‘Airplane’ about life,
plain and simple
Author Gary Pak finally
By Nadine Kam
releases his work to see
where it takes flight
Assistant Features Editor
Star-BulletinAN airplane to fly back to Korea. That's what Korean immigrant Kim Sung Wha wants to construct in Gary Pak's new novel, "A Ricepaper Airplane."
It's a lofty aspiration, but just as in the retelling of the Titanic's story, it is one that leaves no question as to outcome. A paper airplane, with wings as fragile as a butterfly's, is destined to remain grounded.
Pak's everyman is doomed to failure, but the author says, "That's life."
The book's protagonist Kim Sung Wha comes to Hawaii, like the Chinese and Japanese laborers before him, after war-time strife with the Japanese splinters his family life in Korea.
On his deathbed, an elderly Sung Wha recounts to his nephew the events of his life, a calamitous whirlwind of thrills, chills and adventures, that gave way to the normalcy of civilian life in modern Hawaii.
The story shifts between times and locales, myth and dreams and reality. The Korea scenes are so vividly sketched, it's hard to believe Pak has never set foot in the country.
Although Pak's initial inspiration was a tale about his grandfather's friend, who wanted to build an airplane, it is the hopes and dreams of "everyday, hard-working people" that gives the work its substance.
Pak said of his main character, "I look at him as someone I would hold up as a hero. Of course he did not achieve huge status in life. He lived humbly. But in his life he was very pure and I think that's the kind of heroes we need to have, not the kind that splash themselves on TV."
Modern American society accentuates the positive to the point that few want to accept the bad with the good that Pak recognizes as part of life.
"I look at the course of my life and it's really mundane, really simple, with no great ups and downs," he said. "I don't think I'll ever have to face the kind of challenges that Sung Wha faced, but if I had that kind of hardship I hope that I could deal with it.
"The point is, they ( early plantation laborers) didn't think that they had such a difficult time. That was just part of life."
Yet he makes clear, "I didn't write the book as a parable or to have a moral. Of course I hope that readers will be able to draw some kind of meaning, but I just enjoy the writing process. I enjoy stringing words together to create a vision or a picture. I enjoy the rhythm of the language."
He's at work on another novel which he says will be about a modern community split apart by controversy about an old movie theater.
But readers may have another long wait as Pak the writer tries to avoid intruding into the life of Pak, 46, the regular guy. Once the interviews and readings are over, Pak is most happy going home and resuming his role of husband and father of three.
He has little use for fame and the superficial aspects of success. On the prospect of striking it rich with his work, he says that a majority of writers can't make a living from publishing. "They've gotta teach or sell cars or something."
Pak's something is teaching expository writing at Kapiolani Community College. But he's done "all kind stuff" in the past, including driving a cab.
His family stood by him in the long period of labor between the conception of "A Ricepaper Airplane" in 1982 to it's publication this year.
"I thought I was finished many times," Pak said. "Sometime in the early '90s I remember telling a friend, 'This is it,' but I found myself looking back a few months later and thinking this is not my voice, it's not the voice I want."
It finally got to a point where he could either let go of his baby or forever dwell in revision hell. The final incarnation, he said, represents "the best that I could do with it."
Nevertheless, on Tuesday he joined fellow writers Milton Murayama and Frank Chin in a reading at the Ilikai Hotel, and managed to add a few new words to his story. "I felt it needed to have the rhythm of the spoken word, but it wasn't something that I felt I had to put in the book," he said. "I just needed an additional beat. I did it and that's it."
Reading notes
What: Readings featuring Frank Chin, Milton Murayama and Gary Pak
