In her article, “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel,” Blanca Chester observes that “the conversation that King sets up between oral creation story, biblical story, literary story, and historical story resembles the dialogues that Robinson sets up in his storytelling performances (47). She writes:

Robinson’s literary influence on King was, as King himself says, “inspirational.” When one reads King’s earlier novel, Medicine River, and compares it with Green Grass, Running Water,Robinson’s impact is obvious. Changes in the style of the dialogue, including the way King’s narrator seems to address readers and characters directly (using the first person), in the way traditional characters and stories from Native cultures (particularly Coyote) are adapted, and especially in the way that each of the distinct narrative strands in the novel contains and interconnects with every other, reflect Robinson’s storied impact. (46)

For this blog assignment I would like you to make some comparisons between Harry Robson’s writing style in “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” and King’s style in Green Grass, Running Water. What similarities can you find between the two story-telling voices? Coyote and God are present in both texts, how do they compare in character and voice across the stories?

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God and Coyote; Coyote and God

If we combine Robinson and King’s stories of Coyote and God, you get a lovely picture of their relationship. As I see it, they’re almost like siblings. If we take King’s story and treat it as the beginning, the spunky “oral” creation story, told in between the contrasting third person narratives, sets the tone for the relationship between God and Coyote.

While God is helpful, though too proud to see Coyote in person, in Robinson’s story, God is a young and silly thing who grows out of coyote and grows up to spite Coyote. So it seems with God’s Christian followers. God himself disappears from the story quickly (after he jumps into the garden to run after his stuff), but there is a constant reminder of his presence, and Changing Woman is harassed by God’s men over and over. God’s men, like the depicted God himself, are all seen to be powerful, yet idiotic. From Noah’s Thou Shalt Have Breasts attitude to Ahab’s Moby-Jane episode, the Christian world seem full of jerks who are convinced they are right, and will bully anyone who breaks their rules (except themselves of course). Robinson’s king is no different in the way he lies.

Coyote, on the other hand, is a listener in both stories. He comes off as a little silly sometimes, since he asks a lot of questions in King’s stories. However, he is an integral part of the narrative of the creation story. He steps in for the listener and keeps the story interesting, interactive, and oral. Coyote in Robinson’s story is a bit different. We see him in third person, and he is the unquestionable listener: the one who never asks questions and takes things at face value.

This difference is actually remarkable. Keep in mind that in King’s story, Coyote is in a safe space. That is, a space without non-Indians, a space left behind by God. This is a space where stories can really thrive. You may say, “Hey. We don’t know that the storyteller is non-Indian,” and to which I reply, “With King’s command of the English language, the storyteller’s odd manner of speaking is no coincidence.” Now, Robinson on the other hand, Coyote is not there for the purpose of weaving a story. He has a mission and it involves non-Indians. There is no openness and it’s all formality.

Other Observations

• The rustic, old-timey settings contrasting sharply with random objects in anachronism: the camera in Robinson, and pizza and hot dogs in the Garden of Eden in King. I feel like these are things that storytellers are familiar with, and know that listeners are familiar with, so they put them in stories full of unfamiliar things. Make it more relatable? Humourous? Engaging?
• Henry’s style of speaking shows an imperfect understanding of English, but as I mentioned before King mimics this style in order to give it that feel of orality. All the imperfections of speech, like repetition, misuse of tenses, etc, are common.
• Lack of quotation marks perhaps point to a more casual and quick way of speech, mindless of specific who-said-its.

Bibliography

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Perennial Canada, 1993. Print

Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire.Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talon, 2005. Print.

 

In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). 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 the story.

Silent Reading

When I read this to myself, the unconventional poetic style of prose really threw me for a loop. I found myself having to flip back and fourth just to see where Coyote is. There were too many moments of: “Where did those Indians come from? Who’s talking now? Where are we now?” and other questions of that ilk. Fortunately the printed form made it easy to figure things out if I missed it. After two or three reads, everything became crystal clear.

Gathering a Friend for Story Time

Correction: the story became clear…until I had to read it out loud. I had a friend pop on Skype for me to listen to my reading. This is what happened:

1. The way I emphasized some words really surprised me. There were a few moments where I felt like the way I read it didn’t correspond with the way I felt about the sentences, and definitely did not read in my head the first time. Other times, I breezed through parts that probably have more importance than I made it seem.

Here are a few examples. The blue font signify parts where I speed up and italics show the parts that I emphasized. I have also added punctuation to express the way I read it as best as I can.

“Well[?], what did my children do for your children? What did they do? Try to kill’em or what did they do?

Well[!], the Coyote said, ‘They just don’t care for them[!]. They just go and claim the land and they just do as they like.” (Robinson 70)

I wonder if I was doing these things subconsciously because I want to please my friend and try to make it interesting and fun to her. The things we do to try and please others, even when you know they wouldn’t care.

2. I had to omit a few parts of the narrative because I could tell my friend was getting really lost. In particular, the boat scene went around and around for a few pages and neither of us knew where this was going. Well, I knew but all I could think was, “This is never going to end. She’s zoning out.” So I skipped it. After the special boat scene on page 65, I went right to the angel scene on page 66. I skipped the angel’s instructions because I saw boats again, summarized that bit, and went right to the part when Coyote lands on page 68. I did this a few times, because summarizing was just easier. When England was choosing a new monarch, I read the scene then summarized it. My friend’s reaction: “Oh!! Okay I totally missed that.”

3. Pretty much every other word had to be changed because his accent did not mesh with mine. I went back a few times to correct myself in order to read what is written exactly as it is on the page, but I gave up. It didn’t feel natural at all and was extremely distracting.

Little Sister Reads Me a Story

So, as with point number three, when I had my sister read this story to me, she had a very hard time. There were a lot of, “What?”, “Er…”, and generally confused moments. A few minutes in she decided to adopt a stereotypical “down south” accent and found it much easier. Cowboys and Indians?! I told her to stop after a while. The writing was so distracting for her that I’m not sure she knew how to emphasize the text at all.

Also, I had her circle everything she says that is not completely like the written form. There are 7 circles on the first two pages alone. After I told her to stop ruining my book, she continued in monotone. It was a pretty boring half an hour of my life.

General Comments

This exercise was definitely a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. Maybe half the reason is because this story was not my story. It was written right from the mouth of Henry Robinson, and it just doesn’t translate. Telling a story this way is probably how folk tales changed as well. I don’t think anyone can tell the same story twice. Just like in my last post, the “paper” we discussed makes a story seem immortal, but as soon as we tell the story verbally, it loses its permanence in performance because imagination immediately takes hold. Kinda becomes a public thing people can take and change for themselves.

It makes me wonder, though there is no real way to find out, if it’s possible to really read a story the same way as someone else.

Works Cited

“Jay O’Callahan: The Power of Storytelling.” YouTube. YouTube, 16 Nov. 2012. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.

Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire.Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talon, 2005. Print.

“What You Say Vs. What You Want To Say.” YouTube. YouTube, 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 14 Feb. 2015.

“If Europeans were not from the land of the dead, or the sky, alternative explanations which were consistent with indigenous cosmologies quickly developed” (“First Contact”43). Robinson gives us one of those alternative explanations in his stories about how Coyote’s twin brother stole the “written document” and when he denied stealing the paper, he was “banished to a distant land across a large body of water” (9). We are going to return to this story, but for now – what is your first response to this story? In context with our course theme of investigating intersections where story and literature meet, what do you make of this stolen piece of paper? This is an open-ended question and you should feel free to explore your first thoughts.

First Impressions: The Paper

When I first read the story of the paper, I was immediately taken back to the UK. More specifically, going to university in the UK made me see just how inconvenient their fervent love of paperwork is. Nothing is real unless it goes through a group of third-party white collars with a rubber stamp. Work took 3 months to be handed back, and sometimes it would be marked by some person you’ve never even met. Sometimes, you couldn’t take the courses you need because it didn’t follow the Order of the Paper, and you certainly couldn’t drop courses because it’s already in ink.

I don’t know if this was just my school, but it was just a really weird experience. The fact that all my work were marked anonymously created a barrier between teacher and student. All the extraneous parties involved created a huge, impersonal gulf.

The Paper that Coyote the Younger stole signified a contract or even law. By coveting, prizing, and moving something so permanent as a legal document, Coyote the Younger has devalued anything that is mutable. Which is to say that everything can only be Black and White. Further, things can only have one side: the side most preferable to the party that possesses the white Paper.

“Although the Boasians had recorded hundreds of Aboriginal oral narratives, they had limited themselves to a single genre: the so-called “legends,” “folk-tales,” and myths set in prehistorical times” (Wickwire 22). In a way, this claim is a bit like the children of Coyote the Younger returning the Paper. There is a feeling of good intentions, but such an ignorance of Coyote the Elder’s culture that it seems to do more harm than good.

Paper is really one of the most powerful tools in our society. It allows a permanent record of events as told often by a single writer, reaching out to a readership of numbers. The ideas that the holder of the Paper gets to spread have huge impacts, but those without the Paper are left with ever-changing ideas that gets passed along, altering a little every time, to a small audience of willing listeners.

The Coyotes

The separation of the two Coyote brothers is a really interesting concept to consider. The fact that they were twins considers the notion that they are same on the surface, but different at heart. The general attitude between the Indian and the White Man seems to be that we are all human beings, yet They are so different, They cannot possibly be from the same stock as Us.

And yet, there is a familial bond too. In family, there is always forgiveness. Despite Coyote the Younger’s selfishness, Coyote the Elder seeks to make peace between the two. The story of the Black and White reveals a time when forgiveness and harmony is a real possibility if not for the English King’s insincerity.

However, the relationship between the descendents of the two brothers are not black and white. Like Robinson says in his stories, the Black and White was not a reflection of the law. Rather, it’s more of a reflection of the difference between the natives and the settlers. A quick crash course in US History will show how complicated the relationship really is.

The bottom line is: there can be no harmony between the two Coyotes. While the two different groups began as brothers, the deception and insincerity is passed on through generations. The queen’s promise to the Coyote’s children is locked up and set aside to make it as difficult as possible to achieve equality.

Strangely enough, I don’t read bitterness in Robinson’s story. Rather, there is sadness, helplessness, and resignation when he says, “That’s the way it was nowadays” (Wickwire 85). Perhaps if the Paper was available to all, and not held above our heads, we could form a mutually beneficial relationship with each other. Perhaps if we corrected Coyote the Younger’s mistake rather than trying to cover it up, we can all exist in harmony.

Works Cited

“Ass Coverage.” Mimi and Eunice. 24 June 2011. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.

“The Natives and the English – Crash Course US History #3.” YouTube. YouTube, 14 Feb. 2013. Web. 8 Feb. 2015

Paperwork. 2011. Mimi and Eunice. By Nina Paley.

“This Land Is Mine.” Vimeo. 1 Oct. 2012. Web. 8 Feb. 2015.

Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire.Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talon, 2005. Print.

Read at least 3 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog.

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Home changes.

History is home.

Home can be found in the most mundane things.

Home doesn’t always mean citizenship.

Memories is home.

Home is not a physical boundary.

Home is a state of mind.

Homes can be built, but there is always somewhere more special than the rest.

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Based on Heather, Rajin, and Shamina‘s blogs, I came up with a list of common assumptions about the idea of home. All three of us seems to share a “home away from home” story in which home comes up as more than one place. While, yes, there might be a place more special than the rest, each place with a home label is different.

It’s less like this:

And more like this:

Each home we find in places, people, objects hold different memories. Like fruits, each one have a different purpose or usage. Apple pie might be better than strawberry pie, but strawberry-banana milkshakes might be better than an apple pie when you’re feeling thirsty. They’re all equally important, despite a preference for orange juice over apple.

Just like all your different definitions of home.