Paul Theroux’ 1973 novel, Saint Jack is about an exiled American who works selling things to ships in Singapore but who is really a pimp. Jack’s biggest success in his life-long goal to be rich and leisured is when he is approached by an agent of the US government to set up an exclusive brothel for soldiers on R&R from the War in Viet Nam. Prior to that, he was simply a hustler and regular drinking buddy of exiled Englishmen. The same agent offers him a second “job” of taking incriminating photographs of a Major General who allegedly comes to Singapore to abuse women. Jack takes the assignment but finds his redemption in discovering that the General engages in less sordid escapes.
Maybe under a different author this story could align better as picaresque. It does not meet my criteria at all. Jack Fiori "Flowers" is not innocent, despite his regarding his procuring as a saintly calling; he is not on a quest, but simply aging into wisdom; and while he is kidnapped and tattooed (vaguely reminiscent of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo we read this month for book club), he is not threatened, rather humiliated temporarily until he can have the Chinese character slurs inked over, at which point they become medals of honor and part of his fame.
The atmosphere of Singapore seems quaintly accommodating until Jack sees it succumb to more violent, exhibitionist kinds of sex in the mid-60s. The government at the time had not become the "caning for chewing gum" regime it is now and Jack settles back into its comfort and routine at the book’s conclusion. Not just that ending, but the entire progress of the story, is too routine and does not jump into the reader’s memory or provoke admiration for a bumbling rascal like a good picaro does.
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