Two local tomes on agenda for book club
By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor
When a visitor comes into her shop looking for a painless way to absorb some Hawai'i culture and history, bookseller Pat Banning hands them a copy of "Moloka'i," by O.A. "Ozzie" Bushnell. Reading Bushnell, she says, "you're all of a sudden immersed in another time."
Banning considers Bushnell "the father of Hawai'i fiction" and is eager for a new generation to discover his all-too-few works. When we asked booksellers to suggest titles for The Honolulu Advertiser Book Club, Banning suggested "Moloka'i," declaring it "the BEST book about Hawai'i."
Another of Bushnell's' works, is my nominee for "the BEST" fiction work about Hawai'i, and this month marks a year since Bushnell's death at the age of 89. It's an apt time to revisit the work of this microbiologist-turned-novelist.
So, for a change of pace, this month's "Good Read" selection of the book club is reader's choice: "Moloka'i" or "Ka'a'awa."
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"Ka'a'awa," Bushnell's own favorite of his novels, is a much sweeter story — but, as when you nibble on a stalk of sugar cane, there is both flavor and substance. The book illustrates Bushnell's fondness for the flawed character, and his sense of humor, having as its key character the unforgettable Hiram Nihoa, a nosy, gossipy, persnickety sort of fellow who is also something of a ladies' man when he can escape the clutches of his suspicious wife. In 1853, Nihoa is sent on a secret mission for the king, to find out how the people on the North Shore of O'ahu are faring. What he finds is immeasurably sad but also contains an uplifting lesson about love.
Bushnell was one of the first local writers to have a novel published on the Mainland ("The Return of Lono," a novel about Captain Cook, released in New York in 1956). He won the first Hawaii Award for Literature in 1974 and was inducted into the Hawaii Book Publishing Hall of Fame in 1998. But not all of his books are still in print. And, with the welcome increase in new works of Hawai'i fiction — a development he applauded — his works have moved a bit to the back of the bookshelf.
But Bushnell's all-too-few books — just five novels and one non-fiction work published over the course of 50 years — are the sort that bear re-reading and reconsidering, said writer and teacher Steve Goldsberry.
Unlike much Hawai'i fiction, Bushnell's works stand the test of even these PC times. Bushnell writes without the falsity and romanticism that colored — discolored — so much of fiction set in Hawai'i; his are the stories of flesh and blood men and women, Banning said.
Goldsberry, who met Bushnell and his wife, Betty, in the mid 1980s, considers Bushnell his writing mentor as well as a friend. "He was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. He had a tremendous sense of humor; (he was) a marvelous raconteur. I count the hours with him as some of the best of my life," said Goldsberry.
A UH professor, Goldsberry often includes "Moloka'i" in his English literature syllabus and admits to getting on a soap box when it comes to the book, which he believes should be a standard text in Hawai'i schools both because of its historical flavor and because it is a model of strong writing — particularly, the art of employing different voices and building believable characters.
A common theme in Bushnell's books, including his non-fiction magnum opus, "The Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawai'i," (UH Press, 1993) is the decimating effect of Western disease on the Hawaiian population, and the concomitant devastation of the culture. He was a medical microbiologist who studied the disease process and lectured on medical history and wove this understanding into his fiction works.
Though he was not Hawaiian (he was a kama'aina of Portuguese, Italian and Norwegian descent), Bushnell loved the Islands and said he couldn't live anywhere else. A passionate advocate of the local voice and pidgin English, he keynoted the historic Talk Story Conference and lamented the lack of local writers and publishers to print them.
Said Goldsberry: "He paved the way for other writers ... to let people know that Hawai'i is more than a superficial tourist paradise."
