The Pearl of Kuwait [Paperback]

The prose may be based on "attitude" and not "literary style," as one reviewer suggests, but the genius of Twain and other greats rests in their abilities to use a naive narrator to clarify points of theme. Here Cody Carmichael's surf-speak muddies the potential insights behind every encounter. Upon observing his buddy, Tommy Trang, holding a fallen comrade's recently extracted heart, Carmichael observes only that, "once again, it was a weird but powerful moment." Paine even uses italics liberally throughout the narrative. Apparently, the reader cannot be trusted to place the emphasis correctly in Carmichael's overwrought surfer-dude dialect.

The narration was frustrating because, as other reviewers have noted, the ideas that the book begins to explore are timely and important. Trang and Carmichael might represent America's own convoluted approach to the Gulf region. Is Trang's mission heroic, quixotic, or just tragically misguided? There is evidence in the text to support each answer, but a novel that blankets all possibilities ultimately reveals nothing valuable. In the end, the narration and characters are so irritating and the plot so implausible that it's difficult to care about the larger ideas.

The prose is based on attitude, not on literary style, and the surfer style speech is not so different from A Clockwork Orange in that you KNOW you are in a different world. Don't fault the story premise for a style of writing you may not be used to, and in fact, find annoying at times: the same way Chaucer wrote - he couldn't help it!

Rarely do I read a book and laugh out loud, but this one was a pleasure in that it was light and funny and had sexy Arab babes, daring adventures, macho stupidity, confusing culture clashes like KFC meets Felafel Bell but it is funnier than Hell.

The characters reminded me of T.C. Boyle's book Water Music, another underrated adventure story, in that they don't move, they bounce from place to place, like Kerouac on Ecstasy.

The above is a pretty fair rendition of the prose style contained in this novel--which is told in the first person by Carmichael--and if you found your eyes glazing over by the end of the paragraph, imagine reading three hundred and ten pages of it. In case you missed the point, Carmichael is a moron. This pretty much ruins the novel, which is too bad, particularly since there's the outline of a pretty good story in here.

Yes, they do rescue a Kuwaiti Princess after she tries to drown herself in the Gulf. After the war begins, they go AWOL so that they can go to Kuwait to rescue her from the Iraqis. Along the way they meet many unusual Arabs, encounter bizarre customs, and have some truly remarkable adventures. Remarkable, unfortunately, to the point of almost being unbelievable, and almost unbelievable because the narrator, simple-minded as he is, is incapable of putting them in perspective. How nice it would have been for him to have had offered an explanatory note once in a while, or even to comment on how surprised HE was at some of these goings on. But nope, all we get is child-like, wide-eyed wonder, expressed in the voice of a buffoon.

Here are some examples of the profundities: " . . . Trang and me were discovering these Arab folk were way different from us Americans, and it was kind of a bummer." Wow. "And it was so cool, and put me right into the ancient past with caravans and all, and I looked down at my own robe, and thought: Cool! Cool! Cool!" How revealing. "Anyway, that song [American Band] kind of cracked me up, because we were sort of an American band, heading to the town of Kuwait, and maybe we would even get a chance to teach the locals to party American-style!" This is what passes for enlightenment.

It's a shame. Because there really is a good story in here trying to get out, and at least the hint of a theme as well, having to do with Americans imposing their values on other cultures. But as presented here, the story comes across as a Scooby-Doo cartoon, with the wit and intelligence to match. Don't believe the hype. Huckleberry Finn this ain't.