How sapient! The preposterous sentence, "No fighting in here, gentleman" (what restaurant anywhere allows fighting?) is exactly what a flustered "cook or owner" would say in this situation.

In another context, Wittman talks with a lady and she tells him she's taking a philosophy course in college:

"I signed up for psychology," she said, as if conversably asked. "But I looked up 'love' in tables of contents and indexes, and do you know that 'love' isn't in psychology books? So, I signed up for philosophy, but I'm getting disappointed. I thought we were going to learn about good and evil, human nature, how to be good. You know. What God is like. You know. How to live. But we're learning about P plus Q arrows R or S. What's that, haw? I work all day, and commute for two hours, and what do I get? P plus Q arrows R."

We see the source of her confusion; clearly, she meant to take a class in ethics or, perhaps, philosophy of religion, and she's signed up for a course in symbolic logic. This is rather like wanting to learn about Shakespeare and picking a course on The 20th Century Novel. She's completely oblivious of her own silly mistake, however, and blames the designers of the curriculum. Like the maitre d' who says "No fighting", this passage points out the deadening, stultifying effects of the misuse of language and the confusion of meanings. People talk past each other; everyone talks, no one listens. (The book, by the way, also has as its political ideology a variant of 1960s anti-Vietnam pacifism that hinges, in large measure, on this observance of the mangling of meanings. To take this up in detail would require much more space than we have here, but it's another important part of the novel.)

One last example occurs when Wittman, having lost his job, goes to Unemployment to see what he can find. There, he hooks up with a savvy old Latina:

The two of them crossed the stripe on the floor together.

"How old is she?" asked the Government lady.

"Tell her 'sixty five'."

"Sixty five," said Wittman.

"Tell her," said the Government lady, speaking slowly, enunciating, "that I have to inform all the senior citizens that there's a bill in Congress to deduct Unemployment Compensation from their Social Security checks. So, her benefits may total no more than Social Security. This bill may not pass, but we have to tell senior citizens about it."

"No sabe," said the old lady.

This passage continues on in this nonsensical vein for a few minutes. Notice that the Government lady is portrayed as a robot, an imbecile, an automaton, not recognizing that the old lady understands English perfectly. Worse, the old lady, herself, should be saying "No comprendo.", not "No sabe." (This means she can't even speak Spanish correctly!) The point, I think, is that clarity with language produces clarity of thought, and vice versa—poor language produces inferior thoughts.

Thematically and stylistically, there is so much here to consider that I realize I haven't even gotten to an outline of the story, itself, so permit me now. Wittman Ah Sing is a Chinese-American hippie in 1960s San Francisco. His father meant to name him after Walt Whitman, but spelled it incorrectly. "Ah Sing" is Kingston's play on 'I Sing'—again, after Walt Whitman—"I celebrate myself, and sing myself..." Wittman is a literature and movie buff, as we know, with a dead-end job in a department store. His life's dream is to stage a huge production of his own adaptations of Chinese folk tales ("We have so much story, if we can't tell it entirely on the first night, we'll continue on the second night, the third, a week if we have to.") The story covers only a few days, in nine chapters. The chapters are laid out exactly like film scenes, with very definite and specific locales. It is almost as if Kingston modeled the form after a Syd Field screenplay book. The chapters are distinct: Wittman has coffee with the beautiful Nanci Lee; he gets fired from his job; taking the bus to a party, he meets Judy on the bus; he attends the party; he 'marries' a white girl, Tana; he visits his family; he goes to the unemployment office; the play is staged; and so on. This relatively simple outline is filled in with all manner of interesting characters, witticisms, verbal pyrotechnics, philosophizing, and what is really the main point, I believe, of the whole novel: the all-enduring human fascination with—and hunger for—stories. We need stories like rain, like air, like sunshine. Stories are stories, whether they are high tech movies generated with sophisticated computer imagery or primitive stage productions without any scenery—such as Wittman's play. Stories are stories whether they come from ancient China or contemporary America, whether they are watched by audiences or read by one person. Interestingly, the word "literature" is mockingly used a couple of times—once when it refers to a toy company brochure, and a second time when referring to a government manual in the unemployment office. The word is put in quotes, as if way too sacred to be used to talk about such mundane, profane things. Literature is Nathaniel Hawthorne, not a pamphlet of instructions!

I've only really managed to outline some of the principal things to look for, here. It seems to me that there are many possible reactions to his tale. This is a wonderful book to ponder three, four, five times, perhaps over the course of many years. It's the kind of novel that compels one to make notes in the margins, underline things, mark entire paragraphs with stars, and refer back to them later. It means to be a big, ambitious work, and it succeeds entirely.