Customer Reviews

Hotel Honolulu: A Novel

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Few capture the essence of a setting as sensitively as author Paul Theroux. One remembers with pleasure "Kowloon Tong" (1997), a vivid word portrait of China. Once more he renders unforgettable scenes in his latest work, "Hotel Honolulu," set in Hawaii where, by the way, Mr. Theroux maintains a second home.

But this is not the sun dappled island paradise of which many dream. It is instead a rather seedy spot, a down-at-the-heels 80 room hotel on an unimposing byway several blocks from the beach in Waikiki. "The rooms were small, the elevator was narrow, the lobby was tiny, the bar was just a nook."

The owner, Buddy Hamstra, a man with protean appetites, bridled at calling his place small. It was, he said, "Yerpeen."

Resident manager for this haven is an unsuccessful writer who has no hotel experience, but a sharp eye for observing and facile tongue for relating the human dramas that unfold behind closed doors.

Readers will find themselves drawn to the off-beat, flawed characters who visit the hotel, and reminded that Mr. Theroux is not only a trenchant observer of humankind but one blessed with limitless imagination and a powerful sense of place.

There's a great premise for this novel by Paul Theroux. The narrator is an unnamed middle-aged writer who takes a job as a manager of a small seedy hotel in Honolulu. What follows is a book full of overlapping stories about the constant parade of guests and locals and a fresh look at what Hawaii is like by the New England-born author who now makes Hawaii his part-time home.

There's a wide variety of characters and a loose non-conventional plot. Most memorable of all is the larger-than-life figure of millionaire and hotel owner Buddy Hamstra, a big man who over-indulges his appetites in life. There's the writer's wife and daughter as well as permanent and temporary hotel guests and employees. It's a collection of vignettes interwoven with reoccurring themes and finely developed people. It's big and sprawling and full of pathos and humor, small portraits of human nature focusing on the themes of love and death.

I found myself drawn into it, enjoying the author's sharp observations and finding myself wanting to laugh out loud. How each character views this world is fascinating and the writer dares to ridicule it all. There's a power in the book that kept me reading in spite of the meandering pace. It's sad and funny and very human all at the same time as it willingly explores such topics such as ethnic tensions and physical disabilities. It might not always be a flattering picture of a place we sometimes think of as paradise, but it sure does seem real, as the characters grope and blunder along in their lives below a constantly shining Hawaiian sun. I just loved the experience of reading this book. Definitely recommended.

When I went to Hawai'i I hadn't yet read this book. I got home and picked it up to read. Now that I've read it I'm glad I got to go to visit first. I have reflected on the stories Theroux tells and I am able to appreciate Honolulu in a way I probably couldn't while I was there. I recognized so many of the people Theroux described and saw myself in them as well. I had to wonder how much of this novel was really fictional; it was far too easy to imagine that these things had happened. (Especially after getting to know some of the people who do live in Honolulu.)

Having grown up near a tourist destination this book give me an appreciation for those who have to deal with tourists for a living; it also gave me several insights into the human condition.

I would hand this book to anyone who is planning to travel (and not just to Hawai'i).

Once again our "dear friend" makes superficial forays into others' cultures. If you can get passed his stock characterization and stereotyping of various Hawaiian ethnic groups, you might find something to salvage in the local color presented in this novel. As one who has lived in Honolulu, I can just imagine what they're saying about this book at UH right now. I'm not one to eagerly jump on the PC bandwagon, but this book will certainly bring it rolling down Ka'piolani Blvd. You'd think he'd have learned from his patronizing posture in "Riding the Red Rooster," where the Chinese are merely dirty peasants. Or from his flop, "Kowloon Tong," which in its film version (e.g. "Chinese Box") was poorly received at its world premiere at the Hawaii Theatre. At that gathering, Theroux tried to distance himself from the production, which was amusing. You'd also think he'd learned a lesson or two from Lois Ann Yamanaka's debacle with "Blu's Hanging" and thereby tried to resist the urge to caricature Filipino Americans in the islands as over-sexed, perverted or otherwise maladjusted. Yes, and we need that anal-retentive Japanese American and, of course, the sluggish, slow-witted Hawaiian. Please, Mr. Paul, spare us more of this rubbish in the future and fix your otherwise keen traveler's eyes on something you really know about.

Paul Theroux loves to play the intelligent, uninvolved raconteur, the perpetual, if distant, visitor. In his inimical style of episodic narration he tells the stories of those characters he meets, or he writes his fantasies about them (read sexual). In Hotel Honolulu he continues the witty, winking entertainment he began in his fictional autobiographies My Secret History and My Other Life, all viewed from his superior stance. Now that he is transplanted from England to Hawaii, the flavor is Polynesian, but the sly, voyeuristic prose the same. No other autor carries the reader along so effortlessly, so superbly, and on such a smooth amusement ride. No literati populate this world, however, a world of prostitutes, con men, complainers, and calculating crones.

If readers are hoping for plot, try Theroux's masterful sci-fi story O-Zone, or the bizarre sexual deviant thriller Chicago Loop, ore even the anti-establishment raves Milroy the Magician or Mosquito Coast. Discover Paul Theroux, a truly great writer, a mastermid who can take his reader on a funfilled ride of literary loops and thrills that leave you breathless at the feats of prose prowess and always wanting more.

Irreverant and supercilious as always, humorous travel chronicler Paul Theroux gives us a hilarious, eerily insightful account of the sleazy underbelly of "America's tropical paradise," as viewed through the eyes of a presumably fictional profligate, sometime novelist/sometime hotelier wearing racist-tinted sunglasses. As in Theroux's other novels, the self-indulgent exaggeration of the human condition tells us far more about the author than the characters he portrays. Like the people in his travel essays, the staff, guests, relatives, and hangers-on of the Hotel Honolulu are neither protagonists nor antagonists, but skillfully dialogued cardboard cut-outs of laughable humanity, reminding us what pitiful blobs of protoplasm we really are. The arrogant air of superiority Theroux often exudes in his travel essays is bequeathed to the morose, self-searching personality of the egotistical narrator. Theroux's novels have a way of starting out with brilliant, incisive prose and slumping maddenly into a lethargic din. He often seems to struggle with his prose, but despite its flaws, "Hotel Honolulu" is a fun read. If your image of Hawaii is plastic bobbing-head hula-dancer dashboard ornaments and imitation plastic flower leis, this book will change forever the way you think about "America's tropical paradise."

Hotel Honolulu takes the reader on a trip to Hawaii that you probably would never have ever made on your own. Paul Theroux's fiction makes you feel like you've really been somewhere and gotten to meet some people and really know them. And to the people who thought he was being critical, or giving an inaccurate portrayal of the culture, perhaps they needed to look a little deeper. Marginal members of society deserve to be described, also. No culture is ever so monolitic that it can ever be portrayed "accurately" for all of its members. I lived in Hawaii for 3 years, and had no problem with Paul's setting. Wasn't the spelling supposed to be humorous, anyway? Unfortunately, the sexual objectification and slavery of women is all too accurate. I Always enjoy additional view's of the author's "mask".

Paul Theroux writing on autopilot is still better than many other authors at the top of their form. His well-known ability to describe a place or person in just a few perfect words, his creation of believable characters with clear motivations, his ironic detachment as these same characters mess up their lives, and his depiction of a writer's battle with the demons of his craft are among his many brilliant qualities, all on vibrant display here.

Ultimately, however, this novel was a disappointment to me. Set in a 3rd-rate hotel in Honolulu, it has the characters and setting of a novel (and is called a novel on the cover), but it is so lacking in any sort of unifying plot, that it's not even possible to write a plot summary. The huge cast of characters has only one thing in common--they all live and/or work at the Hotel Honolulu. While some characters are complete enough that they could have been worked into a wonderful collection of short stories, others are seen only in tiny, three- or four-page vignettes and add nothing significant. Very much like the author, the narrator is a writer who has had a failed marriage and difficult divorce in England and who has come to Hawaii hoping to escape his bad memories and the pressures of the writing life. He likes Hawaii "because it [is] a void"--almost no one recognizes his name, and those who do have not read his books. He works as the manager of the Hotel Honolulu.

Distressingly, this fragmented book is shockingly mean-spirited in tone, going way beyond good-humored satire, and demeaning almost every aspect of Hawaii, its people, and its culture, while also taking pokes at some American icons. Virtually every woman in the book either is or has been a prostitute. All are dimwits. Even the narrator's wife is the product of a one-night stand between a Honolulu prostitute and John F. Kennedy, a man she supposedly never recognized in this most Democratic state.

Hawaiian/Filipino girls are depicted as fair game, sexually, for their fathers, uncles, brothers, and other relatives. Hawaiians who speak pidgin among themselves are mocked and their language derided. When he uses Hawaiian words, Theroux sometimes deliberately misspells them. Fellow-author Stephen King (ironically, one of the truly great creators of plot) also takes a hit here, Theroux saying, "it takes only a modest talent to write about misery." In a particularly low blow, he even comments on King's near-fatal accident by saying, "Gross reality [the accident] overwhelms his puerile and implausible fantasies." This novel has its virtues, but it seems that modesty, tolerance, and good taste are not among them. Mary Whipple

I admit, after 5 chapters of Hotel Honolulu, I was ready to give it up. Each chapter seemed to be a different story, another character in the Hawaiian mix, the book without much flow or direction. Yet it gradually came together, Theroux as the self-exiled writer getting a job as a desk clerk in a nondescript hotel interacting and commenting on the characters around him. It's typical Theroux, one is left wondering what is autobiographical and what isn't. He works for the rascally and excessive Buddy Hamstra, who is both mirthful and sadistic, and at times pathetic. His wife was born out of a unique tryst with a famous world figure. Mainlanders and Hawaiians, Chinese and Filipinos and more, Theroux comments on them all, in both scathing and sympathetic terms. One thing which stands out is Theroux's emphasis on sex in almost every chapter, but it's sex for gain, as a weapon, for profit, or comfort from pain.

Those familiar with Theroux know his style, on the surface one who studies those around him and all their motivations, yet seems aloof in a snobbish way. His chapters about Leon Edel are useful in pointing out the nature of his exile from his literary life, yet the literary superiority always grates. I expect that from Theroux and so I go with it. As with all his books, there are gems on almost every page, he writes with great care and thought to every situation. He doesn't always hit the mark, but I found this book another rewarding read.

I bought this book based on things I've heard about Theroux's travel writing and because I really didn't like Hawaii when I visited--I thought this book might show me what I missed. Well, it didn't but it did show me Honolulu as it is in an everyday sense--not from as a tourist's guide. (Though I do see it as a mixture or travel writing and fiction.) I ended up really liking the book and loved following the thread of Buddy and all of the other characters. Always wondered in the narrator was autobiographical in any way...I would recommend it.