Have you read Green Grass, Running Water? Would you like to?

[radiantfracture]

I'm discussing Thomas King's novel Green Grass, Running Water with a colleague for her course video on Monday.

Somehow I have forgotten to read this novel until now (I thought I had, but I hadn't -- it was Truth and Bright Water).

If you were studying this book, and you watched a discussion about it, what would you want to hear talked about? What questions would you have? What would be most interesting / fun for you to hear / think about?

As always, I admire King's meticulous construction, his humour, and the way he treats all stories as equal.



I'm struck particularly by the way the four ancients take on forms that are settler self-insertions into Indigenous roles / relations with the land, displacing Indigenous characters to sidekicks (Lone Ranger (W/Tonto), Ishmael (W/Queequeg), Robinson Crusoe (w/Friday), and Hawkeye (uh).

I don't know much about Hawkeye because I've never read The Last of the Mohicans.


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Comments

[sovay]

I'm struck particularly by the way the four ancients take on forms that are settler self-insertions into Indigenous roles / relations with the land, displacing Indigenous characters to sidekicks (Lone Ranger (W/Tonto), Ishmael (W/Queequeg), Robinson Crusoe (w/Friday), and Hawkeye (uh).

I have never read the book, but this part sounds fascinating to me.

I have never read The Last of the Mohicans, either, but having read about it suggests the parallel character is Chingachgook, the recurring companion of Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye) and eponymous last of his kind, which like so much fictional characterization of Indigenous peoples works only on the page, on account of the Mohicans still being rather definitely around, albeit not where the eighteenth century would have found them.

[radiantfracture]

this part sounds fascinating to me.

I think he is saying something about shared stories and how to work with them? I'm not sure.

the parallel character is Chingachgook, the recurring companion of Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye) and eponymous last of his kind, which like so much fictional characterization of Indigenous peoples works only on the page, on account of the Mohicans still being rather definitely around, albeit not where the eighteenth century would have found them.

May I just quote this directly? I could not put it more elegantly.

[sovay]

I think he is saying something about shared stories and how to work with them? I'm not sure.

In complete ignorance of the rest of the book, it makes me think of the part of Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn where the unicorn in the Midnight Carnival can be recognized in her true aspect—a real unicorn, not a white horse or a strange deer—only when enchanted to appear as the popular false version of it. Which may just be a roundabout way of confirming your statement about settler self-insertions of Indigenous belonging.

May I just quote this directly? I could not put it more elegantly.

Absolutely!

[radiantfracture]

Which may just be a roundabout way of confirming your statement about settler self-insertions of Indigenous belonging.

I think you're taking the argument usefully farther -- naming the substition as, in some way, a restoration of the original story.

[radiantfracture]

Here's what we came up with, if you're interested in gossip about books you haven't read (I know I am):

Themes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDju1vGAAU4
Creation Stories https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eRfTSzTvUw

NB I don't think the comment about Hawkeye made it in this time -- as the actual instructor, Janet directed the conversation.

[sovay]

NB I don't think the comment about Hawkeye made it in this time -- as the actual instructor, Janet directed the conversation.

No worries! The quotation does not have a time limit.