MENTION MY NAME IN HAWAII!!!!

ByWilliam Stuart '38 and Eddie Sherman.Honolulu, Hawaii: Hogarth Press, 1972. 207pp. $1.65.

Eddie Sherman's and Bill Stuart's novel could prove a desirable item to take along on a camping trip to the rim of Mauna Loa - together with survival kit, canteen with papayah juice and Smirnoff vodka, geology hammer, backpack, and short-wave radio. Its hero, Michael Mario "Mick" Halahan, a transplanted wahini who grew up an outsider in South Boston's Irish-Italian ghetto, might even make good company for one episode of Jack Lord's "Hawaii Five-O" television troupe. One hopes that Bill Stuart provided the semi-authentic settings and historical perspective. He may have some intimate knowledge of these ancient volcanic islands, although the story line of Mention My Name acquaints us better with South Boston cum Honolulu, via upstate New York, and "Mick" Halahan is vintage Mickey Spillane.

Halahan embarks on his quasi-epic quest after tiring of bitter winters in Troy, N.Y., where he has been pursuing various metiers as gigolo, gambler, hard-drinker, and publicity man. On his flight from the Mainland, he does not seek the Kaluapapa Leper Colony (as one of Graham Greene's unregenerates would); his motives are open and convivial, his objects fresh dames, new bankroll, and escape from past scrapes. The airplane voyage satirizes missionary types, businessmen, and hostesses, while casting concupiscent coup d'oeils in all directions. One begins to hear the venereal, undulant guitars featured in Mondo Cane's segment on the Islands. In fact, Mick hears Sweet Leilani six times on a juke-box in Troy and packs his bags. Shades of Odysseus and the sea-sirens!

Anyone, at this point, for a Pan-Am high-jacking? Here are all the elements of epic: long and arduous travel over land, sea and air; implications of the Underworld, prophetic visions of national destiny and racial Unconscious .... Sherman and Stuart present Halahan in a kind of Vesuvian, alcoholic Watergate milieu, all of Mick's foils being in bed, behind bars, or under water.

"So whattya wanna do tonight, Marty?"

"I dunno, Archie. Lessee. Hey, why don't we hop a flight down to Diamond Head, have a few brews and write a novel? About this Mick from South Boston who t'rows a lotta coives, and - yuh know - he telegraphs his pitches...."

"Aw, cummon, Marty! Whyn't we stroll aroun', pick up some nois-ses an' then climb up Brooklyn Heights wit a gallonuh Bali Hai? Some guys arreddy writ one."

Professor White teaches liberal arts atMassachusetts College of Pharmacy, lives inDorchester, knows South Boston well, andglimpsed Honolulu's harbor from a troopship in1953.