Literary Fools Crow by James Welch - Page 4

paola · 03-08-2014, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccowie

Just for the sake of interest, Thomas King has been nominated for the Charles Taylor award for literary non-fiction for An Inconvenient Indian. He's also currently working on a novel, which should be available soon. I'd also suggest The Orenda by Joseph Boyden. All Boyden's books are great, but this one is brilliant!

I've just been on an extended shopping trip that increased my TBR to new levels, and now this

Thank you, I did not know Boyden at all, and The Orenda looks another excellent read!

Bookpossum · 03-09-2014, 08:12 AM

Thanks from me too, ccowie. The Orenda looks very good indeed.

issybird · 03-09-2014, 10:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paola

I could not reconcile myself with the degree to which most characters were wise, superhumanly patient and collected.

Yes. My least favorite part of the book was the throwaway plot involving Fools Crow's father and his son and third wife. I don't think it served a purpose other than to let us see Rides at Doors (I might be boggling his name) be unrealistically noble and tolerant. The resolution toward the end of the book I thought detracted from the bulld-up to the climax, the massacre and its aftermath.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccowie

Just for the sake of interest, Thomas King has been nominated for the Charles Taylor award for literary non-fiction for An Inconvenient Indian. He's also currently working on a novel, which should be available soon. I'd also suggest The Orenda by Joseph Boyden. All Boyden's books are great, but this one is brilliant!

Quote:

Originally Posted by paola

I've just been on an extended shopping trip that increased my TBR to new levels, and now this

Thank you, I did not know Boyden at all, and The Orenda looks another excellent read!

During the Kobauchery, I bought Boyden's Three Day Road as part of my Great War reading this year--just tossing that title out there for others with a GW reading plan!

ccowie · 03-09-2014, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by issybird

Yes. My least favorite part of the book was the throwaway plot involving Fools Crow's father and his son and third wife. I don't think it served a purpose other than to let us see Rides at Doors (I might be boggling his name) be unrealistically noble and tolerant. The resolution toward the end of the book I thought detracted from the bulld-up to the climax, the massacre and its aftermath.

During the Kobauchery, I bought Boyden's Three Day Road as part of my Great War reading this year--just tossing that title out there for others with a GW reading plan!

Post your thoughts somewhere about any Boyden books you read. I've read them all and I'd love to discuss them a little.

Hamlet53 · 03-09-2014, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by issybird

During the Kobauchery, I bought Boyden's Three Day Road as part of my Great War reading this year--just tossing that title out there for others with a GW reading plan!

Your recommendation of A Soldier on the Southern Front led me to purchase that during the 'Kobauchery'. I'm looking forward to that, as well as a reread of The Guns of August that I convinced my local book club to take on as a monthly read (not for August though). I plan to also included for my Great War reading on its centennial (or related reading) rereads of Nicholas and Alexandra, And Quiet Flows the Don, and Ten Days that Shook the World. It's been at least thirty years since I read any of these.

Not about WWI at all, but a great read about WWII and the Ukraine is Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoli Kuznetsov.

issybird · 03-09-2014, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Your recommendation of A Soldier on the Southern Front led me to purchase that during the 'Kobauchery'. I'm looking forward to that, as well as a reread of The Guns of August that I convinced my local book club to take on as a monthly read (not for August though). I plan to also included for my Great War reading on its centennial (or related reading) rereads of Nicholas and Alexandra, And Quiet Flows the Don, and Ten Days that Shook the World. It's been at least thirty years since I read any of these.

Not about WWI at all, but a great read about WWII and the Ukraine is Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoli Kuznetsov.

I'm ashamed that I've never read And Quiet Flows the Don. I looked for it during the sale, but it doesn't seem to be available in ebook. It's on my list for the summer when I have a little more free time, although perhaps not as a beach read. With luck, the ebook situation will remedy itself by then.

I've got a lot of books on my Great War list for this year, but it could easily stretch out to the Armistice centenary at my current rate.

Thanks for the Babi Yar recommendation; I didn't know it and it's obviously both important and timely. And it's the 75th anniversary of the start of WWII at that.

paola · 03-09-2014, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by issybird

During the Kobauchery, I bought Boyden's Three Day Road as part of my Great War reading this year--just tossing that title out there for others with a GW reading plan!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Your recommendation of A Soldier on the Southern Front led me to purchase that during the 'Kobauchery'. I'm looking forward to that, as well as a reread of The Guns of August that I convinced my local book club to take on as a monthly read (not for August though). I plan to also included for my Great War reading on its centennial (or related reading) rereads of Nicholas and Alexandra, And Quiet Flows the Don, and Ten Days that Shook the World. It's been at least thirty years since I read any of these.

Not about WWI at all, but a great read about WWII and the Ukraine is Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoli Kuznetsov.

can you please all stop

and I thought I had thinned my TBR down...

In retaliation, I will throw in The Sergeant in the Snow, by Mario Rigoni Stern, on the Italian campaign in Russia - alas, no ebook:
http://www.amazon.com/Sergeant-Snow-.../dp/0810160552

Bookworm_Girl · 03-09-2014, 03:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paola

can you please all stop

and I thought I had thinned my TBR down...

I've given up all hope! My only desire that it stops growing exponentially!

Thanks to everyone for all the great suggestions. I am currently 50% through The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan and trying to decide what to read next on the Great War. I'd also like to read one of the other books on BelleZora's nomination list sometime later this year. And, of course, I just had to buy more than the winner from this month's nominations!

Bookpossum · 03-09-2014, 05:43 PM

It definitely sounds as if we need at least one month's selection of books about the Great War - possibly every year up to and including 2019!

How's that for planning ahead?

BelleZora · 03-09-2014, 05:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

It definitely sounds as if we need at least one month's selection of books about the Great War - possibly every year up to and including 2019!

How's that for planning ahead?

Agreed, and the sooner the better. My TBR pile is now re-populated.

fantasyfan · 03-21-2014, 05:14 PM

Fools Crow is a remarkable novel centring on the cultural clash between the Pikuni Blackfeet Native Americans and the more powerful and advanced American settlers.

I found the detailed description of the vanished life style of the tribe very interesting. I would tend to agree with the introduction by Thomas Mcguane when he makes the point that “Tribalism is now accepted as a societal model best left to history. . . .” But he also states that “. . . it helps to see what is lost when cultures evolve and our relationships to one another are blurred.” And James Welch very movingly does let us see the losses that come with the destruction of a way of life that allows a people to live in a more profound relationship with Nature than we seem unable to emulate.

At the centre of the novel is Fools Crow. He is originally called White Man’s Dog and is thought to be unlucky. He begins by trying to attain manhood on a raiding party with Yellow Kidney—another well-drawn character. He kills a young member of the Crows to prevent the theft of horses being discovered and the incident is admired by the tribe. His father gives him a battle club owned by Fools Crow’s grandfather as a reward for his action. Yet, Fools Crow is uneasy about the incident. He gets his name later by killing the Crow chief but here too the incident leaves a certain sense of shame when he becomes drunk and magnifies the exploit.

Fools Crow has shamanistic experiences in which he communicates with the nature spirits which he perceives as a raven and a wolverine. This lead him eventually to follow the path of his spiritual father, Mik-api the healer of the tribe. Indeed, it is as a visionary that Fools Crow has his final great spiritual experience which prepares him for the revelation that the Pikuni way of life is doomed.

The terrible vision of Fools Crow is the culmination of the great central cry of the novel dramatised in a conversation between his father, Rides-at-the-door and another chief, Three Bears. Rides-at-the-door points out the terrible choice their culture faces:

“We will lose our grandchildren, Three Bears. They will be wiped out or they will turn into Napikwans. Already some of our children attend their school at the agency. Our men wear trousers and the women prefer the trade-cloth to skins. We wear their blankets, cook in their kettles, and kill the blackhorns with their bullets. Soon our young women will marry them. . . .

And the reply he gets from Three Bears offers no consolation.

“I am an old man and I see things I do not like. . . I see the signs all around me. Many of you young men go off on their own. They do not listen to their chiefs. They drink the white man’s water and kill each other. Some of the our young women already stand around the forts, waiting to fornicate with the seizers for a drink of this water. They become ugly before their time, and then they are turned out like old cows to forage for themselves. . . We live many sleeps from these places of ruin. But the day will come when our people will decide that they would rather consort with the Napikwans than live in the ways our long-ago fathers thought appropriate. But I, Three Bears, will not see this day. I will die first.”

All this is borne out by the way the Chiefs are put in a Catch 22 situation by General Sully who demands impossibilities from the tribes before giving promised food, medicine and supplies desperately needed as well as making ambiguous threats of retaliation. The result is a terrible plague of smallpox which decimates one tribe and a massacre which destroys another.

The novel does have a muted consolatory tone at the end. I‘m not sure that this is completely effective—though it does show a special kind of heroism in the tribe and in Fools Crow who will lead them into an uncertain future,

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03-09-2014, 08:12 AM	#47
Bookpossum Snoozing in the sun Posts: 10,146 Karma: 115423645 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Melbourne, Australia Device: iPad Mini, Kobo Touch	Thanks from me too, ccowie. The Orenda looks very good indeed.

03-09-2014, 05:43 PM	#54
Bookpossum Snoozing in the sun Posts: 10,146 Karma: 115423645 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Melbourne, Australia Device: iPad Mini, Kobo Touch	It definitely sounds as if we need at least one month's selection of books about the Great War - possibly every year up to and including 2019! How's that for planning ahead?

03-21-2014, 05:14 PM	#56
fantasyfan Wizard Posts: 1,376 Karma: 28116892 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Ireland Device: Kindle Oasis 3, iPad 9th gen. IPhone 11	Fools Crow is a remarkable novel centring on the cultural clash between the Pikuni Blackfeet Native Americans and the more powerful and advanced American settlers. I found the detailed description of the vanished life style of the tribe very interesting. I would tend to agree with the introduction by Thomas Mcguane when he makes the point that “Tribalism is now accepted as a societal model best left to history. . . .” But he also states that “. . . it helps to see what is lost when cultures evolve and our relationships to one another are blurred.” And James Welch very movingly does let us see the losses that come with the destruction of a way of life that allows a people to live in a more profound relationship with Nature than we seem unable to emulate. At the centre of the novel is Fools Crow. He is originally called White Man’s Dog and is thought to be unlucky. He begins by trying to attain manhood on a raiding party with Yellow Kidney—another well-drawn character. He kills a young member of the Crows to prevent the theft of horses being discovered and the incident is admired by the tribe. His father gives him a battle club owned by Fools Crow’s grandfather as a reward for his action. Yet, Fools Crow is uneasy about the incident. He gets his name later by killing the Crow chief but here too the incident leaves a certain sense of shame when he becomes drunk and magnifies the exploit. Fools Crow has shamanistic experiences in which he communicates with the nature spirits which he perceives as a raven and a wolverine. This lead him eventually to follow the path of his spiritual father, Mik-api the healer of the tribe. Indeed, it is as a visionary that Fools Crow has his final great spiritual experience which prepares him for the revelation that the Pikuni way of life is doomed. The terrible vision of Fools Crow is the culmination of the great central cry of the novel dramatised in a conversation between his father, Rides-at-the-door and another chief, Three Bears. Rides-at-the-door points out the terrible choice their culture faces: “We will lose our grandchildren, Three Bears. They will be wiped out or they will turn into Napikwans. Already some of our children attend their school at the agency. Our men wear trousers and the women prefer the trade-cloth to skins. We wear their blankets, cook in their kettles, and kill the blackhorns with their bullets. Soon our young women will marry them. . . . And the reply he gets from Three Bears offers no consolation. “I am an old man and I see things I do not like. . . I see the signs all around me. Many of you young men go off on their own. They do not listen to their chiefs. They drink the white man’s water and kill each other. Some of the our young women already stand around the forts, waiting to fornicate with the seizers for a drink of this water. They become ugly before their time, and then they are turned out like old cows to forage for themselves. . . We live many sleeps from these places of ruin. But the day will come when our people will decide that they would rather consort with the Napikwans than live in the ways our long-ago fathers thought appropriate. But I, Three Bears, will not see this day. I will die first.” All this is borne out by the way the Chiefs are put in a Catch 22 situation by General Sully who demands impossibilities from the tribes before giving promised food, medicine and supplies desperately needed as well as making ambiguous threats of retaliation. The result is a terrible plague of smallpox which decimates one tribe and a massacre which destroys another. The novel does have a muted consolatory tone at the end. I‘m not sure that this is completely effective—though it does show a special kind of heroism in the tribe and in Fools Crow who will lead them into an uncertain future,

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