Dreamer [Paperback]

Matthew is "reminded of his mediocrity" (compared to Citizen King) every day, who comes to philosophical (that is, moral maturity) through managing the education, really his own (a la Pygmalion), of a physical double of King, Chaym Smith. Smith is posited as a character who in his potential may well be fully the intellectual equal of King, learned in history and philosophy, gifted in poetry and art, but whom the harshness of life, through the vagaries of misfortune, has turned into a self-serving skeptic and cynic, essentially a failure of a man rather than the great and immortal thinker or artist he might have been. In other words, he, like the narrator, is not Dr. King.

Charles Johnson spent several years researching "Dreamer." Then, through happenstance, he was given the book "The Changes of Cain" by its author, Dr. Ricardo J. Quinones. This book led Johnson to rewrite "Dreamer" in the last months prior to going to press, only now introducing the double Smith.

The philosophical, that is moral, theme running through "Dreamer" recognizes the presupposition of the inherent inequality of people in terms of their skills and talents, the original theme of the Old Testament's Cain and Abel, but this book uses King and his doppleganger Smith to present the possibility of synthesis and rectification of inequality. This synthesis is ultimately manifested in the narrator Matthew. Such a synthesis of the two sides of man embodies King's "inescapable network of mutuality," the erasure of the "ontological fear" of self and other, me and you, black and white, Jew and Muslim or Christian, man and woman.

The following section on King's thoughts highlights the theme, and the beauty of Johnson's writing: "...inequality was stitched into the fabric of being. No one deserved greater natural gifts than others. But despite the fortuitous differences in men, they could volunteer to share one another's fate. They could-in fact, should rearrange the social world to redress the arbitrary whims of contingency, accident, and chance."

This book is full of great writing, but more importantly, it is a book that offers up the possibility of grace, not necessarily in the religious sense, but in the humanitarian sense. "Dreamer" is a book for anyone who would take their dreams for a better humanity and try to make them reality.

Charles Johnson has written such a strong tale. His "hero," Chaym Smith, is an embittered, tattered, unemployed, former mental patient and drunk. He has one gift and one curse. He's brilliant, with a "photographic memory," and he looks exactly like Martin Luther King. Having thoroughly ruined his own life, he volunteers to serve as a double for King. If he dies substituting for the man he honors, at least his life will have meant something.

King reluctantly agrees, and two young workers take Smith to the country to train him in King's body language and speech patterns. Smith is a quick learner, but a frightening debater. He insists equality is impossible. Even in the beginning, God preferred Abel to Cain (a variation of his first name) for unexplained reasons. Still, he'll risk his life for his Abel.

Quoting extensively from King's speeches and colleagues' remembrances, Johnson shows how King's thought was moving beyond the narrow goal of racial equality to the basic Christian concept of self-sacrificing love for all. King wants to lead his people further than white suburbia, to the real Promised Land. Like Christ and Gandhi, his heroes, his prophetic message will generate violence.

Especially in the passages written from King's point of view, Johnson, a National Book Award winner, shows the incredible pressures on a man whose words can provoke riots but not understanding. No matter how familiar the subject seems before you begin reading, this novel will haunt you.

Kathleen T. Choi, HAWAII CATHOLIC HERALD