Ghosts Galore

Ghostwriters are commonly associated with the written biographies of famous people who have neither the ability nor the time to create a coherent account of their lives. Renaissance artists used ghostwriters, called assistants, to execute their artistic visions. Gianlorenzo Bernini certainly sculpted many works himself, but if he actually sculpted all the works he is credited with then he might still be working today. In some cases, Bernini came up with the idea and sculpted a prototype before turning the project over to his talented assistants.

It seems to me that Kobayashi/Tokunaga (K/T) is also a ghostwriter. He lives a ghost/like existence while executing the plan of the mysterious cult leader, His Serendipity.  K/T takes all the risk while the leader takes the credit for the “accomplishments.” This section, while not my favorite, is interesting in that it lets us peek into the mind of someone who is completely smitten with a charismatic leader of a cult. We have all heard the ravings of lunatics, but in these pages we are able to follow the actual thought process of a cult member.

As the chapter progresses, we discover snippets of background information as the narrator travels, making us piece together the whys behind his actions. Although we know that someone who joins a cult is needy or has been traumatized in some way, it is illuminating to hear directly from inside of the person’s mind. We learn that K/T despises the materialistic “unclean” society he lives in and worships the cult leader, but we get a special clue when K/T thinks: “Before His Serendipity lit my life I was defenseless. I sobbed and screamed at them to stop, but nobody saw me. I was dead” (5).

               From the outside, K/T’s family sees a man who despises them and has surrendered their wealth. The reader knows him as a diabolical nut. But the author Mitchell almost creates sympathy for K/T as we discover that he was emotionally tortured, felt victimized and begged for help. We don’t know what it is that he wanted stopped, but when he says he was dead and that no one could see him, we learn that K/T was a ghost to his family and society. He feels that his value was limited to his material success and that they never loved him (8, 9). Naturally K/T does not see His Serendipity as the greedy hoarder of others’ material success and makes excuses why money and sex are critical to the leader’s success.

We find out that K/T’s “skin” family still matters – in the middle of a paragraph his thought process comes a separate paragraph with two words: “Mom. Dad” (29).  He is a ghost to them and they are ghosts to him, diaphanous spirits passing through his consciousness. The reader can almost feel sorry for K/T, who clearly misses some aspect of his original family as he mourns the raid on his cult’s base. His Serendipity escapes the raid and becomes a ghost to the authorities and to K/T. It’s certainly no accident that when Ota gives K/T a ride he says: “Mr. Tokunaga, I presume? (31), a reference to another famous “ghost” who disappeared into the jungles of Africa for a time, Glaswegian Stanley Livingstone who was finally tracked down by a newspaper reporter. The author references His Serendipity and his escape when Ota has to break for a goat and mentions that “Caligula’s escaped again” (31).