The Elegant Variation: GUEST REVIEW: TERMINAL ISLAND

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February 22, 2005

GUEST REVIEW: TERMINAL ISLAND

As it turns out, the kind souls behind MartiniRepublic took pity on us and invited us to one of their parties last night. We actually had a smashing time - namesake cocktails were poured in abundance - and we finally got to meet L.A. novelist John Shannon, with whom we enjoyed a wide ranging literary conversation (favorite authors, the woes of writing a novel, all the usual, good stuff). Purely by coincidence, this review was all set to run today.

Terminal Island
By John Shannon
Carroll & Graff
276 pp.
$25.00

REVIEWED BY DANIEL A. OLIVAS

At the beginning of the last century, the discovery of abalone in Southern California waters led inexorably to a flourishing fishing industry in harbor communities such as San Pedro. That a Japanese fisherman made the discovery would be of no surprise to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Los Angeles history. And for a few years, the Japanese did well selling their catch to the Caucasian fish packers. But soon discrimination in San Pedro required the Japanese to segregate themselves in order to survive. They moved to Terminal Island, an artificial land mass in the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor, opposite San Pedro. Between 1906 and World War II, the Japanese community thrived and grew from 1,000 to 25,000 people. But the Japanese could not outrun racism. In early 1942, at the height of wartime ethnic suspicion, the U.S. military began enforcing Executive Order 9066, the presidential decree requiring the evacuation of all Japanese nationals and U.S. citizens of Japanese descent from the West Coast. Terminal Island’s Japanese community was relocated to places such as Manzanar in the Owens Valley. In the rush of evacuation, they lost real and personal property, businesses, homes. American history is disgraced by this episode which was based more on bigotry than any true fear of security during time of war.

These ghosts of Terminal Island compel detective Jack Liffey back to his childhood home of San Pedro despite trying to convalesce from a collapsed lung, a gift from his last case. In this the seventh outing for John Shannon’s Liffey, life is almost as low as it can go. Forced to see a fatuous shrink just to keep his meager disability checks coming in (and prescription painkillers readily available), and with a doctor who refuses to inflate the damaged lung just yet, Liffey could sure use the comfort of the bottle but, alas, he’s given that up along with his specialty of finding lost children. The only thing keeping Liffey afloat is his renewed relationship with Maeve, his teenage daughter, and his new, rich girlfriend, Rebecca. These two females give him hope even if the rest of his life is in the toilet.

But the call comes. Vinnie Petricich, a teenage Goth dressed in black with a love for dark poetry, is missing. Liffey can’t help himself. The teen is eventually found in an abandoned Palos Verdes bunker, trussed-up in duct tape, frightened but unharmed. The only clue is a pink kitty card with a warning written on it: Stay Down. And the card is signed with a Japanese ink stamp known as a hanko. It doesn’t stop there: a fishing boat sinks, a detective’s intricate miniature train set is destroyed, and Japanese playing cards with cryptic notes are left at the scenes. As Liffey gets more involved in the mystery, the perpetrator takes note. The next “messages” strike close to Liffey implicating danger to his girlfriend, daughter and a bigoted father whom Liffey had long considered dead. It proves too much for Liffey’s girlfriend who unceremoniously cuts Liffey off with a “Dear John” letter.

As Liffey pulls together the victims’ history—including his own—all evidence points to Terminal Island and the wrong committed against the Japanese enclave. But any surviving fisherman would be quite old by now. And the perpetrator clearly possesses great physical agility and stamina. Through good old fashion detective work, Liffey narrows the suspects to one Joe Ozaki, an enraged Japanese American ex-Green Beret who has vowed to avenge U.S. misdeeds against his father and other Japanese interned during World War II. Liffey forces Ozaki’s hand pushing them to a delirious and surprising engagement on a sealed-off Terminal Island.

The great joy of “Terminal Island” is Shannon’s ability to address the many ethnic/socio-economic/generational schisms that make up Los Angeles without slowing the nimble pace of his narrative. As Liffey struggles to catch Ozaki and prevent violence to the people around him, he falls for a police officer named Gloria Ramirez, a Native American who was raised by Latino parents who taught her to hate her own heritage. Liffey is forced to confront and eventually offer help to his viciously-bigoted father, Declan. But Liffey’s Good Samaritan daughter believes that her newfound grandfather can discard his ugly beliefs by getting to know her African-American friends. Shannon also intersperses the chapters with entries from the perpetrator’s diary, paralleling the investigation, giving us insight into the damaged soul’s desire to redress old wrongs and bring honor back to his family.

The result is a complex and compelling portrait of people linked by both place and past transgressions. In the end, we wonder if we can ever run from our former selves into a future where we are better people who can improve this world rather than tear it down. As Liffey tries to reason with Ozaki, he sounds as if he’s trying to convince himself that forgiveness is, indeed, a great virtue: “[W]ar asks too much of a human being. They weren’t bad people to start with, and most of them have healed. Time heals. Love heals. Work heals. The human mind is resilient, it finds a way.” If Jack Liffey and his father are any guide, these words have truth at their core and there is hope for us all.

Visit Daniel's Web page at http://www.danielolivas.com

Posted at 12:20 AM | Permalink

Comments

way to go, daniel, and you too, mark, for publishing it. daniel, did donna wares put you up to this, or did you find mark on your own? either way, it's a good piece, and i hope shannon sees it. did you know that the l.a. alternative press is advertising for freelance book critics?

all finest,
david

Posted by: david kipen | February 22, 2005 at 10:42 AM

all finest,
david

Posted by: david kipen | February 22, 2005 at 10:43 AM

David, I saw it indeed. Dan, thanks a lot for the thoughtful treatment. (The check's in the mail.)

Posted by: John Shannon | February 22, 2005 at 01:46 PM

david: mark has been kind enough to publish some of my other pieces...i don't know donna! thank you for your kind comments and the lead, too.

john: it's a goddamn fine novel and i hope you sell many copies.

Posted by: daniel olivas | February 22, 2005 at 06:33 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 22, 2005

GUEST REVIEW: TERMINAL ISLAND

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 22, 2005

GUEST REVIEW: TERMINAL ISLAND

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism