FFB: PUNAHOU BLUES by Kirby Wright (Lemon Shark Press 2005)

Despite the fact that I'm about as close to the ideal audience for this novel as it could have, since I, like Wright, attended Punahou Academy in Honolulu in the 1970s (though I began sophomore year there in 1979, rather than attending as he did in the early '70s), and even came to Hawaii with my family from the Boston suburbs of New Hampshire (the mother of the protagonist has strong family ties back in her hometown, the Hub), I was disappointed. It's not ill-written so much as uninspired; unusually large chunks of the novel are devoted to recounting sports-related adventures of the young Jeff, whom we follow from late elementary school at the more overtly Christian Star of the Sea to his matriculation at Punahou for 7th Grade and passage through to high-school graduation, but Wright won't make anyone forget about William Campbell Gault nor Michael Shaara in these passages; they do demonstrate more engagement than much of the the rest of the book does, particularly the oddly muddled portrait of Jeff's borderline-abusive father, who is initially described as hapa-haole (literally "half-stranger" but in most contexts in the Islands meaning half-pale Caucasian, often half Asian or more often originally half-Hawaiian) and yet later his father is apparently only 1/8th Hawaiian; his ancestry is only a small part of what's out of focus in him, and the protagonist's mother also seems rather schematic, even more than either might actually be to a not terribly bright boy like Jeff. Wright drops a Whole Lot of Hawaiian words into his dialog, but relatively little of the common creole of Hawaiian Pidgin, so while people are always referring (believably) to makai (in the direction of the ocean) and mauka (in the direction of the mountains in the center of Oahu) and less common borrowed words, only some are likely to drop in much more than "da kine" (the Hawaiian Pidgin equivalent of "whatsits" or "you know, that thing"--from "the [or that] kind of thing"--often used to emphasize the next adjective or noun, as in "da kine moke"--where "moke" or "moak" are somewhat oddly preserved from early 20th Century rather common US slang for "tough guy"; "da kine moke" = "really tough guy"--Brits and Aussies use or have used the term for donkeys and beat-down horses, respectively, apparently) , and hardly anyone says "brah" (as in "bruddah" or brother/hey, you) or the odd bit such as "garans ballbearins" ("I swear" or "It's a lock/sure thing" after "guaranteed ball-bearings" originally). But, then, maybe Wright knew a lot of people who never said too much in Pidgin, and he does provide a useful glossary for those Hawaiian words that might not be utterly clear in context (I haven't read nor heard "akamai"--smart--for a long while). Weirder by me, and I'll definitely grant this might be more in tune with the times it's set in, since I wasn't there in those years, but was there very soon after (I recognize both at least two names of teachers Wright thanks in acknowledgements and the portraits of at least two faculty as being based on unfortunate people I remember as well), is that Jeff is continually obsessed only with blonde girls in his grades, till he finally discovers in his repressed, rather half-assed way that he can as well be attracted to a Korean-American girl by the last weeks of his last semester. Entirely too much of the book feels like an attempt at post-minimalist resetting of Dobie Gillis in a Honolulu context, and as such, it's rather unengaging...but readable. The first two chapters were first published in Chaminade Literary Review, the little magazine of the Catholic university on Oahu, and that doesn't surprise me...it's a reasonably good portrait, if spartan, of Oahu and bits of Molokai in its period...but it's not what it could be, and that's a pity.

For mostly more well-loved books this week, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

FFB: PUNAHOU BLUES by Kirby Wright (Lemon Shark Press 2005)

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