David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars

By Alison, from Steal this book!

Warning 1: Usually I edit my reviews for as much moderation as a person of my temperament can have. However, the novel reviewed herein deeply angered me, and after many days of deliberation, I can't make it any milder. Plus, Memoirs of a Geisha is coming out soon on film. In this review I speak my mind about both books very freely. Warning 2: This review contains several spoilers. I spoil everything you can imagine about Snow Falling on Cedars. I also spoil William Styron's Sophie's Choice, though not because I'm angry, today, at Styron, as I'm sure he'll be relieved to know.

While I was on jury duty, I read David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars (1994), a courtroom drama cum interracial romance, like To Kill a Mockingbird, but with nipples. It is engaging and decently written, but extremely troubling. For one thing, don't let the Pen/Faulkner Award fool you: the prose is merely competent, at its worst plodding and leaden, by no means the lyrical masterpiece the reviewers would have you think it. (The first time he describes the "mush" of fallen leaves on the forest floor, it's accurate, if not fresh. The third or fourth time, you wonder why the man couldn't buy a thesaurus.) More importantly, it suffers from what Karl calls "Sophie's Choice Syndrome": the author's misguided belief that the sexual frustrations of a whiny, juvenile, misogynistic Authorial-Stand-In compel more sympathy than, say, the sufferings and survival of a woman forced to choose which of her children would be murdered by the Nazis, hmm? In this novel, the WWII internment of Japanese Americans, which powers much of the plot, must take second place to the whining, self-pity, and violence of our protagonist. Talk about a lost opportunity. (Whereas, while half of Sophie's Choice is plain dumb for the same reasons, the other half is masterly, beautiful, all you could ask of a novel.)

Cedars appears on many school curricula--it’'s even got a Cliff’'s Notes--because it can introduce kids to topics like racism, ethics, injustice, and Japs. The book (and the film, starring Ethan Hawke, which I'm not planning to see. Ever notice how Hawke acts “ ' sad'” or “'intense'” by letting his mouth hang open? Same with Tom Cruise--his lips just don't seem to meet--here's always that glimmer of ferrety teeth. Someone get that boy a bite plate!) takes place on a fishing and berry farming island in Puget Sound. Kabuo Miyamoto is on trial for the murder of Carl Heine, following a dispute about the theft of Miyamoto land during the internment. Our protagonist, one-armed Ishmael Chambers, like the accused man and the victim a young war veteran, follows the trial, partly because he's the town newspaperman...and partly because he's obsessed with Kabuo's wife Hatsue, the secret girlfriend of his teenage years, who dumped him when she was shipped to Manzanar and he was shipped to the Pacific.

Because the book says “Internment is bad. Racism is bad,” it traps the unwary into excusing, or ignoring, the book's more subtle racist ideas. If you happen to think racism IS bad, it validates you, lets you indulge in a little liberal guilt about the WWII prejudice against J.A.'s. If you know nothing already about the internment, or about J.A.'s, or the Pacific Northwest, you will probably learn something. That is a good thing. But there are racist ideas more subtle than depriving thousands of people of property, civil rights, and the ability to earn a living, and Guterson is guilty of perpetuating them. (I don't say “'creating” them.' The internment was not his fault. Prevailing contemporary racism is not his fault. What is his fault is his failure to examine his own racist notions, the ones that actually mar his book.)

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