Reborn as Retro Wunderland

One of my readers has contacted me with some amazing news. He may actually have found the Metropol, the mysterious hotel featured in Zen City, Iso. In the novel it’s the setting for much of the 1940s Bangkok action. Further back in the 1920s, the cast of the long lost British silent film, Shadow of Siam, stayed there. Some of the film’s interior scenes were shot at the hotel.

Dodgy Jack Palmer was one of the hotel’s long-term denizens and described it thus:

“The sloping walls, zig-zag staircase and peeling wallpaper with its geometric patterns, that all serve to give a dizzying disorientation to those not used to it. Then there's Saigon Sammy snoozing on the rubbish-strewn hotel steps, and not forgetting the paucity of decent lighting that condemns the place to a sort of perpetual, brown-dim misery. Meanwhile, I’m escorting the would-be guest back to their rickshaw.”

In bars across the Kingdom there was heated debate about whether the Metropol was knocked down in the brutal, massive redevelopment that did for Bangkok in the 60s or even whether the hotel ever existed at all. 

 

Atlanta sausage dog (photo: hotel website)

Well, we may now have the answer. The hotel in question is called the Atlanta and can be found in downtown Bangkok. Visiting the website, it looks absolutely wonderfully retro. Check out that art deco lighting table and the foyer designed by Dr Max Henn in the 1950s. The Atlanta also promises to be suitably idiosyncratic if the blurb is to be believed:

"Untouched by pop culture and post-modern primitivism." 

"Not everybody is welcome at the Atlanta."

"The Atlanta does not ask for or listen to explanations or excuses, and does not apologise for the manner in which miscreants are thrown out."

So is the Atlanta actually the Metropol reborn as a hi-end, respectable retro Wunderland? Is it the place where Palmer stepped out into Bangkok’s mean streets? Where Little Wong cut a mean brilliantine parting as Madam Sin mopped up the stains? Has the mystery of the Metropol, in fact, finally been solved? 

Silent film set? (photo: hotel website)

Well, there are certainly uncanny similarities between the two places even down to their eccentric foyers, furniture and character. And one could certainly imagine a film being shot there. But there is one obvious fly in the ointment – in the novel the Metropol is situated in Pathumwan district but the Atlanta is off Sukhumvit Road, which is in another part of the city altogether. So, if the Atlanta and the Metropol are one and the same, why did Palmer change the location? What was he trying to hide?

There’s only one thing for it. This Christmas I’m going to have to fly back to Bangkok and spend a few nights at the Atlanta Hotel. Do a little snooping. Find out what’s hiding under that art deco table of theirs…       

Here’s the link to the hotel and photographs:

http://www.theatlantahotelbangkok.com/index.php 

A poem to die for

The opening of Zen City, Iso is based on a famous poem by the Zen master, Fudaishi:

Empty handed I go, and behold the spade is 
in my hand;
I walk on foot, yet on the back of an ox
I am riding

Basically, I took Fudaishi's poem and subverted it into something altogether more 1940s, noir and murderous to set the scene for the novel. Thus 'spade' was replaced with 'cord' and 'ox' with 'tram'. Simple changes but I think you'll agree they make for a much more sinister poem. They also link straight into the novel - the female murder victims are all strangled to death and the No.6 tram makes a number of important guest appearances on Zen City's streets. 

Incidentally, six is considered unlucky in Siam because it sounds like Chinese for falling over.

(Note I wrongly attributed the poem to a later Zen master on the above 'Memo' artwork)

Finally, of course, we have the tantalising question of who is actually delivering the poem - or who it refers to. Is it laconic Orson Palmer, full-time fantasist and part-time Buddhist? The racist, violent Swede, Henrici? Even Madam Sin? Or one of the other denizens we meet lurking in the shadows of Zen City...?  
    

Love and Hate

Robert Mitchum was always the ultimate bad boy of the Noir Age. Here he is as the deadly preacher in The Night of the Hunter (1955). Derek Prosser described it as one of the most daring, eloquent and personal films to have come out of America. All true. 

The tats were, of course, an addition by Mitchum himself. 

The children's magical river journey in the film inspired the grisly opening of Zen city, Iso and the dream sequence towards the end. 

Love and Hate

      Ying and Yang

Art: hand-painted painting on a tie

Paul Klee, 1879 - 1940 "I cannot be grasped in the here and now, For my dwelling place is as much among the dead, As the yet unborn, Slightly closer to the heart of creation than usual, But still not close enough."

A fairly serious sort of chap I think it’s fair to say. Not an accusation that can be levelled at irreverent Orson Palmer, the main character in Zen City, Iso who wears a tie featuring a hand-painted copy of Klee’s work.

Allowing him to make an existential statement through sartorial means? Or just being loud? 

http://www.csulb.edu/~karenk/20thcwebsite/438final/ah438fin-Info.00035.html