Letters from Hawaii, by Mark Twain

Before I get into my review, I have to digress. A couple of things happened that reinforce my enjoyment of this venture. First, when I was coming down in the elevator after work tonight, a woman looked at the book and asked what it was about. When I told her it was great and about Twain going to Hawaii in 1866 and writing to a newspaper in SF, she told me that her family had a connection: they bought Twain's mother's house in Fredonia, NY. She said it was a beautiful Victorian with curved halls that she got lost in. Another connection, like Hamagrael knowing Perrin's wife.

And the copy of the book I got from a branch of the local library consortium out in the boonies has one of those old stamped, date-able pockets in it so you can see when the book was taken out, as opposed to the new device of sticking in a random dated card with no particular history for the book. When it came out in 1966, the hundredth anniversary of Twain's voyage, it was read four times. Still some interest in '68 and '69, tapering off to one or two readers, than a four year drought between '75 and '79 and again between '80 and '84, etc., etc.

I remember when I went to the rare books section of the library at Hamilton College and checked to see when a Latin grammar book was last borrowed. This rhythm of reading patterns engages me. What is it about the fashion of a topic that waxes and wanes? How does something really enjoyable or instructive go out of fashion? I miss this look back in books I borrow now; the thread with previous explorers is now broken by improved technology.

But on to Hawaii. I have sixteen different pages listed that I wanted to cite in my review as being not only great, visual descriptions of Hawaii, but quintessentially Twain. I can't possibly cite them all. These were the sentences that could not have been written as wryly by anyone else: on being a heathen, sinning, and offering up your grandmother as atonement; speculating on the original of ham "Sandwich;" about the nastiness of photography as opposed to the softening of portraiture; and the universal reaction of being disappointed in seeing a "natural wonder" for the first time.

This is a laugh-out-loud book, the first I've come across since I read since The Know It All, by A. J. Jacobs. Twain twists the end of many paragraphs by disclaimers about his own observations, -- quaint reflections of a time before political pundits from both parties. He is his own self-deprecating person, and an honest assessor of the less-than-stellar Europeans he encounters in the scantly populated Islands.

Another thing that threw me back was the entire idea of writing about a place in terms of what the people are engaged in as commerce, what their ancestors believed in, and how the land looks. It reminded me of geography exercises in grammar school. It's sad to remember how we wrote about tires from Akron, cars from Detroit, steel from Pittsburgh and Bessemer, Alabama, when these economic strengths are no longer valid. In 1866, Hawaii didn't have pineapples, surfers or Don Ho. Twain writes about sugar production, converting molasses to rum, and naked native girls swimming in the surf with only their heads above water.

I have never felt a draw to go to Hawaii. Twain's description of the stereotypical volcano, beaches and tropical forests seem pristine -- not like a lure for an island vacation. I'd go there, but only back in time with MT.