Emulating Mindset

…What a ride. Night Fisher seems to be a strange melee between the world of high achieving academia and the drug-filled haze of batu houses. R.Kikuo Johnson has created an unusual piece, but there is some method to the madness. The beginning of the book is simple enough, a plain time-consistent exposition of Loren’s place in Hawaii and the history behind his existence there. We see a troubled yet constant friendship between he and Shane, and a steady supportive relationship between he and his father (with typical teen angst thrown in.)  Johnson is setting up our perspectives of the main characters, and does so easily enough. However, as the plot moves Shane from academia to drugs, we know Loren will soon follow.

Everything makes sense up until Loren’s first hit of batu. Then the bumblebees take us into worlds unknown. That panel is  the first time we see words running into the gutters, outside of Loren’s consciousness. From that panel on we have lost sense of time and reason. Scenes make little sense, flashbacks occur frequently, and night fishing scenes seems surreal in the place of more profane activities. But all this has a reason: Johnson is emulating the changed mindset of Loren has he becomes increasingly less like the Loren we used to know. We see more panels without words or with conversations we can’t follow. Abstract panels with a small point of view, or panels focused specifically on drugs and sex. It is not just the art that forms this chain of events, but the plot as well. Distraction, decreasing grades, and failing relationships  follow Loren through to his arrest as an accomplice to the theft the boys are committing to buy their batu.

After this point we regress into Loren’s mind. Conversations are clearer and events more poignant, less emotionally stinted. However, through a series of panels where Loren witnesses Hawaii as it is, and the Hawaiian people as they are, we find ourselves wondering what Loren is thinking. Is he sorry? Is he watching people at the market wondering how this happened, or why he doesn’t fit in? We see everything through his eyes, but we cannot seem to fully understand what is going through his mind. It’s clearly a pensive mindset, as at the end he fades into the grass, staring at the sky. His is also the constantly studious mindset, going over biology in his head throughout the book. Knowing this, we hope that Loren is attaching the same constancy and vigor to his personal life, studying his past actions and deciding whether or not he wants to leave the world of batu and go back to his focused, academically driven self.

Through art, perspective, and plot Johnson creates a world of mindsets, changing throughout the book for every character, but each as vivid and clear as if we knew them. This may not make a novel that is easy to understand, but it does make a novel filled with characters we can empathize with and easily imagine.