Cherry Whip

by Michael Antman

Buy directly from ENC Press: $14.00 An eccentric young Japanese jazz artist, obsessed with new sensations and new experiences, arrives for a career-making gig in New York City, where his quirky adventures are abruptly overshadowed by illness, guilt, and betrayal.

From the moment the deeply eccentric Hiroshi, a budding Japanese jazz genius, hits American ground, the ground starts hitting back with everything it’s got — just as he is to begin a high-profile gig that promises to make his career.

Hiroshi’s experiences in New York are exhilarating and humiliating, thrilling and traumatic in equal measure. As the quirky, disaster-prone, and language- and music-obsessed artist struggles to recover both emotionally and physically from a paralyzing illness that is not permanent but whose aftereffects may render him unable to ever again play his clarinet, he must also cope with the long-distance betrayal of his beautiful girlfriend and with his sublimated guilt over his role in the death of his sister many years ago, at the dusty end of a mysterious route she called “The Forbidden Pathway” in the tiny country town in Japan where they grew up.

This seriocomic novel, densely populated with quirky characters, is a love letter to New York City and to the English language. It also shines a spotlight on one fairly peculiar corner of the Japanese sensibility embodied in its hyperconscious but absentminded, sensual but abstracted, intelligent but terribly innocent hero, a Japanese Lucky Jim, who comes to terms with becoming an adult and respecting his gifts against the dual backgrounds of a mysterious pathway in Japan, which now exists only in his memory, and what he lovingly describes as “the filthy charm of New York City,” in the only too-real present day.

226 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

Michael Antman is the author of the novels Cherry Whip (ENC Press, 2004), Everything Solid has a Shadow (Amika Press, 2017), and the forthcoming memoir Searching for the Seagull Motel, and is a two-time finalist for the National Book Critic Circle’s Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing. He also is the Global Head of Marketing for a Fortune 500 company.

Reviews

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Cherry Whip” by Michael Antman has many unique qualities. The first thing I noticed and liked about this novel is Antman’s ability to create complex and intriguing characters that seem to be so different yet intertwine so well. The dialogue is humorous in its raw form while the internal monologue of the main character, Hiroshi, adds a distinct perspective on what it means to exist in the present based on past and future objectives.
The second thing I particularly enjoyed about this novel is the way Antman reveals America to the reader through a character discovering an America that seems to continually slap him in the face. Instead of fighting against his bad luck, the 22-year-old Hiroshi struggles to find a balance between the things he can control and the things he can’t.
Hiroshi is a jazz musician genius who travels to New York with the hopes to promote his career, but shortly after his plane lands he begins to feel the rare aftereffects from the immunization shots he needed to enter America. Hiroshi is diagnosed with Guillain-Barré, a state that renders him temporarily paralyzed.
Hiroshi lives in a New York hotel while he recovers, leaving behind a relationship in Japan and forging new and interesting relationships in America. While he contemplates the direction of his career after his illness, Hiroshi also explores the depths to which he was affected by his sister’s suicide and learns that perhaps the process of recovery outside of the body is nothing compared to the recovery that takes place within.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

In “Cherry Whip”, Michael Antman explores the process of acclimating oneself to a foreign culture in a variety of events. Hiroshi is a relatively unknown clarinet player who arrives in New York City from Japan to play a few shows and interact with other musicians. From the very beginning, he is met with misfortune; he accidentally leaves his brand new clarinet, a gift from his father, somewhere in the city and has no idea where to find it. Within the next few days, he finds himself crippled with Guillain-Barre – a disease that leaves him completely, albeit temporarily, paralyzed from his neck down. After three months in the hospital, he is released back into the city and forced to find his way in the city.

Hiroshi’s life in New York is compiled of unexpected and at times comedic events and people. As the novel follows his new life it also delves into the secrets of Hiroshi’s past. He is plagued by the memories of a sister who’s fate he feels he could have changed and feels guilty for the disappointment his father feels towards his late mediocrity. His heart is pulled in a million different directions as his concern for the girlfriend he left behind in Japan, the new women in his life in New York and his family weighs him down.

The story of Hiroshi is one that many can sympathize and connect with. It is a story of love, loss, regret and identity. Antman does a wonderful job showing the pain of Hiroshi’s condition, both physically and emotionally. We follow Hiroshi as he experiences all that the city has to offer and witness the effects of these experiences as he beings to find the courage to handle his life, all on his own.

[Kmurphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

What unfolds in Michael Antman’s Cherry Whip is a detailed character study that depicts a young man trying to acclimate into a world of the unfamiliar.

Hiroshi, an aspiring jazz musician, has a very distinct notion of what America is like, but once he steps foot in New York, he becomes deeply aware that what he thought is not reality.

Through a series of unfortunate events, including losing his prized and treasured clarinet, Hiroshi must learn to cope with a variety of things, both psychological and physical.

How Antman portrays Hiroshi’s struggles is very reflective of how the body and mind processes events. Particularly, this novel has a great sense of dichotomy, especially in comparing Japanese and American culture and views.

Antman’s portrayal of a Japanese citizen on unfamiliar ground is spot-on, which is probably due to his travels to Japan. As an American spending two and a half years in an unfamiliar country, Antman was able to reflect on that experience and put those thoughts and feeling into his work.

The finished product is an engaging and intriguing novel that is a must-read for everyone.

[Edward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cherry Whip by Michael Antman tells the story of Hiroshi, a talented young jazz musician who suffers from an auto-immune disease while on a trip to New York. Hiroshi becomes paralyzed from the neck down, and can not play his clarinet for several weeks. During his slow and stressful rehabilitation, he begins to doubt that he will ever be able to play his instrument again. Hiroshi is forced to question his purpose in life, and in the process, he must confront issues from his past that are preventing him from really committing to any goals in his life.

I think Cherry Whip could be considered a coming-of-age story like The Catcher in the Rye or The Adventures of Augie March, where the young protagonist is unhappy with his life, but is not mature enough to figure out how to improve it. Hiroshi can be arrogant at times and extremely insecure at other times. He analyzes every interaction he has with other people, ruminating on the most insignificant phrases or gestures, and usually deciding that people are intentionally mocking him. (He reminded me a bit of George Costanza from the TV show “Seinfeld” in this respect.) Hiroshi takes pride in his technically perfect English, but he often fails to grasp the real meaning of things people say to him; in a sense, his understanding of English is like his understanding of himself – shallow and a bit confused. I really enjoyed the stream-of-consciousness passages following Hiroshi’s comical thought processes.

As Hiroshi is recovering from his illness he develops relationships with an array of quirky characters: his father, a music student named Maureen, and his physical therapist, Trudi. Maureen and Trudi seem to be polar opposites, yet Hiroshi seems to be drawn to both of them, and they bring out different parts of his personality. I think the characters were well developed, interesting, and for the most part, believable, and the author creates enough tension between them that I always wanted to read on to see how their situations would be resolved. I also enjoyed the way Antman brought tiny details from the beginning of the novel back near the end (there is a small mystery about a set of miniature tools that is left unsolved until near the end).

Ultimately, Cherry Whip is about a character asking himself a question most people ask themselves at some point – what is my purpose in life? – and I think most readers will be able to relate on some level. Hiroshi can also be a frustrating person, and I imagine some readers might have trouble caring about him when he is at his most immature, but Antman’s lively writing style always kept me interested. It was a well written and enjoyable book, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys books about unusual characters trying to find their place in the world.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the form of a proper novel – linearity, a focus on the essentials, distinctive and easy-to-follow characterizations? What about the content – an attention-grabbing conflict, individuals pursuing their values with conviction and determination?

Michael Antman’s Cherry Whip sets these standards aflame, and scatters the ashes. The conservative criteria of a “proper novel” are discarded. Carrying on the traditions of anti-traditionalists like James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Thomas Mann, Cherry Whip is a nonlinear, genre-breaking, and well-written tale of morose introspection with a bizarrely appropriate element of hope. Not for the average reader, Antman’s debut novel offers bewilderment rather than simple pleasure, and for this reason, it is all the more rewarding.

Cherry Whip follows Hiroshi, a gifted Japanese jazz musician who has chosen New York for his first American tour, and who falls terribly ill before his first gig. The story amounts to a meandering account of his misadventures in the months following this initial misfortune.

Immediately, readers will be thrown – though should not be discouraged – by the fact that there is no external conflict, no explicit clash of values nor a truly critical clash of characters. Instead, Hiroshi butts heads with other people on the basis of misinterpretations of intentions: Maureen, a music student, may or may not have flirted with him; Hitomi, the girlfriend back in Japan, may or may not be cheating on Hiroshi, and may or may not be giving hints to him that they should break up; etc. It would be easy to dismiss these as the results of cultural barriers, due to Hiroshi’s status as a sort of national in-between, fluent in both Japanese and English. But Cherry Whip’s protagonist is likelier an illustration of Colin Wilson’s “outsider,” “an individual engaged in an intense self-exploration” – “a man who has awakened to chaos,” someone characterized by “a sense of strangeness, of unreality.” Hiroshi is definitely a man consumed by the unreal – he obsesses over the nuances of every conversation and desperately overanalyzes body language for any scrap of meaning. But while he expends so much energy on what most people would consider futile or irrelevant, he neglects his relationships, ignoring Hitomi for months on end, and treats his career as almost an afterthought. He pursues no values, and whether as a result of this or due to simple bad luck, life controls him, and not the other way around. He loses his prized clarinet and falls prey to a paralyzing disease, which leaves him bedridden for half of Part One. Hiroshi’s struggle with this illness parallels his struggle with his own apathy, and his (mostly internal) journey mirrors his inconsistent and flitting trains of thought. Suicide, mental illness, domestic abuse, sexual fetishes, and other multifaceted issues are explored and abandoned as subplots undifferentiated and inextricable from the main storyline. Nothing is taboo; nothing is disregarded as unimportant.

Clearly, Cherry Whip is atypical, and not a happy tale. But is it worth reading? Is it life-affirming rather than nihilistic? And, perhaps most importantly, does its form follow its function – i.e., is it more than feigned seriousness; is it well-written, according to the purpose its author has set; is it not pretentious, but authentic?

The answers would all have to be, “Yes.”

Antman’s theme, and, therefore, Cherry Whip’s style and content, are eloquently set by a quote dropped in the middle of the novel: “That miserable patch of events, that mélange of nothing, while you were looking ahead for something to happen, that was it! That was life! You lived it!” This is not intended as mere nihilism. Trudi, a minor character, explains its meaning and its relevance to Cherry Whip and to Hiroshi: “Well, I just think if you recognize that it’s all fleeting, you can grab onto things as they pass, instead of looking back all bitter like this guy.” Every line, every action, every description of Cherry Whip follows from this central idea. Hiroshi’s focus is frequently on the inessential; he lists, in inane and frustrating detail, what he ate for lunch, what his bedroom looks like, how his childhood doctor’s office smelled, what toys he was given as a boy, his complete sexual history. It is so real that it is overwhelming. It betrays an obsession with and fear of missing out on life, as well as confusion as to just what exactly “life” is. The style of Cherry Whip is similarly free of the essential in terms of its attention to detail. Antman conveys the mediocre life of an obscure and apathetic genius with alternating tightness and overabundance of language, always with a fluid and easy mastery of English. But regardless of style, the story is always drawn to that which is at the heart of what makes us alive: the insatiable desire to survive. The reader finds himself dragged by a brute hand toward this conclusion, through every one of Hiroshi’s cringe-worthy mistakes and self-destructive choices, through every depressing, yet magical, flashback to his childhood with his fey, disturbed sister. It feels only natural to arrive, inexplicably and seemingly by chance, at the light of day after such a distressing and melancholy odyssey. One is struck by the same thought that Trudi had: no man can be subjected (or subject himself) to the trivial torture of fading from life and from significance, as Hiroshi finds himself doing, without making a mad, desperate grab for relevance and self-empowerment. In this way, Cherry Whip is a harsh guide, but a rewarding one, for those readers who will refuse to back down from a challenge.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

“From the moment he’d hit American ground, the ground had been hitting back,” opens Michael Antman’s 2004 novel, Cherry Whip. The story is one of passion, pain, loss and the trials and tribulations of finding yourself when your world begins to crumble. Cherry Whip tells the story of young Japanese jazz prodigy, Hiroshi, as he furthers his jazz career in New York City. However, it’s not long after arriving that the place he’d come to conquer begins to crush him, most notably with the sudden onset of a startlingly debilitating disease. As Hiroshi struggles to recover, he also seems to grapple with his memories, desires and his very understanding of himself and how he fits into the world around him.

While the tale is an intriguing one full of mysteries and eccentric characters, it has a hard time hanging onto the reader as one unbelievable event proceeds another. Often, the supporting characters come across as overwhelming, even overbearing in their quirks and it almost seems as if Antman isn’t convinced he can keep the reader’s attention with just Hiroshi. Yet Hiroshi’s story alone, the one concerning his family (his father and sister in particular), Japan and his relationships, is by far the most interesting and the side plots revolving around spousal abuse and revenge and his interest in Maureen, a girl he befriends early on, seem superfluous.

Despite this, however, Antman succeeds in conveying the way a fluently bilingual mind might process information in its various contexts, shifting from one language to the next, muddling the two depending on the circumstances. There is also the way the book progresses, continually building upon and returning to that very first sentence which so perfectly sets up the whole of the novel.

Cherry Whip is by no means a perfect book, but it is certainly an enjoyable and intriguing ride and worth the read.

[Christine Okon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cherry Whip by Michael Antman has just turned 20, and it still feels fresh and relevant. 

The story follows Hiroshi, a young Japanese jazz clarinetist hustling to make a name for himself in New York’s jazz scene. He’s talented, curious, and fearless in that way only young dreamers can be—until a sudden illness leaves him paralyzed from the neck down. From there, the novel shifts gears in a way that surprised me. Instead of leaning into tragedy, it becomes a quiet, reflective, and often humorous story about stillness—what happens when you can’t do anymore, only be. 

Antman captures that strange beauty of forced observation, the kind that makes you reevaluate what matters. It’s set in a time before smartphones and ubiquitous connection, which gives it this serene, almost nostalgic quality.

Even though Hiroshi’s dream of being a musician is delayed, his journey doesn’t end. He finds a different kind of rhythm working as a clerk at a nature store, meeting people, listening, connecting. There’s also a haunting thread about his sister—something he carries as both guilt and memory—that adds a deep emotional undercurrent.

I love how Antman writes about resilience without making it sound cliché. Hiroshi’s calm acceptance and yearning to understand everything at times feels almost too calm, but maybe that’s the point—some losses can’t be fought, only lived through. 

Cherry Whip ultimately asks what keeps us going, and its answer feels both simple and profound: hold on to the things that bring you joy, even if they look different than they used to. It’s beautifully written, full of quiet moments that stay with you. And I kept thinking while reading—this would make a wonderful movie, the kind where music and silence say more than dialogue ever could.

[Joe Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cherry Whip is an elegantly constructed, superbly written novel about a young Japanese jazz prodigy named Hiroshi who visits New York and immediately falls ill, placing his budding career (and perhaps his entire life) in jeopardy.

Executed with precision, compassion and wit, Cherry Whip kept me turning the pages. Hiroshi lives and breathes on the page. Neurotic but charming, I enjoyed his company. His misadventures, including a tragic subplot involving his older sister, are compelling and affecting.

Antman writes beautifully on every level: prose, theme, structure, and character. Cherry Whip is out of print, which is a shame. It's a terrific book that deserves a much wider readership.

[M J Frishman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought the book was great--I was genuinely impressed by the writing. The book succeeded in the most elemental way--it made me want to keep reading. And not just for the stereotypical "page-turner" plot reason--although there's nothing wrong with that--but because I cared about what happened to the character.

Judging by the the other reviews, I'm not the only one who thinks so. Cherry Whip deserved to have been promoted as an "A-list" novel. Highly recommended.

[David P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hiroshi, a jazz prodigy facing career-threatening setbacks in New York with GBS. He discovers himself and resilience in NYC