COMMENTARY
How about a Literary Crossroads of Pacific?

By John Griffin

Hawai'i could be the first state to carry out statewide a new literary and literacy program already being tried elsewhere around the nation.

The idea is for all adults and adolescents to simultaneously read the same book and discuss it in a variety of forums from classrooms and libraries to community groups and Internet chat rooms.

But first comes what may be the most difficult and controversial part — picking a suitable book to stimulate and educate Hawai'i folks. (You can start sending nominations to Letters to the Editor.)

Seattle's city library pioneered this approach in 1998, and the mass book reading is an annual event. Other cities have picked it up to pull a whole community at least temporarily away from TVs and into serious discussion.

Chicago ran a seven-week campaign last summer with thousands reading Harper Lee's great anti-racist novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," including Spanish and Polish translations.

Much discussion went into the selection, including whether there should be separate choices for children and adults and whether nonfiction was appropriate. (It didn't hurt that "Mockingbird" is Mayor Richard Daley's favorite book.)

A New York Times story told of Chicago's "Mockingbird fever," with eager bookstores booming, librarians handing out discussion guides, and the city providing 25,000 lapel ribbons with bird logos to stimulate spontaneous conversations. Libraries have continuous showings of the 1962 film based on the book, starring Gregory Peck. A mock trial was staged to dramatize the story.

The sponsoring Chicago government says the cost was $37,000. Smaller cities get by with much less and most seem to get help from private grants.

But could this work in Hawai'i with its special brand of diversity and nonliterary preoccupations?

A test will come in April when everyone on Maui will be urged to read "Middle Son," Deborah Iida's novel on Japanese American plantation life, set on the Valley Isle.

On Feb.1, Hawai'i will join 45 states already affiliated in the "Center for the Book" programs of the Library of Congress, which operates with private-sector cooperation.

I think such "everyone reads" programs might be useful here beyond just promoting reading and literacy. Hawai'i needs more perspective on itself and the rest of the world in this era of mixed localism and globalism. We have to work on change and accommodation. Think of literature as current education.

And it may be that our statewide school, library and university systems lend themselves to such a campaign covering all islands. That is, if they provide the leadership and get the support needed.

So what's a good book for Hawai'i?

As elsewhere, librarians in committee may have to make the final choice, and it won't be universally accepted. But debate on the choices would also be useful — up to a point.

Some thoughts:

• "To Kill a Mockingbird," with its southern setting, has been moderately controversial with certain groups of whites and blacks. Yet its educational value overshadows all else.
• Other possibilities abound. What seems most desirable is acknowledged good literature, linear plots, moral issues and not too much sex. Seattle and several other cities led off with the same book, "A Lesson Before Dying," by Ernest J. Gaines, about racial injustice.
• Ah, but Hawai'i is also a special place, as we say, a part of the Pacific-Asia region as well as the United States. Shouldn't that be considered?

Yes, but maybe not too much.

The great, comprehensive Hawai'i novel has yet to be written, although many of us have tried. Most of the good Hawai'i novels I can think of seem too limited for today's situation (which is, no doubt, a debatable point, especially on Maui). People I asked also didn't come up with any suitable Asia-Pacific novels written elsewhere, but we need to keep an open mind on that, especially for a long-running reading program.

If we're talking about educating to broaden our thinking, as opposed to educating ourselves about Hawai'i, we might also think about avoiding obsessive provincialism and political correctness, characteristics of the lively local literary scene.

On a different scale, the San Francisco Chronicle has lists, based on a reader poll, of the 100 best fiction and 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century written in or about, or by an author from, the western United States. Check its books section on the Internet at sfgate.com by doing a keyword search for "books."

The first two on the fiction list are "Angle of Repose" by Wallace Stegner and "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck.

Others include "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior."

"Hawaii," by James Michener, is ranked 49th. It may be better in spots than some people think, but I doubt it would make any cut in Hawai'i.

The major need would not be to find some "perfect" novel for our global-regional-local situation but to get a program going with a reasonable literary choice. Others could follow.

In passing, I note that Advertiser Saturday columnist Jed Gaines does much with his Hawai'i version of the Read Aloud America program.

He reports local enthusiasm for the nationally popular "Tuesdays with Morrie," a nonfiction book about a dying professor passing on life's lessons to a former student. Amy Tan, among many others, loved it.

And while we're at it, what happened to my previous suggestion that either Gov. Ben Cayetano or Mayor Jeremy Harris take a detour from politics and appoint a poet laureate for Hawai'i?

It's another chance to help make us a Literary Crossroads of the Pacific.

John Griffin is the former editorial page editor of The Advertiser. He writes frequently for these pages.