How could I pass up a book about a guy who is climb­ing in a part of the Utah Desert that I’m very fond of, gets pinned by a fall­en boul­der for six days, and has to hack off his own arm with a util­ity knife to get out of it? Aron Ralston’s book about his expe­ri­ence is actu­ally very well writ­ten, and enter­tain­ing through­out. He wise­ly struc­tures it so that his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, chiefly out­door adven­tures in the moun­tains and deserts of the U.S., alter­nates with the details of his most dra­matic expe­ri­ence. It took place in the Canyon­lands area made famous in Edward Abbey’s Desert Soli­taire. Those of us who are emo­tion­ally attached to the red rock deserts of the Four Cor­ners region are gen­er­ally will­ing to under­go some hard­ships to enjoy its beau­ty — but not quite as much as Aron did.

I have some prob­lems with this book (most­ly impa­tience with any­thing any­one says that has the term “post-” in it; that always puts my teeth to grind­ing). But most of it is rea­son­able and use­ful. Of spe­cial inter­est to me:

The basic dis­tinc­tions that traders [North West Com­pany and Hudson’s Bay Com­pany traders liv­ing among the Colum­bia Plateau Indi­ans– P.P] drew between “fish­ing” and “hunt­ing” peo­ples illus­trates well the pow­er of con­tem­po­rary dis­course con­cern­ing the influ­ence of envi­ron­ment on soci­ety. As is made clear in the chap­ters that fol­low, the iden­ti­ties these labels describe are in large part inven­tions of the traders. All Plateau peo­ples includ­ed a range of sub­sis­tence strate­gies — fish­ing, gath­er­ing, and hunt­ing — in their sea­sonal round… The empha­sis itself was sea­son­ally and his­tor­i­cally vari­able, how­ever, and com­mu­ni­ties described as “hunters” at oth­er times gath­ered and fished.… … As for the influ­ence of envi­ron­ment on “hunters’ and “fish­erme,” the groups that occu­pied the banks of the Colum­bia Riv­er were cast as hope­lessly indo­lent, sup­pos­edly because the riv­er “afford(s) an abun­dant pro­vi­sion at lit­tle trou­ble for a great part of the year.” Those who lived in areas that were rich­er in ani­mal life, and par­tic­u­larly those who hunt­ed on the buf­falo plains, were judged far more indus­tri­ous. Clear­ly, the traders’ mate­r­ial inter­ests fig­ure promi­nently in the imagery that casts fish­ing peo­ples as lazy and hunters as hard-working.

My impres­sion is that many his­to­ri­ans, archae­ol­o­gists, and even anthro­pol­o­gists have hard­ly pro­gressed at all from the world-view of these Com­pany fac­tors.

My whin­ing about the lack of seri­ous atten­tion to fish­ing in archae­ol­ogy and the­o­ret­i­cal pre­his­tory may be out­dated. This report on a recent dig in the Out­er Hebrides describes every­thing I’ve want­ed to see done for the last fif­teen years. A few dozen projects like this will sup­ply us with the data to trans­form our under­stand­ing of pre­his­toric economies.

This is a mas­ter­piece of Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture that will present dif­fi­cul­ties for a Cana­dian read­er. This was Flan­nery O’Connor’s first nov­el, writ­ten in 1949. O’Connor (1925–1964) was a native of cen­tral Geor­gia, and the old seg­re­gated Amer­i­can South that she writes about more than con­firms the adage that “the past is a for­eign coun­try.” The world of Wise Blood is clos­er to anoth­er plan­et than a mere for­eign coun­try. Wide­ly regard­ed as the heir to William Faulkn­er, lit­er­ary con­ven­tion has placed O’Connor in the annoy­ingly patron­iz­ing aca­d­e­mic com­part­ments of “South­ern Goth­ic” and “Region­al Fic­tion”. (If you write in New York, of course, that isn’t “region­al”). Much is made of the “grotesque” ele­ments in her fic­tion. But she was not much pleased with that kind of peg-board­ing. “Any­thing that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the north­ern read­er, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called real­is­tic,” she once remarked.

O’Connor was a Catholic, some­thing which is pret­ty nor­mal here in Cana­da, where it doesn’t involve much in the way of meta­phys­i­cal or psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­ity. But in Geor­gia, it makes one an out­sider, and philoso­pher. O’Connor was fas­ci­nated by faith, apos­tasy, sin and redemp­tion, and in the reli­giously super­charged world of the South, and espe­cially the region where the Moun­tain cul­ture inter­acts with the Deep South, there was plen­ty of mate­r­ial to chew on. Wise Blood tells the tale of Hazel Mote, trau­ma­tized son of a preach­er who hates reli­gious faith, but finds him­self involved in every kind of reli­gious expe­ri­ence. He is a vir­tual cat­a­log of here­sies and bizarre reli­gious prac­tices, while he tries to avoid belief. He is sur­rounded by an assort­ment of odd char­ac­ters, each one dri­ven by some equal­ly pecu­liar belief. One char­ac­ter ends up wor­ship­ing a mum­my in a muse­um. It all does seem grotesque, a kind of sur­re­al­is­tic fan­tasy. But the irony is that noth­ing hap­pens in the book, and no char­ac­ter is rep­re­sented, that has not exist­ed in real life.

That is the real pow­er of the book. Every­thing in it is relent­lessly faith­ful to real­ity. It’s writ­ten with incred­i­ble con­trol, pre­ci­sion and econ­omy (it is real­ly a novel­la, rather than a nov­el). Not a word is wast­ed, not a word is wrong, not a word is out of place. Dialect and idi­olect are ren­dered with absolute per­fec­tion. Some­times a sin­gle, short sen­tence will cre­ate a crys­tal clear visu­al image in the reader’s head. The prose sings,

I could not come from a more dif­fer­ent cul­tural back­ground, and my inter­ests and pre­oc­cu­pa­tions could not be more dif­fer­ent than O’Connor’s, but this book still held me in com­plete absorp­tion. What must it do for some­one for whom it’s clos­er to the bone? I would love to sit down and talk over this book with my old friend William Brei­d­ing, who must sure­ly have read it. William? Send me your thoughts on this one.

Cur­rent inter­ests led me a sec­ond read­ing of this excel­lent his­tory (it’s approach is his­tor­i­cal, not eth­no­log­i­cal) of the Man­dans, Hidat­sa and Arikaras of North and South Dakota.

Schol­ars try­ing to recon­struct the Neolith­ic soci­eties of Europe, espe­cially regard­ing trade, ear­ly agri­cul­tural set­tle­ment, and the move­ment of peo­ple, would prof­it by study­ing the val­ley of the Mis­souri Riv­er. Here we have a mix­ture of first-per­son eye-wit­ness sources and archae­o­log­i­cal data that shows us much about the inter­ac­tion of nomadic and agri­cul­tural peo­ples, which Old-World his­to­ri­ans could learn a lot from, if they both­ered to look. The rel­e­vance to under­stand­ing the Euro­pean Neolith­ic seems to me obvi­ous, but the par­al­lels and exam­ples have not been explored or exploit­ed. Exact­ly why this is, so, I’m not sure. But of par­tic­u­lar rel­e­vance is the detailed knowl­edge we have of Man­dan and Hidat­sa trade: the prod­ucts involved, how they moved, how far, how many peo­ple where involved, and with what eco­nomic con­cepts and process­es. They do not at all resem­ble the pic­ture con­jured up by his­to­ri­ans in the Old World of How Things Must Have Been Done. One can­not prove, of course, that the Euro­pean Neolith­ic farm­ers, hunter-gath­er­ers, and nomads had the same kind of econ­omy as exist­ed in the cen­ter of North Amer­ica in a lat­er peri­od, but the data cer­tainly is rel­e­vant to guess­ing what was like­ly or prob­a­ble. Read more »

In the ear­ly 1940’s, Robert Hein­lein wrote two charm­ing nov­el­ettes, which have most of the ele­ments of his mature style, but with a lighter, more imp­ish tone. The two nov­el­ettes have been in print togeth­er under the title Wal­do & Mag­ic, Inc. for the last 58 years.

Wal­do (pub­lished in Astound­ing in 1942) is set in a future (appar­ently around our present, now) where Niko­la Tesla’s radi­ant pow­er forms the back­bone of the tech­no­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture. The prob­lem is, the tech­nol­ogy is mys­te­ri­ously fail­ing, and there is the pos­si­bil­ity radi­ant pow­er is cre­at­ing an eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter. It may be sap­ping everyone’s vital­ity, turn­ing human­ity into help­less couch pota­toes. Nobody is bet­ter qual­i­fied to solve this prob­lem than Wal­do, the obnox­iously brat­ty super-genius who lives in orbit above the earth, and is afflict­ed with myas­the­nia gravis, a degen­er­a­tive mus­cu­lar dis­ease that makes him help­less. To com­pen­sate, he has invent­ed var­i­ous forms of remote con­trol devices, known as wal­dos, which Hein­lein describes in detail. But he needs the help of a Penn­syl­va­nia hex doc­tor to solve the prob­lem. Hein­lein con­ceived of the remote con­trol devices long before they were actu­ally built, and it is said that the sto­ry led direct­ly to their inven­tion. Read more »

This is an inter­est­ing, well-writ­ten nov­el by an accom­plished New­found­land writer. It com­bines three sto­ries. One is set in dur­ing World War II, and focus­es on a desert­er from the navy, who is on the run in back­woods New­found­land. Anoth­er sto­ry cen­ters on, Nan­cy Shanawhdit, the last known native Beothuk, who died of tuber­cu­lo­sis in 1829. The third focus­es on a foren­sic pathol­o­gist at Cam­bridge, U.K., whose life is strange­ly altered by the first two sto­ries, and by her expe­ri­ences dur­ing the geno­cide in Rwan­da. It’s an odd com­bi­na­tion, but Ber­nice Mor­gan makes them work togeth­er with a decep­tive ease.

One detail that struck me. The sailors and sol­diers in wartime New­found­land includ­ed New­found­lan­ders, Cana­di­ans, and Amer­i­cans. New­found­land had not joined Cana­da, and for most of the his­tory that pre­ceded that union (in 1948), lit­tle love was lost between the two coun­tries. In Cloud of Bone, the New­found­lan­ders have reg­u­lar, and rel­a­tively good-natured fist­fights and brawls with the Amer­i­cans, usu­ally over access to dance-hall girls, but the fights with Cana­di­ans are far more vio­lent, and far from good-natured. It reminds me of the old New­found­land folk songs, “Come Near At Your Per­il, Cana­dian Wolf”, and “Thank God We’re Sur­rounded By Water”.