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University of Wisconsin English professor Bukoski grew up—and still lives—in the Polish community of east-side Superior, Wisconsin. It’s been the setting for several books of short stories that form a kaleidoscopic portrait of Bukoski’s community, like Yoknapatawpha on the Gitchee Gummee. The latest, Time Between Trains, contains thirteen new tales that show Superior the way his people see it. In the title story, a lonely railroad inspector, the only Jewish man in town, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an isolated widow who lives near the tracks. “Closing Time” takes us through a bad night in the career of the well-meaning but overbearing accordion player at the local bar. And Bukoski, a Vietnam veteran, gives us what we can only imagine is a thinly disguised version of himself in younger days, in three stories about a nineteen-year-old corporal named Thaddeus, whom we first meet as he is stumbling drunk around town, unwilling to admit he’s terrified of going to war and poignantly unaware that he’s walking around for one last look at the town he might never see again. Bukoski has a deep well of empathy for his characters and does a nice job drawing out their emotions. If we could change one thing, it’d be his occasional bouts of clonking prose style.
Ruminator, 1648 Grand Ave., St. Paul,
(651) 699-0587, ruminator.com

Minnesota’s most venerable company landed one of the biggest private contracts ever awarded by the Chinese government. And promptly lost it, because of—what else?—sex and cars.

The Orient promises untold riches. And yet for centuries those riches have remained untold. From Marco Polo to AOL, Queen Victoria to General Motors, the history of foreign investment in China is undistinguished, occasionally despicable, and mostly ruinous. But that’s never stopped anyone. In the early 1980s, as China began to open its markets to foreign investment, a new generation of corporate Marco Polos decided it was time, once again, to conquer the Orient.

Minnesota’s 3M led the charge.

In 1984, 3M became the first foreign corporation granted a license to operate on the mainland without a Chinese partner. It was a significant honor, and that’s what it remained for a long time: 3M maintained an office—or presence, as they like to say—that generated almost nothing. Twenty years later, 3M China’s Shanghai manufacturing facilities and seven national service centers produce dynamic growth rates and glowing press releases. Whether they produce profits is another matter, and one not revealed in the company’s quarterly earnings statements or filings with the SEC. Nevertheless, the company insists that it is in China for the long-term, and its long experience in the country is one of its primary marketing tools. “With ten years of business savvy to date,” the company claimed as early as 1995, “3M China is as knowledgeable as any in delivering its global technology.”

In June 2002, as part of his celebrated trade mission to China, Gov. Jesse Ventura visited 3M (3M China spokesman Kelvin Li fondly recalls the governor as the “King of Wrestling”). The drop-in was typical for an official visit: drums, dragons, a brief tour, and the announcement of a large deal. In this case, Governor Ventura was pleased to declare that 3M would be providing “digital license plate technology” to China’s Ministry of Public Safety. Kenneth Yu, managing director of 3M China and the China Region, told reporters that the deal could be worth more than $100 million over several years. He also told a Minnesota Public Radio reporter that Ventura didn’t deserve much credit for the transaction: “All the deals you see that are signed in any trade mission didn’t happen just because the trade mission is over there, you know.” Yu wanted the media to know that 3M had been working on the project long before Ventura crossed the Pacific.

Kenneth Yu’s pride would be tested. Less than three months later, the Chinese government had placed the deal “on hold.” Meanwhile Yu was revising himself, bluntly telling The Rake that “It was never a deal.” Deal or not, the suspension was covered in every major Chinese newspaper (it has never been covered in Minnesota’s business press, including the Star Tribune, despite that same paper’s enthused coverage of the original announcement). Though 3M was never mentioned in those stories, it is widely known in China’s foreign-invested business community that 3M let loose blatant sexual innuendo on the streets of Beijing, thus ending the program.

In the year since the suspension, the tale of how 3M botched a $100 million deal in ten days has taken on near-mythic status in China’s foreign business community. Some recount it for laughs and others for consolation. In free-market China, failure is more rule than exception for large corporations. Even the biggest players are capable of doing something breathtakingly stupid. In spite of its extensive China experience, 3M Corporation proved it.

Over the past decade, China has become the fastest-growing automobile market in the world. In the first half of 2003 alone, passenger car sales in China increased by eighty-five percent. By the end of the year they’ll certainly exceed the record 1.2 million units sold in 2002. Predictably, the growth in private car ownership has stressed public resources. Roads are overwhelmed by traffic; cities are choked with exhaust. More prosaically, China’s local governments are running out of license plate numbers.

In the publishing biz, excellence awards are often a travesty. If you win one, you’re brilliant. If you don’t, the judges are idiots. Just so, it’s gratifying to know that the American Society of Magazine Editors each year publishes a selection of what they consider the best magazine journalism of the previous year. We consider it a real service, and an exercise in transparency. If you browsed past them in their glossy form, here are Ian Frazier’s amazing story for Outside about icebergs and global warming; Michael Paterniti’s riveting exposé, in GQ, of a Nazi German book of anatomy illustrations; and Gary Smith’s dramatic reconstruction for Sports Illustrated of the rise and fall of George O’Leary, the Notre Dame football coach whose creative approach to résumé padding cost him his job (though of course he’s landed on his feet with the Minnesota Vikings.) Oddly, the best American magazine writing of the year does not include Top Doctors, Super Lawyers, or even a seafood lover’s guide to the Twin Cities, but you saved those issues, right?

If you don’t like the society you live in, you can either try to change it or leave. In 1891, the painter Paul Gauguin left, fleeing bourgeois France for an existence filled with art and unashamed sensuality in Tahiti. In 1844, his grandmother Florita had embarked on a lifelong career of ardent political activism for workers’ rights and female equality. Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian grandmaster of letters, alternates chapter by chapter between these two divergent yet resonating lives, which somehow shared a common goal—building heaven here on Earth—if not much else. It’s a compelling pair of character studies, and we can’t help imagining that there’s a glimpse into what makes Vargas Llosa himself tick. His own attempts to combine careers as a civic leader and an artist have been disappointments at best; a failed 1989 campaign for the Peruvian presidency made him angrily declare that “literature and politics are mutually exclusive.” Sadly, he may be right.

Australian novelist Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang was an inventive explosion of the myth of outlaw national hero Ned Kelly. He continues pulling at the loose, frayed edges of legend in Fake, a tale that plays off a real-life scandalous Aussie literary hoax. Carey’s con artist, Chubb, forges the life’s work of a fictitious working-class poet named Bob McCorkle to humiliate a rival. But things go terribly wrong. The rival winds up dead, and then … McCorkle shows up. Conjured out of thin air, apparently, by some unknowing magic of Chubb’s. He’s a tough, leathery creature who makes growly threats out of lines like “he’d never tangled with a poet before.” And he’s quite irritated with his creator. It’s a thematic shift not unlike what Charlie Kaufman did in the last act of the film Adaptation—suddenly, Carey’s story is a weird echo of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and an exploration of self-destruction and literary invention. Like Adaptation, Fake loses punch by never resolving the story it started telling, and that lack of cohesiveness makes the book feel about fifty pages overlong. Still, it’s an engaging and recommended read.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the procedure. What they don’t tell you is that it’s basically having a kid, even though the kid is you. They all make it out to be a “perfect genetic copy,” they get all lathered about “genomic imprinting.” Yeah, but it’s a DNA snapshot of me in a sagging diaper. Me with a relentless stream of snot coagulating around my nostrils. Me at two years old. The terrible twos. With all due respect, I’m cute, but not that useful at this age. So far, the only “bioethics” issue has been whether I should spank me or not.

If I’d stopped to think about it, it would have made sense. Did I expect a mid-level manager in an oxford to jump out of the test tube? Now, of course, I realize I can’t even use the little guy as an organ donor. His tiny liver couldn’t handle a single four-day weekend in my body. God knows, his kidneys and bladder work beautifully—too beautifully for my worn-out valves and distended sphincters and whatnot.

There are many aspects of childhood that I am not keen to relive. It is irritating to have people mistake me for a girl again. I will not put one of those pink bows on my bald head just to appease the gender-obsessed. Strained beets have, in the mists of time, lost whatever appeal they once held for me. I am thankful that I will not have to re-endure Barry Goldwater; but that’s cold comfort with chicken pox and mumps to look forward to again.

The other day, I stretched the rules of “bring your son to work day” a little bit. It was a mistake. Jennifer in accounting said I did not look like me. “He must take after his mother,” she said. “That must be where he got those pretty blue eyes. Or maybe it was the milkman!” she tittered. I did not point out that my toddler’s corneas would be a perfect match for mine, if it came down to that.

My friend Ted says I indulge the boy. Well, duh. He’s not my son, he’s not my brother. He’s me! Imagine my delight at getting to stay up as late as I want the second time around. Imagine the unvarnished joy I get riding in my own lap, getting to steer the Camry on designated residential streets. True, I have caved and bought myself a car seat and a bike helmet, but this is just to keep the neighbors off my back. “This is not actually my child,” is an argument I’ve found to be problematic.

There are many advantages and efficiencies. When my younger self starts school, for example, there will be no need for school pictures. They would just be redundant. I’m sure I have most grades tucked away in a shoe box somewhere. While I didn’t have the foresight to hold on to all my baby clothes, I have started to stockpile my old double-vented suits and wingtips.

One might think not having a unique identity would be a problem, but look at it this way: The little guy will never need to apply for a social security number or a driver’s license. On the other hand, I don’t suppose I can claim myself as a dependent.

As a single working father of a clone, I find that people are sympathetic. The ladies at my daycare think it’s cute the way I speak to myself. “Time to change my diaper!” always brings a smile. “Boy, I’m smelling a little ripe!” And they think it’s charming that we have the same name—though of course he’s “the second.”

If I had it to do over again, well, I guess I’d do it again and again and again. In a sense, no matter how many times I replicate my DNA, I’ll still be an only child, and that’s pretty cool. I’d hate to be a burden to my family. As I get older, I intend to take care of myself. An army of one.