Mad Dogs & Co
Chart Korbjitti

Patpong, Pattaya, Phuket and other paradises, for a gang of mad dogs and sundry sonzabitches. Babble, booze and grass and snow and toadstools and ---

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(Modified from a previous posting made elsewhere on the forum)

I chanced upon this translation in a Bangkok book shop and decided to give it a try. I hoped it would provide me with an exciting read with a genuine Thai perspective (being written by a Thai author) and I was in no way dissapointed.

I suspect many people buy and read books with a Thai theme authored by Westerners in order to help gain further insights into a culture that fascinates them, in order to help them better understand what it is that makes Thailand 'work' the way it does. Likewise I always suspected it would be difficult to get solid, genuine insights from someone either not born of a culture or someone whom has not truly fully engaged in that culture (an accusation I feel can't be levelled against Steve Van Beek - Slithering South reviewed elsewhere in this forum section) so why not get it straight from the horse's mouth so to speak.

Such insights are certainly to be found aplenty in Mad Dogs & Co. A perfect compliment to an exciting novel in its own right.

For those accustomed to reading books with a Thai theme authored by Westerners, indeed for those accustomed to reading books with any theme authored by said Westerners, the style of Mad Dogs & Co. might come across at times as somewhat unusual. It sometimes seems to fall prone to repetition, gentle rambling, meandering idly through a portion of the story that doesn't at all progress the plot in the 'efficient' and well paced manner we might expect from a good Western author. However this in no way indicates literary sloppiness but rather exposes the reader to a subtly (perhaps at times not so subtly) different approach to narrative relation, and beyond that to a different mindset. This might be analogised to the differences inherent in Western film making and Asian film making - perhaps think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and how that film's structural style diverges quite widely at times from Western film fayre. Such divergences I suspect provide clues as much as anything else to thought processes and cultural perspectives in general.

So what is the novel actually about? Here's a decently written review that sums up the nature of the novel and saves me from penning my own summary : )

Mad Dogs & Co. reviewed on Bookideas.com

The story is so disjointed I put the book down several times because I got bored with the rambling over descriptive way in which the author babbled on at times. I was intent to finish the book which I have now and the conclusion is left a bit in the air I thought.
The only good thing about the book as a whole is it is from a Thai persons point of view and this takes some realising at first, that I did find interesting.