Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book is an unusual book in terms of both its narrative technique and its rich variety and odd mixture of images and allusions. It slides from objective description to interior monologue without warning or explanation. Allusions to literature, movies, and other aspects of popular culture cover a wide spectrum, William Shakespeare to Gary Snyder, Europa to Nabokov's Lolita (1955). The entire novel is a mix of logical narrative, stream of consciousness, non sequiturs, and a cascade of imagery, often for pages, drawn from sources as diverse as Chinese legends and Charlie Chaplin movies. The whirl of words and images, which seem to tumble over themselves, is both riveting and exhausting; readers may feel they are being flung from the ferris wheel to the roller coaster in Kingston's verbal carnival. Although at times disorienting, the sudden shifts in tone, point of view...