Hawaii - James Michener

The last of the five books I grabbed from that sale at work. I've never read Michener's work before, and the length was a potential stumbling block. If the book wound up being lousy, was I really going to drag myself through 1100+ pages? The disaster that was my refusal to just give up on Tristram Shandy lurked.

The good news is, this book is infinitely more readable than that book. Michener's got at knack for descriptive language, so that even though I've never been to Hawaii, I had a clear image of the land, the cities, the plantations. (Whether it's an accurate image, I don't know). His dialogue is good, and considering the book follows certain families for over a century, he makes it fairly easy to keep track of who is related to who and how. I'm not even talking about the family genealogies he included at the end of the book. I didn't even look at those. The relevant stuff is in the text. The characters are interesting in that way where they can make decisions or actions that surprise you, but don't feel out of character.

I did reach a point, about 10 days in, where I was getting fatigued by the fact I still had 350 pages to go. I'm not sure what I'd cut out, maybe some of the scenes of the crackers patting themselves on the back for being so good to all the other people on the island (while doing everything possible to keep those people in the lower social classes, and out of the best schools). On the other hand, those scenes make it funnier when the Kee family or the workers start to run rings around them and they just can't understand how these people can be so ungrateful.

I liked the look at the cultures of the different people living on the islands, what parts of their culture they retained, but how over generations they adapt to improve their standing, and what results from that. There's a point, late in the book where Goro's wife decides she is going back to Tokyo, because she feels there's no culture here, that the Japanese in Hawaii have decided the important thing is a big car, like the white folks do. Goro's brother Shigeo believes the culture will develop in time, which I think is probably right. I'm not sure people can worry as much about art and music when they're working at getting above subsistence level. But also the idea that the people who originally left Japan were so beholden to the idea of their home country that it kind of blocked any development in that sense. They tried to keep things they way they remembered them in Japan, even as Japan was changing over the decades.

I didn't need the last paragraph, where we learn who is writing this book. I didn't care who the narrator was, and the answer left a sour taste, since it feels like more back-patting from a character I'd rather see punched in the face, but oh well.

'"I will not take citizenship," the old man said resolutely. "If this hurts you Shigeo, I am sorry. If my vote and Mother's cause you to lose the election, I am sorry. But there is a right time to eat a pineapple, and if that time passes, the pineapple is bitter in the mouth. For fifty years I have been one of the best citizens of Hawaii. No boys in trouble. No back taxes. So for America to tell me now that I can have citizenship, at the end of my life, is insulting. America can go to hell."'