As I start this final entry, I must reflect on the fact that some of these connections are entirely personal and rooted in my own experience/privilege/etc. Then more of it will come from Jane Flick, and the rest from a kind of communal shared knowledge – that of the Western Canadian community I’m from.  

“There were color bars on channels two, four, and eleven, static on channel twenty-eight, and a Western on twenty-six” (GGRW 180).

The first things Charlie comes across on the TV are the colour bars. For those who didn’t have this experience, colour bars were hard not to come across. Many television stations did not have late night programming and would display colour bars (and a tone) late at night. There, in the world of the book, King exposes Charlie to colour – separated, delineated, before he taking him into the world of the Western. King gives us first the test pattern, where the colours all co-exist on the same screen, but divided (if formatted correctly – none of the colours should bleed into each other).  Then static. A moment of change: a white noise, a blur of sound created. Finally, the Western. There was a chance (and perhaps King is allowing us this knowledge) that in the static the colours could have been blended together. If we look at the colours in the (what feels to me a very 90s sensibility) where they each reflect a different race, then in the black and white static there are two options: one, the lack of colour can subsequently only separate the colours further; two, that the static allows the colours to melt into one another and no longer have clear delineations. Through the Western though, we realize that the former has happened; the Indians will fight they cowboys and they will lose, because if they won “it probably wouldn’t be a Western” (GGRW 193). The Indians will always be separate in the sharply defined world of the cowboys.

Another allusion King makes, is the separation between Charlie’s past and future – simply in the naming of his companions. Portland (his father) is his past, wrapped up in the image of the Hollywood Indian; Alberta is his present (and potentially his future – certainly where he wants his future to go). One named after an American city, the other for a Canadian provence. Both given a separate location geographically, and growing in size. Portland (locationally) is smaller where Alberta is large and expansive. These two people both lay a certain amount of claim to Charlie during different periods of his life, and spatially they reflect it.

On the drive down to Hollywood – Portland amuses Charlie with stories of the people he left behind. Many of these names need to be spoken aloud to hear the phonological link that King is drawing attention to. It wasn’t until going back through Jane Flick’s work that I gained the allusions that King was trying to make. Sally Jo Weyha (GGRW 182) does sound like Sacajawea when said aloud, indeed most of these names (as pointed out by Flick) reflect early discoverers or explorers, most of which were connected to early colonization in the Americas (Flick 157).

When Charlie and Portland arrive in Hollywood, things are not the same as when Portland as successful there before. He is told as much by C.B. Cologne; the C.B. standing for Crystal Ball (GGRW 181). Certainly something that a mystical, fortune-telling named person tells Portland about all of his old pals that have died suggests a more literal interpretation of C.B.’s name. He is not just named after his mom’s favourite perfume (GGRW 181), but literally for a connection to the other side, a knowledge of death.

The final connection that I will talk about is about the cars. Charlie is driving his underdog Pinto to go and see Alberta. For those of you that don’t know this – a pinto (in addition to a compact Ford) is also a breed of horse. A rather beautiful one as well.

They are also quite a typically Western looking horse, on the cover (I’m sure) of at least a couple Louis L’amour novels. Pinto’s are distinguished by the blending of colour of their horsehide, they need a certain amount of colour differentiation to distinguish them from a solid coloured horse (that may have sections of another colour – usually along their forehead). King ties the car to something perhaps Charlie is dealing with himself, the blending of a certain amount of white culture vs. that of his ancestry. The co-existence of both colours, both backgrounds, on one man.

Works Cited

“Biography” The Official Louis L’Amour Website. Internet Trading Post LLC, n.d. Web. 10 Aug. 2015. <URL>

Elybaster. “KING TV5 Seattle – Test Pattern 1980s” YouTube. YouTube. 04 March 2011. Web. 9 Aug 2015. <URL>

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999): 140-172. Web. 9 Aug 2015.

Ink it up Trad Tattoos Blog. “Post 108995610661.” tattoome.tumblr.com.  Tumblr. Web. Accessed 9 Aug 2105. <URL>

ItsWolfeh. Elsa, Pinto Horse. 2012. Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia. Web. 9 Aug 2015. <URL>

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins P, 1993. Print.

3] What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story or stories you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories ?

When approaching any creation story, I must take a minute (of course immediately after writing those words I then stand up – pour a cup of coffee, switch seats and settle in – a literal and figurative minute), because creation stories to me (even our own scientific story of creation, the Big Bang), always feel a little dissociative. They always seem to be out of my language: they are expressing ideas that I can barely grasp. It seems, at times, I can barely hold onto the size of the world, for a new discovery can make a city that feels so small seem, once again, endless. In elementary & high school, they showed us a video from 1968 to try to put the size of life on this earth into perspective, I’m sure others of you have watched it: The Cosmic Zoom. (The National Film Board of Canada produced that 8 minute bad boy). So, I would say that I have an understanding of that concept. Of the largeness of this specific galaxy. However, to then take that concept and apply it to how the UNIVERSE began – that is just so beyond my understanding. Like I can look at renderings of the big bang and say “ah, yes, I understand” but it has this largess behind the idea. So much so that thinking of the big bang (hell – even thinking about dinosaurs) feels like thinking about the surface of the moon being like cheese.

All of that is to just put into perspective how other worldly and bizarre all creation stories/myths/etc seem (to me). Fundamentally, I can believe them but not without this separation between my existence and these ideas. Simplified: all stories of creation feel like myths to me, even if I know that they are “fact.”

Tom King really plays with these ideas of creation in Green Grass, Running Water. They exist in two planes, one foot at the start of life on earth, reflecting all creation, and another foot in the recent past, showing the shadows of all of the issues that effect us still. He weaves pop culture representations of Indigenous people throughout these stories. Importantly, King does not name the Indian women after the Native sidekicks – instead, he gives them the names of the leading men (and they are usually men). They are given positions of “white” authority; however, in all of their tales, their renaming of themselves does not affect the militaristic reaction that they are received with.

Call me Ishmael, says Changing Woman.
Ishmael! says a short soldier with a greasy mustache. This isn’t an Ishmael. This is an Indian.
Call me Ishmael, says Changing Woman again.
All right, says the short soldier. We know just what to do with unruly Indians here in Florida. And the soldiers drag Changing Woman down a dirt road. (GGRW 225)

The authority of the names of these white, leading men still does not give them the authority to walk their own path. The idea of being both Indian and Ishmael is impossible, the two are mutually exclusive to the soldiers, to the enforcers of controlling standards.

This inclusion of contemporary pop-culture is one of the most dissociative ideas for me in relation to his creation myths. The constant root to the present is hard for me to then reimagine as a “creation” story; however, it certainly does reflect the contemporary effects that these stories and names and characters still have on us. The idea that these past-pop culture icons can still evoke righteous principles, even with their outdated morality is both frightening and important to remember.

Works Cited:

Curious Curious. “Cosmic Zoom (High Quality)” YouTube. YouTube, 02 Sept 2008. Web. 8 Aug 2015. <URL>

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins P, 1993. Print.

Wallace and Gromit. “A Grand Day Out – Landing on the Moon – Wallace and Gromit.” YouTube. YouTube, 30 Apr 2015. Web. 8 Aug 2015. <URL>

5]  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?

In Green Grass, Running Water, author Thomas King allows for the segments in the novel between the four old indian women (and coyote) to feel dialogic and have elements that seem inherent to speech and not necessarily to writing.

Where did all the water come from? says that GOD.
“I’ll bet you’d like a little dry land,” says Coyote.
What happened to my earth without form? says that GOD.
“I know I sure would,” says Coyote. (GGRW 38)

The dialogue where Coyote isn’t either apologizing or asking questions, usually promotes Coyote to be of a single track – overlapping and responding to his own speech and less reactive to that of the other characters. This is a characteristic that is often associative of speech and not of narration in a novel. In this passage, Coyote also seems to have knowledge before and beyond the characterized “GOD”, perhaps associating this God characterization to knowledge that isn’t connected to the stories being told by the old Indian women. This puts Coyote into a position of knowledge beyond that of western omnipotence. It is no surprise that shortly after in the story god has a new adjective, “that backwards GOD” (GGRW 39). God’s intentions or stories are directly in contrast with those of the four women.

Certainly, for me coming into contact with this story after reading Harry Robinson’s, Living By Stories, the character of Coyote had more authority than usually associated to a trickster character. One of my first interactions with the trickster was through the stories of Anansi the Spider. Often Anansi would fall into trouble and have to be saved by one of his sons (all that had a specific talent to help their father with. In these tales, although intelligent, the trickster often was in need of rescuing or alternatively, got others into terrible trouble while dodging their own confinement through intellect.

The Coyote depicted by both Robinson and King seems to represent something greater, for King certainly, Coyote needs to be guided much more than necessary. Through this King reasserts the interruptive dialogic feel into his narrative. Although Robinson does not have this same style of interruptive text, the pacing is similar in his text as it is in the segments of King’s book dedicated to the old Indian women. King often uses dialogic interjections like “oh, oh” (GGRW 39) or the narrative “you know” (GGRW 38) or “you get the idea” (GGRW 269) at the end of sentences. These kind of dialogic elements to the writing really help it become something that feels spoken as opposed to simply words on the page. The words spoken by Coyote and the old women are vocalized in my brain, where the more through-line story exists outside of me, on the page.

Robinson reflects similar vocalized patterns in Living by Stories, the slang like, “and was just forced, like.” (LBS 75); this in addition to replicating an oral grammar gives the whole story the sound of someone’s speech as opposed to a cut and dry narrator. Robinson also retains the “you know” (LBS 77) intermediary interjection and a very verbal pattern of “so, because”  (LBS 76) to start a sentence. All of these speech replications tie the language of Harry Robinson to a similar speech used by King’s old women. Although Coyote and God are very differently reflected, they really have a similar feeling because of the language used to describe them.

Works Cited

“Anansi the Spider (1972).” Picture Books Review. Blogger, 16 Jan. 2013. Web. 1 Aug. 2015. <URL>.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins P, 1993. Print.

Robinson, Harry. Living By Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.