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4.0 out of 5 stars
A useful, if somewhat annoying (to me) guide, October 31, 2006
This review is from: Cliffs Notes on Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars (Paperback)
There are some very good points about this guide, and one point that made me want to tear it in half; I will try to describe it so that the reader can make their own decision.
I think that
Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel was a so-so book. I found it uninvolving, and I cannot see why one would bother reading it when there are so many excellent non-fiction works on the themes. Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston wrote a classic book on the internment called
Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment. Mary Matsuda Gruene wrote another book:
Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps, and she has a bibliography listing many other books about the Japanese-American experience. Matsuda, incidentally, came from a family of strawberry farmers living on an island in the Puget Sound. People interested in the lives of fisherfolk can read
HUNGRY OCEAN, THE: A SWORDBOAT CAPTAIN'S JOURNEY,
Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, The Lives of Men,
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea (P.S.), etc.
Having warned of my basic lack of enthusiasm, the majority of the Cliff Notes is a competent and useful guide. One of the best parts of the guide is that Wasowski has provided lists explaining a variety of terms, including boating, fishing, contemporary slang, Japanese words, etc. I hope that the authors of some other guides will take a lesson.
I think that there are two missing themes. One is the position of women in the family. Some people will not find it odd that Carl and Kabuo feel little need to consult their wives when making decisions that affect their entire family, but some people today will find strange; it was much more common during the period when this is set than it is today. Guterson cannot really address that directly, but I think it would help if it were in this guide. The other issue, which neither the guide nor Guterson seem to recognize is that Etta does the same thing to her son, Carl, that she does to Kabuo: she deprives him of the opportunity to make his living on land his family owned. If Kabuo feels strongly about land that his family owned for seven years, how might Carl feel about land that has been in the family for several generations?
On the minus side is a vehement objection which I am certain many literary students will not understand. Wasowski commments the "Some question Guterson's style ... or else they think he just didn't succeed in what he attempted to do." He responds to the criticism: "Most readers tend to recognize that prejudice on either side of a relationship can lead to misunderstandings and that someone living with one foot in two different cultures is not fully part of either."
Since I often receive similar comments when I criticize "serious fiction", it is presumably necessary to point out that his response is a non sequitor, from the Latin "it does not follow", meaning "a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said." (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002, online, Oct 31, 2006).
Whether or not one likes Guterson's style does not necessarily have anything to do with whether or not one understands the pressures of conflicting loyalties. One could understand perfectly and still not like Guterson's book. Themes are different from writing techniques. Perhaps Wasowski means to say that Guterson's development of the theme is so good, so novel, and so important as to make wading through his verbosity worthwhile. I wouldn't agree, but that at least would make sense.
A useful companion to the book, if not a great example of clarity in writing.
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