startling month in which I first came upon the Chairman again ... made me feel like a pet cricket that has at last escaped its wicker cage. For the first time in ages I could go to bed at night believing that I might not always draw as little notice in Gion as a drop of tea spilled onto the mats."

Golden deftly makes use of a culture that deflects emotion and makes direct communication taboo to create a world of intrigue and romance. Depression and war remain in the background while Sayuri imbibes wisdom from her mentor, Mameha, battles her rival, Hatsumomo, and yearns for the attentions of the Chairman. "Memoirs of a Geisha" is an intelligent entertainment.
SALON | Oct. 29, 1997

Dan Cryer is a book critic for Newsday.