The Story as It's Told: Prodigious Revisions in Leslie Marmon Silko's "Almanac of the Dead"

Abstract

Readers familiar with Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony are in for a surprise when they encounter Almanac of the Dead. Published in 1977, Ceremony has become one of the central texts of the evolving multi-ethnic canon of contemporary American fiction, and rightly so: it combines technical innovation with powerful linguistic vigor. Aside from the obvious difference in length (760 pages, to Ceremony's 262), Almanac differs radically from Ceremony in scope and tone. Whereas Tayo's pilgrimage and thus the vision of Ceremony is at first intimate and personal, the vision of Almanac is global. Ceremony focuses on one man's struggle; Almanac tackles the struggles of whole peoples-Native American peoples especially, but also African American peoples, Latino peoples, women, the poor of all races. And, perhaps most significant, where Ceremony uplifts, Almanac overturns. Almanac similarly calls for a return to native ways of viewing the earth and mankind's place in it, but this is only one aspect of a whole system of change. Instead of invoking the healing ceremony, Almanac calls for an upheaval in the world order and a dramatic revision of world history. With this breadth of scope, Almanac bears resemblances to other prodigious novels published in recent years. Like the works of Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, William Vollmann, and David Foster Wallace, Almanac's vision is broad and dark, its cast of characters huge, its narrative line jumbled. If a pro-