PERCHAN'S CHOREA: Eros and Exile

A happy surprise, this little elegant book about venery and scrutability and foreignness and style. Perchan, Cleveland-raised, teaches college in Korea, and his base of operations feeds his predilection for aphoristic, Latinate, dying-fall prose. Whether it's the deadpan reprinting of letters to the Korea Herald (proof that cultures themselves get all tangled up in their own expectations of tradition and change), or semi-scientific classifications of Korean female pubic-hair patterns, or hilarious dialogues between the author-persona and his hardly respectable girlfriends, Perchan trains on whatever's Korean a gimlet-eye and sad amusement; the poise of the style and the epigrammatic posture bring a less dour Edward Dahlberg, or Cyril Connolly, or even Catullus, to mind. ""The Korean Government is threatening harsh measures in a crackdown on alcohol-related births. The republic, in fact, leads the world in the export of babies for adoption. Like storks, young world-travelers with empty pockets can hitch a free flight stateside by accompanying an orphan to its new home across the water. As a thrilled childless couple waits expectantly at the LAX arrival gate, Korean Air Flight 006 touches on the runway, its huge pneumatic tires smoking and hissing that first passionate, drunken kiss now very far away."" A lovely book.