Some meta narrative concerns:

1
Some meta- narrative concerns

• Two (opposing?) conceptions of narrative time and
  storytelling Native/cyclical/recurrent and
  (vs.?) Western/linear/teleological

2
Some meta- narrative concerns

• Two (opposing?) conceptions of narrative time and
  storytelling Native/cyclical/recurrent and
  (vs.?) Western/linear/teleological
• Special emphasis on origins beginnings

3
Origins Beginnings

• The four Old Indians (who have adopted the names
  of manly-independent heroes of quasi-mythic
  Euro-American literature pop culture Lone
  Ranger, Ishmael, Hawkeye, and Robinson Crusoe)
  are continually, comically, squabbling and
  bumbling, trying to get their creation stories
  off the groundtrying to find the proper
  formulaic/ceremonial beginning, doing it over and
  over until they get it right. Throughout the
  novel, they together tell variations on the same
  story four times.

4
Origins Beginnings

• (Or rather, their attempts at telling these
  stories are related to us by a meta-narrator,
  the I of pp. 1-3 who is hanging out with Coyote
  and narrating the entire book to us, in an
  ostensible attempt to explain where all the water
  came from.)

5
Origins Beginnings

• The Judeo-Christian G O D is parodied as a
  backwards, delusional, grandiose (and tyrannical)
  dog-dream of Coyote, the creator-destroyer
  trickster common to many Native American
  traditions.
• And the Biblical creation story from the book of
  Genesis (the one authored by G O D, in which
  God speaks the world into being) is subordinated
  to Native creation stories about First/Changing/
  Thought/Old Woman falling from the sky into a
  water world.

6
Origins Beginnings

• And the Biblical creation story from the book of
  Genesis (the one authored by G O D, in which
  God speaks the world into being) is subordinated
  to Native creation stories about First/Changing/
  Thought/Old Woman falling from the sky into a
  water world.
• (But even those stories arent told in a
  traditionallet alone reverentway. Instead,
  theyre mash-ups of several different sources
  Native legends, Biblical tales, and myths of
  the American frontier.)

7
AndAction!

• Principal Characters Narrative Strands
  (Mythic Time/Meta Time)
• I and Coyote (and G O D)
• Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Hawkeye, Robinson Crusoe
  (telling stories about First/Changing/Thought/Old
  Woman)
•  

8
AndAction!

• Principal Characters Narrative Strands
  (Linear Time/ Realistic Novel Time)
• Lionel
• Dr. Hovaugh, Babo, Capt. Cereno
• Alberta
• The four Old Indians (Messrs. Red, White,
  Black, and Bluea/k/a Lone Ranger, Ishmael,
  Hawkeye, and Robinson Crusoe)
• Charlie
• Latisha
• Eli