Continua
I make it no secret that my book is powered by continua. Though as a possessor of opinions, and a left-of-leftist when politics come up, I’m invested in conclusions – when I’m working with process, I’m much more interested in questions. And continua – gradients – turn questions into literary mechanics.
Stylized Speak
After three weeks of Bill Compton stammer-blathering about ladylike propriety, I’m somehow still interested in stylized speech. Rather, how problematic it is in the history books. This isn’t exactly a complaint – more a lament. And one without a tidy answer.
The Purpose of Stories, 3
Let’s take this discussion back to the book. I’ve thought a lot about portability lately, and even about ownership of words. Maybe the only way the story I’m writing will survive its bookness is for me to release it entirely. My version of the story is just one. Yours will be next.
The Purpose of Stories, 2
I’ve had an amalgam of texts at a rolling boil in the back of my head lately. They all deal with a special cultural distinction between between Taker (colonial) and Leaver (indigenous) cultures: the strange insistance on history over stories.
The Search for Maugus
I grew up on Maugus Avenue. When people (from a few blocks, towns, or states over) visited, they asked my parents the same question: “What’s a Maugus?” I’ve spent most of my life wondering, “Who was Maugus?” The time’s almost here I get to start really tearing into that question.
More on Ishmael
As the book relaxes on its haunches a little, several things are still bending my head back: Quinn’s a product of colonial culture, discussing conquered cultures. His take on Genesis and the Garden is healing my childhood. And his narrative powers are probably the most important craft I could study right now.
Mother Culture Croons All Night
This weekend I began recovery from reading Ishmael. It’s hard not to wonder how we’re supposed to move forward from this damn book. Quinn himself, in an author’s note at the back, refers to it as much more than a book.
Buoyed
Tuesday afternoon I went over to Pat’s place and dug through boxes-and-boxes-and-boxes of books with her husband, John. To give a sense of the rarity and quality there, a good deal of her collection will be donated to UNM’s library archives, and probably another university’s.
What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate
Toward the end of Pat’s book, Weetamoo has some hard concerns about writing, itself. Young Metacom has learned to write the figure A. He pronounces it for her, and explains the white men’s utility in writing – and the Indian need, therefore, to be conversant in it. I had to stop reading a while after I saw her response: …What if, whenever we wanted a story, we could just reach out and read it from a paper, instead of waiting for the right time and place and the right storyteller to tell it to us? As it is with us now, when we learn a story, we must hear it again and and again, and repeat it to…
Next Levels of Dramatic Irony
Your experience as a standard reader: Toward the end of Pat’s rendition of Weetamoo’s diary, the sachem-to-be is finally called for her adulthood rite. The year is 1654. She’s been anticipating it most of the book; she’ll spend several days and nights in a sweatlodge, tending a fire and waiting for contact from the nonmaterial world. In her two visions, a deer she’d unceremoniously killed leads her through the winter night to an important fishing area to the Pocasset, downstream from a waterfall. The second night, the deer leads her to an important fishing area, downstream from a waterfall, where she encounters older versions of herself with Metacom, her sister, and child. Metacom is painting bloodroot on their…
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