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Hawaii: A Novel

Description

In Hawaii, Pulitzer Prize–winning author James Michener weaves the classic saga that brought Hawaii’s epic history vividly alive to the American public on its initial publication in 1959, and continues to mesmerize even today.

The volcanic processes by which the Hawaiian Islands grew from the ocean floor were inconceivably slow, and the land remained untouched by man for countless centuries until, little more than a thousand years ago, Polynesian seafarers made the perilous journey across the Pacific and discovered their new home. They lived and flourished in this tropical paradise according to their ancient traditions and beliefs until, in the early nineteenth century, American missionaries arrived, bringing a new creed and a new way of life to a Stone Age society. The impact of the missionaries had only begun to be absorbed when other national groups, with equally different customs, began to migrate in great numbers to the islands. The story of modern Hawaii, and of this novel, is one of how disparate peoples, struggling to keep their identity yet live with one another in harmony, ultimately joined together to build America’s strong and vital fiftieth state.

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-06-07
Summary: "Hawaii"

Excellent! Once I started reading it, this book was difficult to put down. Not only does Michener weave a great story, he describes the people, the history, and the places of Hawaii perfectly. One of the best!

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-04-20
Summary: "Not Michener's Best"

I've read several Michener novels and this is frankly not his best work. As always, he spends plenty of time acquainting the reader with the locale, beginning with the formation of the earth's crust. I enjoy the historical and archaeological background, and thoroughly enjoyed the story of the early people who made that incredible journey of faith and will across the sea to found Hawaii. But with the arrival of the missionaries the story takes a turn, and I kept having to wonder whether or not Michener himself believed that their deliberate, disrespectful destruction of the beautiful, thousands of years old, Polynesian society was a crime against a human population. However, his telling leaves one to wonder, and in fact it seems that the author does not see the irony in his own telling.
To be fair, it is certainly challenging to write hundreds of pages about such a very unappealing character as the missionary Abner Hale (who believes unswervingly that his God is the only one, and that the religious beliefs of the Polynesian people is pure heathen fantasy that must be destroyed). His success is painfully unsettling, and is the crux of much of the story.
The book is long on missionaries, and short on connecting the reader with the culture that was willfully destroyed (in the name of God).
There are better Michener novels with which to spend a thousand pages of reading time.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-03-07
Summary: "Very Very Good, but not Great"

This is a novel just one step away from greatness.

First, I want to say that I hold Michener up to his own story-telling standard, and that of one other author - James Clavell - whose body of work plays within the same genre of historical fiction.

Michener is a master - without a doubt. His subtle nod to a "humanistic/Classical Liberal" viewpoint is always present despite his slight play at moral neutrality. This means that many of his stories - short and long - carry with them moral lessons that I personally believe are essential to one's living a happy, successful life.

And while I enjoy his worldview, I must say that there is one thing missing from "Hawaii" that I would have greatly appreciated.

That is, the sort of heroic, individualistic men and women that make up some of his other works, and are always present in the Clavell universe. While there are great heroes in "Hawaii", they flash in and out too quickly, and you are left with a sense of watching the beginning or ending of many movies, but never really taking a whole film in. There are a few notable exceptions such as "Wu Chow's Auntie" but I wanted more.

And then there is the sad, sort of fatalism, almost defeatism, that plagues so many of his characters and their lives. They are not really ever self-actualized. Revenge is not often sought, rights are not wronged and justice is not served. There are exceptions but they are rare. I was left unsatisfied...left feeling...when are my heroes going to win! or Lose! Or something. Not just fade away in a sentence after reading and caring about their lives for weeks of mine.

Even so, I am grateful that this book was written as it has educated me to a wonderful land that I knew next to nothing about. So as a (semi-fictional) historical record, it deserves a 4.5/5. As a work of fiction, it is sadly lacking. It is simply Michener's masterful mind and research that keeps things moving along. Well worth the read. But if you have not yet picked up Tai Pan or Shogun, then I think it is better to start there and return to this gentlemen later.

Lastly, this novel should be commended for two things. First - its portrayal of missionaries and the Church. The good and the bad. The Church, whether in Europe or elsewhere, has always been a source for those that believed in asking questions about existence and seeking them out. Many men and women in this novel did just that. And they succeeded and failed depending on the answers they found, and how they dealt with them.

Second - the idea of an American, or Hawaiian, or "pure" Chinese is transformed into what it should be. Not something based on race, color or "who was there first" but on the millions of people who's ideas, culture, tastes, dreams, etc. shape each and every single person on this planet. Michener's Golden People are not the color "Gold" - but they are indeed Gold in that they have integrated the BEST of so many aspects of East and West, culminating in a truly integrated human being. This is the antidote to racism and tribalism, which multiculturalist never quite understood.

I suppose the bottom line is that if you look to novels to inspire, motivate, drive you to seek your dreams out, and make them real, Hawaii will satisfy you but inconsistently so. But if you aspire to know and understand Hawaii as a place and people, and the dreams that made it real, then you have the right book in your hands.

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Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-01-11
Summary: "Not my favorite"

My favorite Michener novel is "The Novel". This is probably partly because I'm a writer myself. As I contemplated my review for Hawaii, I did read some of the reviews and they fascinated me. It would be interesting to know a profile of readers who love Michener. Please indulge me regarding the comments below prefacing my review of Hawaii.

Michener's books are almost invariably extremely lengthy. And he gets away with what would be literary suicide for many writers. Most all his books include hundreds of pages of exposition: geologic research, cultural backgrounds, historical references, family trees/genealogies, archaeological discoveries, geographical information, etc. I've read stern warnings in many instructional books regarding the temptation to include all your research in a novel just because you spent so many hours compiling it. The books state how boring and tedious this can become for readers to wade through all this exposition in a desperate search for the plot.

It was a little amusing to me how many readers acknowledged Michener's penchant for massive exposition. Then the reviewer typically goes on to say that the book was still great and engrossing, etc. I'm a researcher as well as a writer, so it's saying a lot for me to state that I think Michener does go a little overboard at times with the truckloads of background material. But he's great enough to still keep an interesting plot moving along and sell tons of books.

Regarding Hawaii, I read it and, like others, found sections of it quite fascinating. One section, however, disturbed me quite a bit. It seemed as if the missionaries were caricatured as horrible human beings. They were foolish, sour, stern, mean-spirited, and even cruel at times. I'm not saying Michener is lying. I believe that some early missionaries misunderstood grossly what it meant to evangelize and invite people to consider the salvation offered through Christ's death on the cross for mankind. They thought that native people's cultural mores must be forsaken for them to be "Christianized." They sometimes made cultural mountains out of molehills and forced standards upon native peoples which did not even come from the Bible. Christian missions has changed in huge ways and for many decades it has spread the gospel of Christ without destroying the cultures and customs of various people groups.

Maybe I'm overreacting a little, because most reviewers seemed to realize that Michener was not cynically condemning all Christian missions with ugly, biased intentions. But, in any case, I'm just recording my reactions to the book. Please don't email me with bristling retorts as if I've bad-mouthed Michener. I have read some of his books and agree that he's a great writer. If you have an interest in writing, I especially recommend that you read The Novel. It is excellent.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-01-10
Summary: "Impressive"

I've never read Michener's work before, but this book left me awed with his knowledge of history and storytelling ability. The book begins with a brief section on the formation of the islands, then plunges into a novella (100 pages) about the arrival of the original Polynesian settlers. After that, it jumps forward again to the 1820s and the arrival of the New England missionaries. After this point, the narrative is pretty much continuous, with new chapters covering both the background and the arrival of new groups (Chinese, Japanese) and continuing the story of those who were already there. At this point it becomes very much a family saga, spanning about 130 years (the book was published in 1959, so the narrative deals only with pre-statehood Hawaii).

Obviously there's a great deal of history here, somewhat fictionalized as it may be, and I've never learned about so many places and cultures in the same book. The depth of Michener's research and the details of his portrayal of the lifestyles and thought processes of people from so many different cultures, in particular, never failed to impress me. But the story is brought down-to-earth through the always-engaging struggles of the protagonists, and the plotting and characterization were certainly enough to keep me reading. The writing style is intelligent; I know some people find Michener too dense for their tastes, but for me this book was just right: much more intelligent than your typical pop lit, but still absolutely readable.

My one reservation about this book is that, while I think Michener was quite progressive for the 50's, there are some wince-worthy moments in his dealing with race relations and his characterization of women and their roles. It doesn't seem to have bothered many people, but there is the occasional bit that hasn't aged especially well. Other reviewers have found the dropping of old protagonists jarring as the story moves on from one generation to the next, but I think that's standard for family sagas, especially when they have the breadth of this one.

I highly recommend this book even to those who have no special interest in Hawaii, and I plan to read more of Michener's work in the future.