Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to both King’s article and Robinson’s story.
What I noticed when telling my own story to family and friends a few weeks back, and what I had seen from others’ posts as well, was that writing a story has a very different feeling from telling the story. For myself, my written voice is a lot more elaborate, uses a lot more words, and — having had practice — captures my ideas a lot better. But my oral voice is more direct, and uses more accessible, common words. Our understanding of what words feel good to use, the phrasing, the size and variation of the sentences changes dramatically between putting our stories down on paper, and saying them out loud. The words that we choose for written text may look the way that we want our ideas to be seen, but rarely do they appear as they sound.
If I were to read my ideas out loud the way the would appear on the screen, it might be hard for the average listener to follow, as it just isn’t the way that people tend to talk to each other, even if it is the way that we might read. I would normally assume, too, that this would be the same if I were to switch roles, and transcribe the spoken word into the written. However, in Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England, Harry Robinson demonstrates great skill at doing just that while maintaining the connection between storyteller and (for lack of a better word) listener.
Looking at the text of this book, the first impression that I am given is that it looks like poetry. It is not written in the format that I would normally recognize as a story in the European tradition. It has lots of single lines, one after another. Some larger than others, some just a couple of words. There are many breaks in the writing, where there is an empty line between spaces. If it weren’t for the accurate use of capitals in this book, it would look like a collection of E.E. Cummings’ work.
However, despite appearances, this story is not written like poetry in the traditional sense, either. Reading the story feels like a conversation. Like someone sitting down at the table across from you, and telling you how they see things. It feels honest, and careful. And familiar. This closeness seems to lure you in to the mind of the storyteller as Robinson recounts his tale.
Thomas King describes this as Robinson “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance,” by developing an oral syntax that prevents the reader from just reading in their head. (186) King elaborates that the voice of the storyteller, the gestures, and the interaction are all lost when trying to transcribe a story for use in text. But by laying out his stories in the form of fragmented ideas, told slowly through repetitive, winding journeys, it is somewhere between inconvenient and impossible to skim the text, as so much information about what is going on will be lost. By forcing the reader to read each word like this, Robinson has created a means of guiding the reader to imagine the story the way it is meant to be told — out loud. Included in this is the imaginings of gestures, raising voice, and beyond anything else, a storyteller.
On reading the text, ‘pace’ was one of the first qualities that I noticed. The pace is very controlled and simultaneously rhythmic and arhythmic. I am a very slow reader, and normally tend to read at a speaking pace, finding it very difficult to skim. So reading rate felt unaffected. But despite this, I actually found it quite difficult to put the text down, or take a break from it. This was not just because it was captivating, but almost as if I didn’t want to interrupt the flow, or the conversation.
Each line tells us an idea that we are supposed to hang onto before moving on to the next. But some of these ideas are more important than others. Robinson emphasizes these ideas by telling and retelling them. Sometimes the same way, other times in different ways. When describing Coyote and the Indians waiting for the kings of England to give indigenous people rights to land on a reserve. He lists each King out, one, two, three, four, and eventually comes to a new leader who instead is going to be a Queen. This is how he describes the change to queen Elizabeth II:
(76)
Instead of passing on with new information, King hangs on to the idea of the new crown being a woman. Notice how he cycles through the same ideas throughout this passage: a king, a queen, they don’t have a boy, they have a daughter. Using repetitive connections and sentence starters — maybe, when, they — gives us a sense of a syncopated rhythm as this idea is hashed and rehashed again and again.
Partly, Robinson does this to be absolutely sure that the ‘listener’ understands what he means. Partly, Robinson does this because it is an important piece of history that he remembers being monumental at the time. Having been in his 50s at the time of her coronation, this was likely something that has stuck with him in the 30 years before writing this down. But he also does this because he is a great and practiced storyteller. We know that if something hasn’t happened until Queen Elizabeth II, then the story must continue when she is introduced, and hanging onto that idea lets the listener (or reader, in this case) feel hooked on his telling.
This manner of emphasizing and reclarifying information as the story is being told is a hallmark of the oral tradition, and one that is historically not welcome in the European tradition of the written word. What often seems to be expected from written work is that if it is worth saying, it is worth saying right the first time.
As I read it aloud to my partner, I felt a bit embarrassed at first, as the story was not told through a voice that you could mistake as my own. But I got into the flow of it, and felt quite active in the role of storyteller. My partner was a bit confused with the story as the listener, not prepared, I think, for the jumbling of ideas, but by the time she started to read to me, it was clear that she found the role fun to put on as well.
King is right, I think, to say that Robinson has done something incredible in the way that he has transcribed his stories. Where we might have missed this complex and captivating story if written in plain text, edited down to suit the traditional, European style, instead Robinson has led us into the role of storyteller and given us a chance to slow down and think about what makes a story important, and more significantly, what makes it sound important.
King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190.
Roberts, Linzie. “E.E. Cummings: The Power of Structure and Form.” Owlcation, https://owlcation.com/humanities/EE-Cummings-The-Power-of-Structure-and-Form. Accessed 5 March 2021.
Robinson, Harry. “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England.” Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 64-85.
Scott, Tom. “The Hidden Rules of Conversation.” YouTube, uploaded by Tom Scott, 4 May 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJEaMtNN_dM.
5 replies on “Blog 2:6 :: Harry Robinson: Our Storytelling Guide”
Interesting blog, Zac, and I think you’re correct about the overall effect of the oral-written transcription of Robinson’s tales, but I also believe that the words have a subtly different effect whenever I bear in mind that Wickwire did the last transcription. Those may be Robinson’s words, some of them, and some from long-dead elders, but it’s definitely Wickwire’s arrangement and, since the poetic function “projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination,” we can be sure that hearing a recording of Robinson’s voice wouldn’t be much the same as reading Wickwire’s textual transcription. Like, for starters, where did all the “aughs and ummmms” go? Wickwire certainly cleaned it up a lot (Robinson 7-30). Also, Blanca Schorcht… (146)
…quotes Robin Ridington, saying that “Robinson’s storytelling is particularly ‘remarkable because he told the stories in English, using the Okanagan narrative style with which he was familiar.’” So, multiple transcriptions happening here: Robinson’s Okanagan oral to English oral and then Wickwire’s English oral to written English. We would have to suspend disbelief to think there were no contrivances along the way. Still, it’s a gift to the Euro layman, because it’s infinitely better than nothing. Cheers!
Hi Joseph,
Thank you for this comment. I had considered going into this as I wrote my post, but was afraid that it would end up taking too much time and space.
Yes, I think that you are correct in saying that we must situate these stories in the context of the many contributors who all brought his words into fruition. After all, as you point out, these stories were largely not originally told in English, but in Okanagan, and translated through Robinson and others to be told in English.
But I also feel that it is important to note that in the 70s and 80s, Robinson put forth a lot of effort to make sure that his stories would live on after he was gone. (29-30) Through translating his stories into English, and recording the audio of his English-translated stories so that they could be listened to by others, Robinson contributed a lot to make sure that his craft was maintained for those in the world that would need it.
Wickwire did a fantastic job of compiling these works, and though the editors note and introduction do not state who’s decision it was to write these books in “poetic form” (21) it is clear that she felt the need to compile his stories as it was like to witness them. And ultimately that was her job: editors are not an uncommon part of publishing a book or telling a story, and the function of a good editor is to reframe the story without putting your own mark on it.
Wordsmith deleted my link! Of all the nerve!
Blanca Schorcht is at:
https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/download/1640/1685/6767
Hi Zac,
I really enjoyed your dissection of language in this post, and of what is defined as correct or normal for written language by a specific European standard. It makes me think of discussions of African American Vernacular English. As an English teacher keen on working to decolonize my curriculum, I must ask myself whose rules I am teaching. Who says punctuation had to be this way and not that way? Who says double negatives were redundant or confusing? All of these English language rules are very much a part of a Eurocentric history. I recently read a great book called Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. I was startled to find that the novel is written with no periods. There are commas to break up sentences, but no periods at the end of a sentence. Each new sentences is started on a new line. At first I thought it was strange and unique and then I quickly forgot about periods ever having existed and was fully immersed in the book. English class would tell Evaristo that her Booker Prize winning novel was incorrect. Hmm.
I was also interested in this idea of cooperation that was brought up in the video you posted. Do you think that there can be effective ‘cooperation’ of language between people used to expressing themselves orally and people used to expressing themselves in writing?
Hi Laura,
I am very preoccupied with that same question of who’s rules are being taught. I remember getting into a (very cooperative) argument with a pedagogy teacher in my Teacher Education Program about this exact problem regarding the conventions of spelling. My concern was whether focusing so hard on what the ‘correct’ spelling of something is would reinforce an inherently classist system. The only justification that I could come up with for its existence was that in school we teach to make sure that our students can be successful, but this opened up the usual problem — that we are once again making assessments based on the traditional, euro-centric-colonized expectation of what ‘success’ is. She didn’t have an answer for me either, and said as much.
My partner has also read Girl, Woman, Other; and has encouraged me to put it on my (growing) list of books to read! You’re right, English class would definitely tell them that they are incorrect, but maybe this comes back to the idea that conventions, like rules, are made to be broken. Maybe instead of just teaching to a rigid set of rules, we should be teaching to the idea that there are conventions, and you should be flexible to use the conventions that are expected of you in context? Like, make up your own rules if you like, but be consistent in how you use them, and acknowledge why they are there.
Maybe this can answer your question of whether there can be effective ‘cooperation’ of language between people used to expressing themselves orally and in writing, respectively. The best idea I have is that this cooperation would come in the form of recognizing or investigating why conventions for each of these mediums exist in their different contexts, and being flexible enough to adapt to them.
Thank you for this thoughtful comment. It really had me thinking about my own practice.