Some “meta-” narrative concerns: Two (opposing?) conceptions of narrative time and storytelling: Native/cyclical/recurrent and (vs.?) Western/linear/teleological

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:

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 ground—trying 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.

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….)

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.

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 aren’t told in a “traditional”—let alone reverent—way. Instead, they’re mash-ups of several different sources: Native legends, Biblical tales, and “myths” of the American frontier….)

And…“Action!” 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)

And…“Action!” 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 Blue—a/k/a Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Hawkeye, and Robinson Crusoe) Charlie Latisha Eli