MAUl THE DEMIGOD Steven Goldsberry Illustrated by Dietrich Varez Simon and Schuster, 1984
" I hate this story." That is Maui's spontaneous reaction to a parable in praise of patience, order, and appropriately bestowed rewards. And he is quick to explain: "Because it is a story of contrivance. It is meant to teach a lesson." Steven Goldsberry's "epic novel of mythical Hawai'i" respects Maui's distaste for preaching and for contrivances. It is, instead, a book of flexible plentitude, a book that is filled with ~toried imagination weaving around a world where wonder and preciseness meet and enrich each other. And since stories explain best, here is an episode from another story, told by Maui's grandfather about a chief of the island of Hawai'i, a son of Pele who had found a huge basalt slab which he took to be the heart of the island and meant to dedicate to his mother the volcano goddess. Opele and his retainers carried the slab through the 'ohi'a lehua and tree-fern forests of Mauna Loa toward the crater at Kilauea, Pele's home. The journey seemed endless. Two men died on the way, when their bodies lost their own weight into the stone. You know how, when you carry something heavy, you feel lighter afterward. Some of your weight has gone into the object. It takes time for you to regain your weight and feel heavy once more. These two men, who were walking at the front and back of the slab, lost so much of their weight that they became light as chicken down, light as clouds. A stiff wind swept through the 'ohi'a with a hiss, and the two men blew away. They blew over the tops of the trees and disappeared. The others found them days later, one after the other, dead, their bodies crumpled and black from having fallen out of the sky. Maui doesn 't hear this story, but it is one he wouldn 't have hated. There are also lessons in Chief Opele's adventure, as he finally dances himself to death on the burning crater floor, but they are lessons which scatter in all sorts of directions and which constantly suggest their own qualifications, new pathways, and other stories. Above all, they are informed with the kind of magical realism that makes us see the retainers fly through the 'ohi'a because we know such experiences about weight and lightness to be true. Robert Frost 's New England boy swings the birch forest in this manner,
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