I'm ashamed to admit I never read a Paul Theroux novel. He is, after all, King Bull Nuts among writers living in Hawaii (yes, a highly coveted honorary title I just made up). So I checked out Hotel Honolulu from the Mililani Library.

Here's a passage:

"I sat and studied those big kindly waves rolling toward Waikiki, slowly rising from the smooth sea, dividing themselves into ranks, gathering shape near the shore to whiten in peaks before sloping and softening, just spilling and dying, declining in a falling off of bubble soup and draining into the drenched sand. It was as though the whole event of each separate wave had started when a great unseen hand far from shore had cuffed the ocean, shoving water into motion, creating waves, a study of beautiful endings."

Uh, yeah. That's hands-down the best description of waves I have ever read. I'm only about seventy-five pages in, but wow.

One thing stuck me as funny, though. The book is about a haole writer who gives up writing, moves to Hawaii, applies for a management position at a hotel despite having zero hospitality or business experience, gets the job, and beds then marries a hot local girl, the surrogate daughter of the hotel owner, who is also the illegitimate granddaughter of JFK.

He seems rather fortunate.

For some reason, it reminds me of that Eddie Murphy SNL skit where he infiltrates white society in white-face:

You can find a link to the skit here

Good stuff.

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