162 Western American Literature Miller, for example, is credited with truly feeling the power of the archetype, though his limited craft did not allow him to produce “a single achieved poem.” Nonetheless, “in Life Amongst the Modocs he emerges permanently as the West’s first literary autochthon.” Robinson Jeffers is the fulcrum upon which Everson’s study balances, for he “gave the Western archetype its fiercest clench and its prospective apotheosis.” Jeffers took “the peculiarly Western ingredient of violence” and applied it catalytically to transcend rationality and achieve apotheosis. In “Tamar,” which Everson argues is the inceptive work in Jeffers’ break through, a pregnant irony is found: the same story evolved in the oral literature of a coastal California culture, the Yurok, and has been included in Theodora Kroeber’s The Inland Whale, further evidence of the arche type’s pervasiveness. All western writers, Everson implies, no matter what their cultural or historic milieus, must acknowledge the underlying force of the archetype. This is not a book for general audiences. It is often abstract, sometimes turgid. But for students of western life and letters it is important indeed, and will be more than a little controversial. Despite the passion of his presentation, Everson really does not prove, in a rhetorical sense, his central point, but then how does one prove the arational through rational argument? This reader at least, feels Everson has struck mighty close to the mark. GERALD HASLAM, Sonoma State College Shabegok. By Jaime de Angulo. Edited by Bob Callahan. (Berkeley: Turtle Island Foundation, 1976. 109 pages, $10.00.) How the World Was Made. By Jaime de Angulo. Edited by Bob Callahan. (Berkeley: Turtle Island Foundation, 1976. 101 pages, $10.00.) Here are two more magnificently produced books from Turtle Island. I emphasize books because this is what hardbound books used to be like, before the paperback takeover (and — horrors! — the practice of “perfect” or “notch” binding, i.e., glueing rather than sewing, clothbound books). Shabegok is the ancient village of the Pomo Indians near Kelseyville in the rainy north country of what is now called Lake County, California. Continuing Indian Tales and Coyote Man & Old Doctor Loon, these are further adventures of Oriole-girl; Pearl; Tsimmu, the snoop-nosed wolf; Antelopewoman; Turtle; and of course, Coyote Old Man. We are back in the time when as Jaime says, all the Animals were People, and all the People were Animals. De Angulo is a Great Liar, a Great Story-teller— as he explains, “. . . don’t ask me if these stories are true. Of course they are true! Reviews 163 I . . . heard them when I was living with the Indians . . . when I was a young man, forty, fifty years ago ... I became an Indian myself, so I know.” De Angulo modelled the personalities of these characters, according to Callahan, after members of his own family and close friends. “Antelopewoman ,” he tells us in the Notes, “seems to be much like his own wife, Nancy; Turtle Old Man, Uncle Bill Benson; Oriole-girl, his daughter Guiomar, etc.” Benson known in Pomo as Raganal, was a lifelong friend of Jaime’s, and was born near Shabegok in 1862. He was a hereditary chief whose mother was a Bear-doctor; and was a well-known basket-maker, who, says Callahan, is credited by Lake County historians as having invented the first macramè knot. So de Angulo’s research was not so different from Balzac’s or Flaubert’s — he observed, listened and re-invented. “We’ve sure seen a lot in our time, haven’t we brother?” Turtle Old Man said. “Yes, brother, we have . . .” said Coyote. “People are more or less the same everywhere.” BARRY GIFFORD, Berkeley, California The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, from the Winchester Manuscripts of Thomas Malory. By John Steinbeck. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976. 364 pages, $10.00) Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, published in 1485, is a water shed in the literature of the Western world. It is the culmination of the Arthurian romances, the Matter of Britain, from Gildas through Layamon, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Crétien de Troyes, and other “Frensshe” books, anonymous alliterative poets, Gottfried von...
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Jan 1, 1991
Korhan Kaya 
Open Access
