One is certain that more than a few reviewers of Levy Hideo's "A Room Where The Star Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard" will trot out Samuel Johnson's oft-quoted line: "A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
That quotation, however, in addition to being egregiously sexist, is not entirely apt. One may be surprised to learn that, as translator Christopher D. Scott informs us, "Levy Hideo is the first white American novelist to write in Japanese," but one is even more amazed — as one must be with every successful work of art — to see not just that Levy has done it, but that he has done it very well indeed.
This is doubly surprising because the tired template he's taken for his book — young American male finding himself in Japan — has been done and done again. Levy, however, makes it new. His protagonist does not, as most of these fish-out-of-water expats do, experience Japan as a means of getting in touch with his inner-American, but rather finds in Japan a place where he can distance himself from the country where President John F. Kennedy has been murdered and that is sinking deeper into the morass of Vietnam.