It's easy to see why Cedric Yamanaka has won awards for his fiction. The short stories in "In Good Company" possess the ingredients that readers of good local fiction have come to appreciate: a strong sense of place, fine-tuned details and the use of language (pidgin), combined with skill to reflect the nuances of local culture -- and the ability to tell a decent story. Recurring voices echo
through poignant tales"In Good Company"
Cedric Yamanaka (University of Hawaii Press, 188 pages, softcover, $14.95)By Joleen Oshiro
joshiro@starbulletin.comEach story in and of itself is a gem, some humorous, others poignant, all with the ability to lure in the reader with compelling drama. The eight-story collection starts out light and lively with "The Lemon Tree Billiards House," about a college student's encounter with an aging hit man, and "One Evening in the Blue Light Bar and Grill," in which a professional wrestler meets his high school dream girl. The tales' easygoing, engaging story lines end almost prettily enough to be tied up with a red bow.
Then the tone shifts dramatically. Stories such as "What the Ironwood Whispered," "The Day Mr. Kaahunui Rebuilt My Old Man's Fence" and "The Three-and-a-Half-Hour Christmas Party" carry weighty themes of isolation, abandonment and self-imposed limitation that have the reader carrying away the unfulfilled, sad resonance of the characters. "The Papah Fooball Champion" and "Uncle Martin's Mayonnaise Jar" continue the melancholy tone.
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The collection ends strongly with "The Sand Island Drive-In Anthem," a tragedy of sorts about young men who work 15-hour days at a drive-in. Not only do they work for minimum wage, they live their lives at minimal level, literally in the dark. They report to work before dawn and then hang out at unlit parks, exhausted, at the end of the night."Yeah," said Rudy, his voice very soft. ... "Look what we doing. Twelve, fifteen hours a day. Sixty, seventy hours a week. I mean, we're young. We're healthy. But look how we spending our time. Cooped up in one restaurant. ... We should enjoy being young. Enjoying da sun, da sea, da trees."
For these guys, real dreams, real goals can't even begin to germinate. There is no light in their lives, no spark.
Of course, the dissatisfaction at such an existence comes to a head -- with a story line that is, unfortunately, all too predictable. But Yamanaka's strength is in his ability to create characters that internalize and embody the plight of the circumstances, rather than using plot to illustrate the conflict.
Yet this quality gives rise to another problem with "In Good Company" as a collection: Several stories into the book, the voices begin to blur, becoming difficult to differentiate. Sure, the names, ethnicities and window dressings have been changed, but the same voice reappears. The reflective college student in "Lemon Tree Billiards" sounds an awful lot like Rob-boy in "Ironwood" and the narrator in "Mr. Kaahunui." Isaac Kalama in "Christmas Party" would fit right in with the gang in "Drive-In." Collectively, the individual gems of stories sap each other of originality and punch.
That being said, the recurring voice may very well be the point of "In Good Company." After all, each story offers a slice in the life of an average Joe. What ordinary fellow hasn't had his brush with the extraordinary, like the college kid with the hit man in "Lemon Tree Billiards"? Most of us have grappled with our relationship to a parent, just as the teen does in "Papah Fooball." And too many folks struggle to make ends meet and make sense of it all, as does the gang in "Drive-In."
Like all of them, each of us has our own story to tell, and our voices overlap, blurring our lives into common experience. In this light, Yamanaka offers a thoughtful, poignant tribute to the Everyman.
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