A loose tale of ties that bind

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Echoes of a Distant Summer By Guy Johnson Random House, $24.95)

Echoes of a Distant Summer is a sprawling, 600-page action and adventure potboiler. Like his famous mother, Maya Angelou, author Guy Johnson has a flair for the dramatic. He can set up compelling scenes and drive a narrative.: along in a manner that sustains gut-level interest.

The central character of Echoes is Jackson St Clair Tremain, grandson of mob boss King Tremain, the protagonist of Johnson's previous novel, Standing at the Scratch Line. The younger Tremain is a high-level government employee in Oakland, Calif. He wrongly assumes he has severed all connection to his grandfather's criminal activities. As the elderly, severely ill King Tremain approaches his demise, old enemies reappear, scheming upon King's vast holdings and properties and, worse, plotting revenge upon King's kith and kin.

With that plot summary, you can probably deduce that despite all reasonable efforts not to, Jackson Tremain will become involved in violence and killing. His friends, and his new love interest join in the violence with a relish that is both utterly unbelievable and sadly humorous. Echoes of a Distant Summer is the story of Jackson Tremain's "coming out" as a man's man. He becomes such a skillful killer and strategist that he ascends to the leadership position of his grandfather's crime syndicate.

Though ostensibly set in the 1980s, the story speaks to a simpler time and place. One thinks of The Godfather films, of Francis Ford Coppala's slickly romanticized gangsters who fight for family and pride - not the crass crack dealers and unrefined addicts of today's news stories.

Johnson can write action scenes equal to the best writers of genre fiction and occasionally his writing merits comparison to literary artists, most notably Hemingway. In scenes such as Jackson Tremain's memory of his adolescence in Mexico and of his first real fight, a noholds-barred encounter with the son of one of King Tremain's most hated enemies, the prose captures the sweaty viscera of battle and the sick sweetness of adolescent rites of passage.

Unfortunately, narrative drive and action scenes are about all Guy Johnson is skillful at. He has absolutely no ability with characterization. None. Jackson Tremain's romance with his lady friend is the same story told in the exact same words as in every romance novel. By the middle of the book, cardboard characters have sunk Echoes of a Distant Summer as literature. This isn't material on the level of Goodfellas, or even an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. This is more a kung fu action picture.

Plenty of moralizing accompanies the action (Jackson Tremain sounds like a sufi mystic whenever he opens his mouth), but as in kung fu movies the moralizing can't disguise that glorified violence is the main point. There are not 30 consecutive pages in the novel's last half lacking a gratuitously exaggerated gun blast, knife fight or bomb explosion. Jackson Tremain's new girlfriend is kidnapped and raped. Of course, his posse must rescue her. For all the platitudes about the importance of family, manhood and love, there is nothing new here; in fact, the narrative reinforces sexist paradigms.

Black machismo reigns supreme. King Tremain, the gangster grandfather, is finally a sympathetic character, the epitome of virility and the courage to stand up for oneself. It is his wife who is the true villain. Her greatest crimes are that she has hidden the existence of one of King's sons and spoiled another. King Tremain has murdered countless numbers, but apparently, murder is nothing compared to the guile of a castrating woman.

"When do I become a man?" asks Rhasan Tremain, Jackson's nephew, meaning when are you going to let me wield a weapon and help eliminate the family foes. A real man is a man who can fight and, if necessary, kill. This is the subtext of numerous American movies. When applied to Black men, so many of whom are incarcerated for violence and gang activity, the proposition is particularly problematic.

At best, Echoes of a Distant Summer is passable summer reading, the kind of reading where you don't worry much about unbelievable dialogue and outlandishly contrived coincidences. Some readers will climb aboard the joy ride and have a vicarious thrill. Others may be bothered by the simple stereotypes: real men versus sissies, real women versus man-destroying monsters. Those more thoughtful readers may consider the damage the cult of mindless machismo is doing in Black communities and find themselves less and less amused.

Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is a poet and critic. He often reviews poetry for Washington Post Book World.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Nov/Dec 2002
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