I Join Sherman Alexie in Recommending This Novel

In addition to being a brilliant writer, Leslie Marmon Silko is an unusually, almost miraculously patient writer. I finished my first reading (it will not be my last) of her novel Ceremony and have to say that Sherman Alexie did not exaggerate a bit when he called Ceremony “one of the greatest novels of any time and place.”

By calling her patient, I refer to the way she never rushes through a scene but takes time to note each shifting detail of the natural surroundings, along with details of the main character’s thoughts and memories and feelings and imaginings. She backtracks at least as often as she takes her story patiently forward -- backtracks and circles around and circles back again and again, in wider and wider narrative orbits. Thus the story expands and grows deeper it proceeds, and we acquire background as we gradually get to know the main character.

The main character is Tayo. That his mother “went with white men” and that his own unknown father was white is the earliest burden of his life, compounded when she leaves him with relatives and disappears from his life. Even before she dies, he knows he will never see her again.

Tayo’s Uncle Josiah and cousin Rocky accept him from the beginning, but his Auntie never lets him forget that he is not really Rocky’s brother, not her own child, and that his mother brought shame on the family, shame made visible to their village in his very existence.

Then – I am telling this chronologically, not in the order of the novel’s recounting of events – Tayo and Rocky enlist to fight in World War II. In the Pacific, they are captured by the Japanese, and the horrors of that time haunt Tayo on his return, disturbing not only his sleep but also his waking life. Nightmares, flashbacks, and disturbing visions cripple his spirit. Civil and military authorities, as well as his own people, doubt Tayo’s sanity, and he doubts it himself.

To return from the horrors of war to a previous life of normality – can it ever be easily accomplished? Tayo’s fellow veterans seek relief from their wartime memories in alcohol. Periodically Tayo does also, but he wants more of life than a haze of oblivion. He has inherited, in the time before the war, a dream from his Uncle Josiah. Materially, the dream consists of a herd of cattle -- not helpless Herefords, waiting to be brought food and water in time of scarcity and drought, but rangy Mexican cattle that can fend for themselves, like antelope, in an arid land. As Josiah explained the matter to Tayo:

“Cattle are like any living thing. If you separate them from the land for too long, keep them in barns and corrals, they lose something. Their stomachs get to where they can only eat rolled oats and dry alfalfa. When you turn them loose again, they go running all over. They are scared because the land is unfamiliar, and they are lost. They don’t stop being scared either, even when they look quiet and they quit running. Scared animals die off easily.”

Josiah reads books on the raising and breeding of cattle but is dubious about the practices recommended in  the books. He asks Tayo and Rocky to read them and see what they think.

The problem was the books were written by white people who did not think about drought or winter blizzards or dry thistles, which the cattle had to live with.

The books treated cattle as an abstraction, something apart from the land on which they were to live.

To deal with the effects of postwar trauma, Tayo’s family and Tayo himself turn to traditional medicine men. These ceremonies, both specific and metaphorical, form much of the book’s bedrock. I have emphasized the role of the cattle because that dream and that reality dovetail with the ceremonies. It is the land itself – and the cattle, that belong to the land – grounding those who would not fall victim to the destroyers’ sickness.

Spiritual connections, history, and ideas all have their place in the story, and while many of the themes are universal (“one of the greatest novels of any time and place,” to quote Sherman Alexie once again), the physical features of place are present in loving detail, so clear that someone who has never been to the Southwest might almost see and feel and smell it when reading certain passages. I open the book at random and easily fall on a paragraph of place:

He tied the mare in a clearing surrounded by a thicket of scrub oak. He sat under a scrub oak and picked up acorns from the ground around him. The oak leaves were already fading from dark green to light yellow, and within the week they would turn gold and bright red. The acorns were losing their green color too, and the hulls were beginning to dry out. By the time the leaves fell and the acorns dropped, he would be home with the cattle.

And there is so much more. For instance, almost offhandedly, in a single sentence, Silko gives one of the most original and beautiful analogies of lovemaking I have ever encountered in literature.

He eased himself deeper within her and felt the warmth close around him like river sand, softly giving way under foot, then closing firmly around the ankle in cloudy warm water.

I finished my first reading of Ceremony on Saturday morning, and later that day in my bookstore a customer saw it on the counter and said that he was reading it but was afraid of how it might end. I felt the same way as I saw the remaining pages grow fewer in my hand. And as Sherman Alexie said later in his words of praise for the novel, violence is part of the story, from beginning to end. But “You will be surprised” was all I told the apprehensive reader, and it’s all I’m going to tell you.

Neither, here, am I going to get into the issues of race and racism and brown vs. white and how blame is allocated (if you think it is) by the author. I’ll only tell all readers not to be afraid but to keep reading to the end.

Book clubs and discussion groups interested in exploring American history and issues of race in our country’s literature should not neglect this beautiful novel. Lovers of fiction, give yourself a gift. Read this book.

Earth Surfaces

Snow frozen rock-hard at sunrise

These early April mornings the topmost layer of snow (still ankle-deep or more in many places) is frozen to a hard crust. It’s hard enough to walk on, easily, with only the occasional surprising plunge of foot and leg precipitating a stumble or fall. During the day, sun and warmth do their work; like a retreating glacier, the snowpack gradually gives ground; and by early evening another six feet of last year’s sorry-looking vegetation has been exposed to view. Where snow still lies deep, it has the consistency of a slushie and begs to be kicked.

Standing water still freezing overnight, too

The basic soil type on my home ground is clay. With all the snow melting right now, water stands in temporary pools and lakes in field and orchard, and a miniature river, ephemeral, runs across my meadow. Runoff water is hurrying north to the little no-name creek that will carry it the last stretch west to Lake Michigan, while on the north side of the creek, water rushes south, tumbling down the soggy clay bank. All creeks are running high this spring, and there is still a lot of snow and ice left to melt, besides the usual April rainstorms.

Another thing I think about this time of year is “miniature geography,” as I called it in the past, although I’m now seeing it as miniature, speeded-up, fast-disappearing geology, as well. That second phrase hasn’t quite the same ring, but here are a couple of illustrations of what I'm talking about:

This snowbank built up over months by snowfall and road plow exhibits layering that reminds me of Upper Peninsula sandstone deposits, the banding in the stone along Lake Superior making apparent a laying down of sediment that occurred over vast periods of time. As warm weather and sunshine do their work of revealing the snow layers, they also, along with wind and rain, erode the bank. Sandstone erodes much more slowly, but wind and water are at work there, too.. Over on Karen Casebeer’s blog, you can see ferocious uplift and grinding of ice on Lake Michigan—again, similar to what happened with the earth’s crust long ago. Modern episodes like that, with earth rather than ice, we term disasters. Demonstrations in geology, just outside your door!

In my garden, rhubarb began to poke through a couple of days ago, as did daffodils under the silver maple tree. Soil is much on my mind in the spring.

It must be thirty years, maybe forty, since I first read Plowman’s Folly, by Edward H. Faulkner, a book that had such a profound effect on novelist Louis Bromfield that it changed the course of his life. Like Immanuel Kant when he read David Hume’s A Treatise on Human Nature and “awakened from his dogmatic slumbers,” Bromfield reading Faulkner experienced the epiphany of his lifetime and was inspired to return from France to his native Ohio, where, with royalties from his fiction sales, he bought up “wornout” farmland (Malabar Farm, now a state park) and return it to productivity. The methods Bromfield practiced on his land were called then the “New Agriculture.” “No crime is involved in plagiarizing nature’s ways,” wrote Faulkner in his little book, published in 1943 and destined to become a small classic in its field. In fact, he argued, nature’s ways are what farmers should have been following all along.

[I'm letting the foregoing stand as I wrote it, although I mistrusted my memory, and with good reason, as it turns out. Malabar Farm was already in operation when Faulkner's book came out. There was, however, a connection, as you can read here, and Bromfield did think highly of Faulkner's recommendations and practices.]

The importance of organic matter in holding soil moisture and preventing erosion has become well known in the decades that have passed since Faulkner’s book was first published, but I’m finding plenty of new food for thought in his argument, nonetheless. Take the matter of soil compaction. Faulkner’s objection to the moldboard plow is not, as one might assume or I might have misremembered, that it compacts the soil but that, in turning over the soil, it deposits organic surface matter below the surface. Organic matter at that level, he says, will pull moisture down and away from crop roots, while the smooth, bare soil surface the plow leaves, however beautifully friable it appears, will shed moisture, leaving crops thirsty and setting up conditions for erosion.

Is anyone still with me? Did you think soil compaction was a bad thing? Is Faulkner is saying it’s a good thing? Not compaction, but compression:

Compression was the principle upon which the marker worked. [This was a roller he invented for marking rows and spacing to tell him where to put his vegetable transplants.] Where the idea originated, I do not know. Perhaps it was the result of an illustration we used to see in one of our soil texts. The illustration was intended to show the student how a well prepared seedbed should look. The light color of the surface soil indicated that this loose, “well prepared” surface soil had been dried out by wind and sunshine—as is always true—even though the area presented was supposedly ideal for seed growth. Included in the picture was a heel print. The moist condition of this compressed spot, darker in color, proved that capillary water climbed the vertical column of soil immediately under it. The comparatively dry condition of the rest of the soil showed that, in the loose soil, the capillary connection with the deep underground water supply had been broken. Thirty years ago, the picture meant nothing more than a clean-cut photo of an exceptionally well prepared soil in good tilth (according to established standards). Fitted into the new scheme of soil management, it becomes a significant guide to better methods of planting seeds and transplanting plants. [The italics are my added emphasis.]

If there is even one person who reads this far and is fascinated by the claim that compressed soil is better for plants than loose, friable soil, I will be satisfied. If two people are fascinated, I’ll be downright thrilled!

Because, think about it—does anyone want to go to the trouble of double-digging if the practice is deleterious rather than beneficial? We’ve been told that soil has to be loose, has to be aerated, and here’s Faulkner saying, Hey! Nature doesn’t do it that way! Do not disturb! Or, at least, disturb the soil as little as possible, and after you’ve disturbed it, try to restore it, as much as possible, to its undisturbed state.

I’m thinking Aristotle here and the Golden Mean. Soil too loose to hold moisture can’t be good, but neither can soil compacted into rock. “Builder’s clay” is what Faulkner had to begin with in the yard of one new family house, and that took a long siege of amendments, physical and organic. Too compressed or not compressed enough are bad. What we want is the “just right” middle position. Yes, Goldilocks comes to mind, too.

Not all cultivation is plowing, and here’s a site that will help make various tillage distinctions clear for the uninitiated (nonfarmer).

The question of tillage and cultivation has not yet been settled, even among organic farmers, partly because no-till practices often involve heavy use of chemical herbicides. An article published not long ago in AcresUSA (November 2013, Vol. 43, no. 11), which is a factor in unwanted soil compaction.

Many farmers bought into no-till methods as a way to “save money.” What the abandonment of tillage saves in the beginning, though, can be offset by declining fertility. Long-term use of no-till methods, especially when heavy machinery wheels are used at planting and harvest times, can lead to a state of brick-like compaction. It is unlike anything anything in nature, except perhaps as a result of certain catastrophes such as meteorite strikes [emphasis added]. 

 Salts, whether naturally present in the soil or added as part of the fertilizer regime, provide an active bonding agent to stick the soil together. This, you see, is the age-old formula for making mortar. – Jeffery Goss, “Tillage Under Attack?”

Faulkner, it should be noted, was not an advocate of herbicides and even thought fertilizer unnecessary, if proper tillage and planting practices were followed. He did admit, however, that his own “research” was not controlled enough to deserve the name and that long-term studies needed to be done. Here’s a 2014 site I found with a lot of recent research on the subject. Time for me to stop blogging now and go read the studies....

But first a couple of reminders --

Reminder: A book that makes clear the relationship of soil health to every human being's health, Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing, by Daphne Miller, M.D., is still being featured at Dog Ears Books.

Reminder: Poets Night Out in Traverse City is Sunday, April 27. And this is National Poetry Month, so I'll be getting to poetry with my next blog post.

What’s Happening In and Around Town and Country, Indoors and Out?

As mentioned in yesterday’s postscript, Sarah and I went to Peterson Park on Monday afternoon. The images today are from my time on the beach. I’ll intersperse them with unrelated text, if you don’t mind.

I’m reading (devouring!) Marry or Burn, having set aside Deeply Rooted to dive into the long-awaited (by me and others) Valerie Trueblood story collection. I’ll have a lot to say about both of these books in the near future, but I was so confident about Trueblood’s work, after Seven Loves, that I chose her for this week’s recommendation before even opening to the first page, something I’ve never done before. I can say now, several stories in, that my confidence was fully warranted. More on this later. And more on the various books related to agriculture I’ve been reading. Another that might go into the to-read-soon pile is Sacred Trusts: Essays on Stewardship and Responsibility, ed. by Michael Katakis, with illustrations by Russell Chatham.

Pictures immediately below:
Petoskey stones come in rock size, too.
Land and water forms join.
Other rocks present alluring colors.




We finally got to set our clocks back on Sunday, and Northerners now have another hour of sunlight in the mornings. I suppose Southerners do, too, but can it possibly mean as much to them as it does to us? I love having a wider window of opportunity for morning dog walk/runs. (I walk, she runs.) Some people are grumpy about losing light in the evenings, but the home fireplace takes the pain out of dark evenings for me, and it’s a good excuse to stop yard work and come into the house, too.


With the sun so low, the shadows of even tiny creatures stretch to great lengths.

Bless my neglected garden! Yesterday I wanted carrots for soup but didn’t want California carrots (Sorry, California, we have plenty of carrots in Michigan!), so the grocery store in Northport wasn’t going to help me, but riding through the countryside with Sarah after our expedition to Lake Michigan I remembered that I hadn’t dug the carrots from my garden yet. Went home. Got out the spading fork. Sure enough, beautiful and fresh and crisp and sweet! There are enough for a few more diggings, too. Very satisfying!

Here is a plant from the beach, kinnikinnick, or bearberry, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi. Not much from a distance, but up close the berries are bright, cheery red.




My calendar has suddenly spouted another exciting holiday event. Well, the date isn’t certain yet, but I’ll keep everyone posted and add it to the calendar as soon as possible. Marjorie Farrell, whose mother-in-law lives here in Northport, will be visiting from Woodstock, New York, in December and will be bringing her new line of beautiful, stylish, reusable, eco-friendly wrapping cloths. They are perfect for books (I love how easy books are to wrap, anyway), and lucky recipients can use the wrappings afterward as scarves, small table covers, art for the wall—or as wrapping for gifts to pass along to friends. “The medium is the message”? In this case, “The wrapping is [part of] the gift”! We’ll have a party at Dog Ears Books, with refreshments, Marjorie will give a demonstration, and we will banish the winter blues, if anyone already has them in December, which I hope will not be the case.

For now, anyway, it's still November with balmy October weather.


P.S. Please take time to read Sharon Astyk's post today on the "love economy."