"A Woman of Bangkok"

My Search for Jack Reynolds

Whenever there’s a discussion about the best expat novel about Bangkok bar girls, someone always mentions “A Woman of Bangkok” by Jack Reynolds.

Strangely this was the very first of the genre, published in 1957 the year after “The World of Suzy Wong”. Said to have sold a million copies, it was last published in Thailand in 1985 and has since gone out of print.

Dasa, the Bangkok second hand bookseller, say it’s often asked for and that they’ve only ever had one copy.

After looking for ages I’ve just found one and it’s left me fascinated to know what happened to Jack Reynolds. Stuff on the web about him usually asks the same question as me. What ever happened to Jack Reynolds? There seems to be no public information about him and his family.

I’ve therefore written an article on my blog at Thai Girl collecting together what I have discovered about him.

Do please have a look at this and tell us if you know anything more about the mysterious ‘Jack Reynolds’.

Andrew Hicks

Sorry! I didn't choose this dark background. It just came out like this and I've failed to change it.

Black is not the best choice of colour Andrew...

Thank goodness its in black so we can't read it.

just another Ad really. The only legible bit is...........................

was suzy wong a 3 holer ?

It was a great book, one of the first I read when I arrived in LOS. In fact I think it was the only one of that type then..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marmite the Dog

Thank goodness its in black so we can't read it.

:smileylaughing: I hate these bloody books about Thai girls and the how I escaped to live in Thailand bollocks, 1950's or now they are all boring.

Must have a book-signing venue approaching. Post-of-the-month.:mid:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thai Pom

It was a great book, one of the first I read when I arrived in LOS. In fact I think it was the only one of that type then..

Agreed. It was the original and genuine article written at a time when hardly anyone had ever heard of Thailand ( Siam maybe ). This book was interesting because it wasn't trying to cash in on any ' scene ' as all the books you see now are. It predates the Vietnam era and gives an interesting insight to life on the street for the adverage white man of that period. It was also novel in as much as it was well written unlike the garbage you see now.Its understandable how many people would be put off reading it as the subject has now been flogged to death by a lot of very low ability novelists who seem to rely on a sexy jacket cover to suck in the Thai newbie who thinks he will learn something by reading them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by baldrick

was suzy wong a 3 holer ?

Good question :chitown:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bangyai

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thai Pom

It was a great book, one of the first I read when I arrived in LOS. In fact I think it was the only one of that type then..

Agreed. It was the original and genuine article written at a time when hardly anyone had ever heard of Thailand ( Siam maybe ). This book was interesting because it wasn't trying to cash in on any ' scene ' as all the books you see now are. It predates the Vietnam era and gives an interesting insight to life on the street for the adverage white man of that period. It was also novel in as much as it was well written unlike the garbage you see now.Its understandable how many people would be put off reading it as the subject has now been flogged to death by a lot of very low ability novelists who seem to rely on a sexy jacket cover to suck in the Thai newbie who thinks he will learn something by reading them.

Thanks for this appreciation, Bangyai. I frankly agree the cynical comments on an earlier post that most of this genre are rubbishy and I personally never read them.

This one though, the first and the best, is a remarkble book. I am fascinated too that it has been out of print since 1992 and that there is no public record of what happened to its author.

I don't likethe idea of famous solo-novel authors falling into obscurity so I'm keen to find out.

It shouldn't be difficult.

Andrew Hicks

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazy dog

I hate these bloody books about Thai girls and the how I escaped to live in Thailand bollocks, 1950's or now they are all boring.

So write an updated modern 21st century one...

The only book I will write about life here will be about music, not some sorry story about how I married a Thai gal, built her a house and how great it is living in Issan -yawn.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Hicks

I frankly agree the cynical comments on an earlier post that most of this genre are rubbishy and I personally never read them.

You must be psychic then if you only read the 'I agree posts' How do you know people said these books are 'rubbishy' if you never read the posts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Hicks

[

I don't likethe idea of famous solo-novel authors falling into obscurity so I'm keen to find out.

It shouldn't be difficult.

Andrew Hicks

Were you this 'sabaijai poster on TV? (last year) This book was published under another name in the UK so probably not his real name anyway-

A year ago I met a Thai woman who says she is the niece of Reynolds' widow, who is still alive or at least she was at that time. She has promised to introduce me but I haven't got round to it yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazy dog

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Hicks

I frankly agree the cynical comments on an earlier post that most of this genre are rubbishy and I personally never read them.

You must be psychic then if you only read the 'I agree posts' How do you know people said these books are 'rubbishy' if you never read the posts?

The genre I'm referring to is the 'bar girl swallowed my wallet' novels. I never read them. But I read evrything that Teakies have to say on a topic. Of course.

And Crazy Dog, Sabaijai apparently is a mod on Thaivisa and four years ago was asking about Jack Reynolds on that forum. A Thaivisa member then revived the thread last week when they saw the article on my blog about Jack.

I'm getting some information in response to that blog and I hope to learn more about the novellist soon.

Andrew Hicks

Good luck with the hunt and let us know what the result is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazy dog

Good luck with the hunt and let us know what the result is.

he wont.,

he just link to his blog to tell us to find out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kingwilly

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazy dog

Good luck with the hunt and let us know what the result is.

he wont.,

he just link to his blog to tell us to find out.

Thanks for your concern that I won't tell you what I find out about Jack Reynolds.

May I therefore honour you and all Teakheads with the very first publication of my (draft) story about Jack Reynolds, surely a man after your own heart.

I think the subject matter makes for fascinating reading and I hope all this turns up some more information about him.

Andrew

PS Damn and blast. It's come out in black lettering again. Can I or the mods correct this?

The Jack Reynolds Story

A tentative first draft from internet sources, all in need of verification, with your help.

‘Jack Reynolds’ 1913 to 1984

[Preliminary Note: If, as the biographical details to his 1974 book say, he only joined the Friends Ambulance Unit in China in 1945 when he was 32 (and which soon wound down its work in early 1946), what did he do as from the outbreak of war when he was already 26 and ripe for war service of some sort? Perhaps he joined The Friends some time before 1945, though how could the publisher get this wrong?]

‘Jack Reynolds’ is known for his seminal novel of 1956, “A Woman of Bangkok”, a story since widely regarded as creating a genre and as setting the standard for tales of western men falling for and losing their shirts and trousers to the exotic sirens of the Bangkok dance halls and bars.

He was born Emrys Reynolds Jones in Hertfordshire in the South East of England [the blurb to the German edition, ‘Vershung in Bangkok’, Rowohlt 1959, says Hertfordshire, though I can’t read German], his father a clergyman originating from the coal mining valleys of South Wales (true…Colin Piprell?). [Could his parents perhaps have been missionaries on the West China station?] He published his books in the name of Jack Reynolds, not to seek anonymity but because at an early stage he had adopted this as a more useable or distinctive name by which he was generally known [Correct?].

Little is publicly known of his early life except that the notes to his later book of 1974 say that, ‘he had had a swashbuckling life…’ and ‘has been a trawler hand in the North Sea and a motorcycle speedway ace on the British circuits’.

Nothing is known of his life in the early years of the Second World War [????] but it seems that as a conscientious objector he joined The Society of Friends, the ‘Quakers’. Thus he was from 1945 to 1951, according to the same book cover notes, ‘seven years in China as West China Director and Transport Manager for The Friends Ambulance Unit, where he supervised the distribution of medical supplies by truck, ran hospitals, fought diseases and regularly delivered babies.’ The FAU was set up as a channel for conscientious objectors, mainly Quakers refusing active service, to take part in the relief of suffering occasioned by war. In 1941 it began the transport of medical and relief supplies over the ‘Burma Road’ to the Guomintang’s ‘Free China’ and provided medical teams initially working with the Chinese Red Cross.

There Reynolds was with Bernard Llewellyn, later a major figure in the early development of Oxfam who wrote about Reynolds in his 1958 travel book, “With My Back to the East”. In it he recalls how they ‘had gone scrambling together in Kweichow’s limestone alps and made many memorable excursions in that tucked-away corner of China.’

Based on his experiences in China, Reynolds’ second and final book, “Daughters of an Ancient Race” was published in 1974 by Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd in their Writing In Asia Series. [Sadly I don’t have a copy, though I knew the Heinemann editor in Hong Kong who probably commissioned it, Leon Comber, a colourful figure who was previously married to novelist, Han Suyin.] The cover notes mentioned above describe the book as follows.

“A fascinating collection of nine short stories with a mainland China setting, based on the author’s experiences with The Friends’ Ambulance Unit in China during 1945-51. The locale of these stories is a small village on the south bank of the Yangtse River, opposite Chungking, where the author was running a simple medical clinic. The stories portray in a racy fashion an unusual peasant woman, several of the Friends Ambulance Unit employee’s wives, the local midwife, and two girl members of the Chinese Communist party…” (When published in 1974, Reynolds was by then ‘living in Bangkok with his Thai wife and seven children’.)

Reynolds is listed in the records of the1,314 full members of The Friends Ambulance Unit (a charitable offshoot of the Quakers, chaired by Cadbury’s and Rowntrees) in the name of Emrys R. Jones. However the work of the Unit in China, using a total of 170 members, continued to the early spring of 1946 and was finally wound up on 30 June of that year. It is thus not clear what Reynolds was doing in the four or more intervening years before arriving in Hong Kong, ‘penniless’, as his friend, Jim Shaw puts it, and then, ‘somehow winding up in Thailand broke’.

By 1951, in Bernard Llewellyn’s words in his chapter on Thailand, Reynolds ‘had seen the changes the Communists made. Then he had moved on to Hong Kong and, after a brief interlude there, had taken a UN job in Bangkok.’ By this time Reynolds would have been thirty eight.

His new job in Bangkok was with UNICEF which saved him from penury, his work apparently being based on his experience in transportation in challenging conditions, combined perhaps with his medical expertise. According to Steve Van Beek, a long time Bangkok resident and friend, Jack could tell many a story of running transport in the roadless North East of Thailand in the 1950s. His employer provided a comfortable house in Bangkapi where Llewellyn stayed with Jack and his growing family in 1957.

By this time Reynolds was married to Pen, a rural Thai who spoke no English and hadn’t enjoyed her trip to England, and they had sons David and Philip, with another child on the way. A future life in Thailand for them therefore looked very likely.

Llewellyn comments, “It is one thing for a European to have a Chinese or Thai mistress, and not very surprising at that. But it is another thing altogether for an Englishman to marry a Thai girl. And another thing still when they look like being ‘happy ever after’, when they enjoy family life together more than bridge and cocktail parties and having the same people to dinner and listening to the endless chatter at the club. I suspect that to many Jack was something of a disappointment. I suspect it did not bother him a bit”.

Llewellyn also mentions that, “last autumn [of 1956] his first novel had been published in England and the United States and banned in Australia”. This of course was “A Lady of Bangkok” by Jack Reynolds, which was published in London by Secker and Warburg. At first released as “A Sort of Beauty” [by Jack Jones???], as this not indicate the subject matter, the new and more explicit title was soon adopted and the author shown a Jack Reynolds. In the USA the book was published by Ballantine Books and a number of editions can be seen. [Possible to assemble a brief bibliography of editions?]

In Thailand new editions were later published by Editions Duang Kamol ‘in 1985 – 1992’ for sale in SE Asia only, the inside cover showing the English publication dates as 1956, 1959, 1962 and 1974. The cover design for one of the 1985 edition shows an explicit photo of a totally nude Thai female that would have shocked Vilai ,‘the woman of Bangkok’, while the cover of the !992 edition more accurately shows her elegant but alluring in a low cut red blouse.

In the words of Michael Elmore in a recent article for Deutsche Presse-Agentur, ‘“A Woman of Bangkok” centres on Reginald Joyce, a hopelessly naïve British businessman, who falls for Vilai, a jaded Bangkok working girl tellingly called The White Leopard. Reggie becomes obsessed with Vilai and at one point considers committing murder for her.’

Unlike earlier moral stories where titillation was possible only if the miscreant came to a sticky ending, Reggie lives to tell the tale. Things with Vilai did get sticky for him though and he ends up parted with his money, losing his job and put on a plane back to England in disgrace. In the concluding parts of the book he even goes to steal jewellery from his bosses’ wife by violence if necessary so as to help Vilai, at which point clearly he has lost the plot. The book is thus often cited as telling a cautionary story that no single western male should omit to read before sailing close to a bar where sit the sirens of the Bangkok scene.

A personal appreciation and a full critique of the book appear on a blog written by Andrew Hicks at www.thaigirl2004.blogspot.com, posted on 8th November 2009.

Perhaps the book’s finest quality is that Thailand in the fifties and the Bangkok dance hall scene, and in particular of the ladies of the night, is closely observed from life. A friend of Jack’s in the seventies, Jim Shaw has written that, ‘The earlier parts of “A Woman of Bangkok” are very autobiographical.’ Indeed both Emrys Reynolds Jones and his protagonist Reginald Ernest Joyce were both British speedway riding sons of Christian ministers.

Llewellyn likewise describes visiting an eating place in Korat together with Jack. “It was the place – so Jack said, and he should have known - where Ronnie (sic) Joyce, the long-suffering hero of his novel, and his friends had their hilarious meal preparatory to the loss of Ronnie’s virtue in the Korat back streets.”

As an inside story the book was thus bound to be successful. Though Richard Mason’s “World of Suzy Wong” was to become better known as it was made into a film, Reynolds claimed in an interview in 1983 that his book had sold more than a million copies. Furthermore, it is also seen as a courageous book that broke new ground in describing its subject matter in some detail and that its observation of the psyche of a rural Thai woman working the dance halls of the time was sensitive and accurate. It is thus often said that nobody since then has done the story better, despite there being many imitators. Nonetheless both Reynolds’ and Mason’s book have been out of print for many years, and with both authors dead, the ownership of the rights is perhaps uncertain.

Reynolds’ Christian family in England were apparently appalled by the book and its contents and a future in Thailand perhaps became even more inevitable for him. After his initial success, he also hoped to continue his work as a novelist.

Llewellyn describes that at the time of his visit to Bangkok in 1957, Reynolds was “now sweating away at his second and third [novels], and if he was not making as much progress as his publishers hoped, he had good reason to blame the weather. And if the weather wasn’t enough there were the demands of the job which took up much of the day and his family which took up most of the rest of it. Over the garage he had made a work room. The desk and floor were littered with paper and typescript and manuscript books curled up at he edges. When the wooden shutters were opened the sunlight streamed in, and the more beer you drank the more your forearms sweated into the paper. I didn’t know how he got anything done at all.”

It was not to be until 1974 that his next book was published about his life in China three decades earlier, though it is not clear when it was written. [????] Apart presumably from his later journalistic work, no other publications are on record, except two short stories. (‘No. 1 Bad Girl of Bangkok’, in ‘Nugget’, 6 December 1956 and ‘The Milky Way’ in Short Story International, 9 August 1978.) In the archives of The Bangkok Post there are however many articles written by him, including a hilarious April Fools story. [I have not seen any of these… Sabajai on Thaivisa has?]

When UNICEF no longer required his services, no doubt the struggle began to stay in Thailand and to provide for his growing family. It seems that he was then employed by The Bangkok World and then The Bangkok Post [On about what dates and in what capacities?? A lot could be filled out here perhaps]

From 1970 to 1973 [correct??] he was then on the staff of The Investor.

A colleague at the time, Jim Shaw wrote on an internet forum (ww.tfs2m.com) that, ‘he was a splendid fellow, a great drinking companion, and friendly towards everyone. We both lived on Suk Soi 8 (Soi Prida), my wife and I near the top of the soi, he at the very bottom. We’d sometimes go together for beers at a little outdoor bar/café in Lumpini Park after work on the magazine.’ Some time around 1973, says Shaw he joined a UN agency and worked in Africa for a while.

[Did the UN really take him on aged 60 or was his UN work earlier interspersed between his newspaper jobs? One informant tells me that he was in Palestine and used to come back annually and impregnate his wife. Llewellyn’s description of Jack’s family in 1957 suggests they must have been together since the early fifties. (He’d probably had many forays to Thailand on R&R from China and doing research for his novel.) If he’d then married her then aged say 20 she would by the seventies be early to mid-forties and at the end of child bearing. She would have been born around 1930 and so now aged about eighty.]

The notes to Reynolds’ book of 1974 confirm that as well as in Thailand, Reynolds worked as ‘a UN Transport Officer… in Jordan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Nigeria.’ [For how long and what did he do after that??]

Shaw continues, ‘I went back [from Hong Kong] to Bangkok sometime in the 1980s and tried to learn what happened to him. I went to his old house on Soi Prida, but wasn’t able to learn anything, so I don’t know when or where he died.’

Little is publicly known of his family life though it must have been an extremely busy one. Jack sculpted and did illustrations as a hobby and this and his collection of books on art encouraged his son Steven Muthikul Jones (born 1962), after completing his degree in Political Science at Ramkamhaeng University, to take up art. Steven has since exhibited his limited edition bronzes in Chiang Mai and Singapore, among other places

THE AIM OF THIS ARTICLE is now to confirm and fill out the above information and to record the rest of his extraordinary life. So when and were did he die?

Michael Elmore in a recent article quotes Reynolds as saying of his novel, in an interview for Living in Thailand magazine in 1983, that, “It was an astounding book for its time, perhaps the first serious book on prostitution, if you want to call it that, in any country outside Europe.” Even though the book has long been out of print, it has certainly not been forgotten. Leading second-hand book seller, Dasa, tell me that they receive more requests for it than almost any other title.

Jack’s tombstone which can be seen [where ????????] records the name of Jack Reynolds Jones and shows his picture with black hair, glasses and a strong lantern jaw. Next to it is the empty slot waiting for the picture of his widow.

It seems sad therefore if the life of its author who is surely still remembered by more than a few in Bangkok is allowed to slip from the collective memory and not be publicly recorded and acclaimed. His friend, Bernard Llewellyn has his public obituary (24th June 2008 available on the website of The Guardian) but Jack does not.

A FEW FURTHER QUESTIONS

1. I’m told that there’s an obituary in the Bangkok Post or elsewhere? If so how to recover it?

2. Is the New York Times review of the book available?

3. How can I discover copies of the Living I Thailand interview article of 1983 mentioned in Mike Elmore’s article, and any more such material?

4. How do I contact Jim Shaw and Megapoint who posted on the tfs2m forum?

5. And also how can I find anyone else who knew Jack?

5. And what of his wife, Pen, (or wives?) and his seven children? Llewellyn refers to the two oldest as David and Philip. I have mentioned the son, Steven Muthikul Jones who exhibited limited edition bronzes at Vichit Chaiwong’ Gong Dee Gallery in Chiang Mai in October 2003. (www.chiangmaimail.com) How could I contact him? I’ve also seen a speculative reference on the net to a Reynolds contributing to the work of the Siam Society that could be a son but I now can’t find it. Surely his children would be all named Jones?

Andrew Hicks
November 2009 arhicks56[at]hotmail.com

If you highlight the text it shows up OK. Very interesting story so far, thanks for taking the time to post it here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Hicks

Andrew Hicks

Why do you sign off your posts with your name all the time? We can clearly see it.

he is never sure who he is until the end

Where is the 'forward'....isn't that the short bit at the front, so that you don't have to read all the rest ?

Or, better still the 5 line summary on the back.

Quote:

Originally Posted by crazy dog

thanks for taking the time to post it here.

he's spamming, dont get too thankful