Hypertext Magazine asked Hosho McCreesh, author of “Chinese Gucci,” “Why did you choose to make your protagonist so abrasive?”
The short answer is: At the beginning at least — I wasn’t really sure. I just knew that the story had to be built that way.
It wasn’t until editing and re-editing that the deeper themes of the book really emerged for me, and I better understood why I had the instinct. For me, Akira represents many things about America, and masculinity that I hate. In an almost allegorical sense, I want a reader to feel about Akira the way I feel about America. America is a young, spoiled, stunted nation — one lost to façades. It’s a nation that can be brutally incurious about the world, one that views other countries simply as resources, and one that lumps the whole of Asia into a simplistic archetype that it only relates to through either an exotic wonder or warfare. But I also see America as a clever, creative, and ambitious project, one with real promise. If we can get and keep out shit together. These competing visions of America are in constant combat for me, and the soul and character of the nation are the ultimate stakes.
For the book, that meant Akira had to be both his own worst enemy, and, when it comes to the buried, wiser parts of himself, his ultimate redemption too. I have always liked books where the narrator is, to some degree, also the butt of the jokes. Hans Fallada’s The Drinker, and Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square come to mind. I like that Chinese Gucci does something similar by skewering Akira and his ridiculous ideas about the world and himself, while still covering some serious ground in a more literary way. The dynamic of high and low brow, of both rumination and gutter humor appeals to me, and felt like a natural fit for the book. Add an unreliable narrator (or maybe an infuriatingly delusional narrator), and it hopefully makes for a mashup of strong reactions from the reader.
Hosho McCreesh is currently writing & painting in the gypsum & caliche badlands of the American Southwest. His work has appeared widely in print, audio, & online. Purchase Chinese Gucci HERE.
