Memorable characters inhabit Theroux's 'Hotel Honolulu'

E-mail this article Print this article

A seedy and old-fashioned hotel, tucked away near the beach in Waikiki, with a changing and occasionally intersecting cast: vacationers and lost souls, business travelers and lovebirds, crooks and quiet hotel workers, seekers and mystery guests. What writer could resist a setting like that?

"Hotel Honolulu" Paul Theroux will read from "Hotel Honolulu" at 7 p.m. tomorrow at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus. Tickets are required; available free from the University Book Store. Information: 206-634-3400.

Not Paul Theroux, thank goodness. "Hotel Honolulu" is a delightful, loose-limbed riff of a novel, set in just such an evocative place and full of Theroux's characteristic sharp wit, unashamed crankiness, pungent observations and surprising insights.

The narrator is a former writer, down on his luck, who accepts the job of managing the hotel despite a complete lack of experience. The owner, a spectacularly vulgar but big-hearted alcoholic named Buddy, figures the writer will succeed because he's a smart guy: "He's written a book!"

The narrator is content to let his capable staff run the place, and they generally like and trust him. He falls in love with a maid; they marry and have a daughter. He reads big books and is amiably teased by his unlettered staff.

Mostly, he watches the messy but very human parade passing by, and he listens to their stories. These tales, which ultimately prod the narrator into writing again, turn "Hotel Honolulu" into a collage of linked episodes, rather than a more conventional novel.

Among the book's many memorable characters are Pinky, Buddy's grasping Filipina bride, and the vaguely ominous relatives who follow her into Buddy's life. There's the mysterious carpenter who holes up for years as a hotel resident, creating noises that sound like lovemaking - but who ultimately produces something quite unexpected.

There's a sad-sack, know-it-all guest the staff nicknames Hobart Flail, who gloomily starts conversations with "What most people don't realize" and ends them with "Very few people know this." A couple of real-life characters also pop up. One is the distinguished biographer Leon Edel, who died a few years ago in his adopted home of Hawaii, but who shimmers in and out here to offer graceful advice to the narrator. Edel is one of the rare fellow travelers who come from what the narrator thinks of as his former "planet," the land of literacy.

His use of real-life characters, meanwhile, is one aspect of Theroux's delight in blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction, novel and memoir. This blurring teases the reader, creating a diversionary tactic that lets the writer both avoid and invite personal questions: How much of what you write is true? Is that really you?

In this case, the narrator does share some characteristics with "the real Paul Theroux." Both grew up in Massachusetts and spent years in Africa, Singapore and England. Both wrote best-selling travel books and novels. Both had families that were torn apart. And both have washed up, in middle age, in Hawaii.

But drawing too many conclusions is still a mug's game. Why bother? It's much more rewarding to simply enjoy the pleasures offered by "Hotel Honolulu's" masterful storytellers - all of them.