You're an asshole!"

Hardly what one would expect someone to be saying to Arthur Golden '78, the celebrated author of Memoirs of A Geisha, the novel that just out in paperback after spending 60 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller List. When Golden incredulously asked his editor what had prompted such an epithet to come from her lips, she responded, "Well, you're walking through a hotel lobby talking on your cell phone about your movie deal!"

Hardly what one would expect from an unassuming man from Brookline who, after more than a year in the spotlight, still seemed slightly surprised to find himself behind a podium in front of a packed audience at the Boston

By Arthur Golden

Vintage Contemporaries

(A division of Random House, Inc.)

428 pp, $14, paperback

Public Library on Feb. 10. Golden was thefeatured author of the Library's and the HarvardBook Store's "Author Series," and it soon becameclear that his self-professed "Hollywood Moment"was the first of many.

Golden's debut novel, chronicling the lush andexotic life of a geisha in the Japan of the 30sand 40s, has been wildly successful. InMemoirs, Sayuri, an aging geisha recountsher youth spent in the Okiya, a cloisteredbrothel where women trained for the rigors of theGeisha art. Hatsumomo is the primadonna geisha ofthe Okiya, supporting a household of youngapprentices and aged ex-geishas. From the momentSayuri is sold into the Okiya Hatsumomorecognizes her as a challenge to her supremacy andspends the rest of the novel plotting Sayuri'sdemise.

With Stephen Spielberg's recent purchase of therights to the movie and the antics of America'sfavorite pop icon, Madonna the simplecinderella-like plot of Memoirs promises tobe the year's great multimedia phenomenon. Ms.Ciccone appeared on the February cover ofHarper's Bazaar clad in a black kimono(Jean Paul Gaultier) and with the pale face, darkhair and red lips characteristic of a geisha. Inthe article "Like A Geisha," written by DaisanMcLane, Madonna likens what she does to "being amodern-day geisha."

Traditionally, a geisha was "an entertainer,above all" according to Golden. Wealthy maleexecutives paid for the company and entertainmentof geisha (who were extensively trained in teaceremony, dance and traditional instruments) atteahouses, and those who were wealthy enough kepta geisha as a mistress and became theirmaster. (The mizurai, or virginity,of one geisha was sold for $850,000.) Although thegeisha's livelihood depended on the generosity andwhims of their patrons, the geisha district ofKyoto, Gion, was a woman's world. When geishasentered a teahouse, they bowed to the other geishafirst and then their male patrons. Economicallythe geisha controlled Gion as well, because themore successful a geisha was, the more kimonos,make-up and wigs she would need, and the wealthierall of Gion would become.

While few would venture to call the UnitedStates a "woman's world" today, Madonna hasapparently taken the idea of a "geisha asentertainer" to heart and was so inspired that thevideo of her new single "Nothing Really Matters"is based on the au currant geisha-look, asis Gaultier's last collection. The infatuationhardly stops there, as, according to theBazaar article, Madonna and her assistantstalk about Golden's characters as if they're realpeople, with Madonna identifying with the evilHatsumomo. Rumor also has it that Madonna wouldlike a role in Spielberg's up coming movie, and atthe Public Library talk Golden confirmed that"Madonna has taken an interest in the movie. Myworry is that she identifies too much withHatsumomo -- I think that tells us what we want toknow!" Though Madonna will not be making a cameoin the upcoming movie, the roster does include aJapanese dancer, the screenwriter of The JoyLuck Club and the costume designer of TheLast Emperor and Dangerous Liasions.

Clearly Madonna isn't the only one whoidentifies with Golden's strong characters. TheBoston Public Library's auditorium was filled toits capacity, and the crowd of roughly 400overflowed into the aisles. The crowd, like themajority of Golden's characters, was predominantlyfemale, spotted here and there with a reluctanthusband, an enlightened male or an entire bookclub. Instead of filling the hour by readingexcerpts from his book ("We're all literatebecause our parents read to us every night," hequipped, "read us to sleep!"), Golden chose totell about the ten-year odyssey that lead to thepublication of Memoirs of a Geisha.

After graduating from Harvard in 1978,concentrating in Japanese art history, Goldenearned a Master's in Japanese history at Columbiaand then worked in Tokyo. It was after his returnfrom Tokyo that Golden began writing a novel abouta Japanese friend. While researching the characterof his friend's mother, a retired geisha, Goldenfound he was writing about the wrong subject andswitched his focus completely. 750 pages went intothe trashcan, and he wrote 800 pages about 35years in the life of a geisha that were declared"dry." Golden then threw out another 750 pages, anact which he called "exhilarating," and then aftera week-long anxiety attack, decided that this wasa story about "a world" and one that needed to betold in the first person. After six weeks ofwriting, Golden developed a voice that mixes thecleverness of a gifted woman with the wide-eyes ofchildhood and emerged with the character of NittaSayuri. He then set her in the detachedenvironment of an apartment in the Waldorf AstoriaHotel in New York 40 years after she had leftJapan, and her story unfolds.

The creation of such a confident narrativevoice attests to Golden's diligence and skill as afiction writer. While Golden's name and the words"a novel" appear on the cover of Memoirs ofa Geisha, the novel begins with a translator'snote, convincingly signed by "Jakob Haarhuis,Arnold Rusoff Professor of Japanese History, NewYork University." The story begins from there asthe ever hopeful, bitterly realistic voice ofSayuri takes over, and the reader finds himself sotaken by the enveloping prose, quietly blendingthe "superlative degree of comparison" present inDickens's opening in A Tale of Two Citieswith the seducing party-haze of wealth and a longafternoon that Fitzgerald so successfully employsin The Great Gatsby, that he soon sheds hiscritical eye and sinks deeper into the sofa for along, delicious read. This, of course, is exactlywhat Golden wanted.

One woman was so convinced of the story'srealism that at a Denver reading she raised herhand and, looking directly at Golden, asked "Isthat you on the cover?" Golden chuckled in obviousenjoyment as he told this story at the Bostonreading and wondered aloud whether "it was me on agood day or a bad day?" He then added that thename of the supposed translator was a pun,"Haarhuis" substituting for "whore-house" inrecognition of the darker side of the geisha'sworld. "Arnold Rusoff," far from endowing aprofessorship at NYU, is actually a dear friend ofGolden's, eager for his 15 minutes of fame.

But as it turns out, both Rusoff and Goldenhave gotten far more than their 15 minutes offame, and with the huge popular appeal of thenovel--ranging from Madonna to local book clubs toGaultier--one can hardly help wondering what it isabout this 428 page novel that has generated sucha fervor. The answer is simple, and Golden himselfarticulated it best when he said "I read because Iwant to live other lives."Photo Courtesy of Vintage BooksThe man behind the madness: Arthur Golden'78