Name: Green Grass, Running Water
Rating: 4.15 (10 reviews)
ISBN: 9780553373684

Thomas King

A great human drama is played out from a Blackfoot reservation to Hollywood while the mythical trickster, Coyote, watches from the sidelines, playfully manipulating events

Green Grass, Running Water

NAT IONAL BESTSELLER * FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD FOR FICTION * WINNER OF THE CANADIAN AUTHORS' AWARD FOR FICTION * AMONG THE BEST CANADIAN FICTION OF THE CENTURY (QUILL & QUIRE) * A CBC CANADA READS FINALIST (2004) Welcome to the town of Blossom--part myth, part hilariously off-kilter reality.Green Grass, Running Water is the story of five Blackfoot Indians whose existences connect in ways that are at once coincidental, comical and cosmic. This is a rich tale, weaving magical humour, revisionist history, nostalgia and myth into one bright whole. Green Grass, Running Water's timeless appeal has kept it flying off bookstore shelves since it was published in 1993. Enhanced with a P.S. section, this edition introduces a new generation of readers to King's unique take on contemporary human experience.

Edwin Lang

Spoiler alert (1): Alberta Frank gets pregnant and neither Lionel nor Charlie is the father. I did not enjoy the book very much as a work of fiction although I did like the story, its indigeneity and the characters - Thomas King did a good, simple job at making them all likeable, even George, the fool. King immerses his readers in Indigenous / Blackfoot theology, which would have been fine had there been say a Preface or perhaps a Prologue which might be used to set the stage for the ‘realist’ story (the part that I liked). BTW I did like my Harper Perennial edition which included a comprehensive reading notes section at the end (which, alas, I only noticed at the end), and Bing, which I found invaluable in helping me understand much of the book (and story) and with whom I now have a personal relationship. On the surface, though, it all seemed kind of gimmicky. Alberta Frank is a central character, a university professor, a troubled woman, a child of a broken marriage and abusive absentee father, who today has two lovers, Charles and Lionel, neither of whom she likes very much, both of whom might be perceived as losers as they are by Alberta herself. Charles Looking Bear, though, is a lawyer and, at least in his eyes, is a success, with that red Porche and everything; he really likes Alberta, and wants to give her that baby he knows she needs and wants, by force if necessary, wants to take her away from all this and save her from herself, and especially from Lionel. For his part, Lionel Red Dog is much simpler: he works in an electronics store, specializing in selling TVs, is overweight, listless, and is about to turn forty because of which everyone is converging on Blossom to celebrate the event, even those like Charlie who hadn’t been invited. Overall Lionel is not exactly discontented with his life – as much as others believe he should be, reminding the reader of that main character in Steinbeck’s Winter of Our Discontent – but is under pressure from everyone to do better and change his life, ‘even the old Indians’. Lionel likes Alberta, would like to marry and have children with her, although typically not as passionately (and possessively) as his cousin Charlie and wonders somewhat reasonably with some jealousy why she needs two men in her life, simultaneously, and probably recognizes in his simple way that she is a tad above him in terms of pretty well any metric one can think of. Alberta herself had been briefly married before, to a ‘Bob’, now divorced from that controlling and sly bum, but keenly wants a child or two, and is currently investigating donor-infused artificial insemination clinics, shuddering at the thought of Charlie or Lionel being father of her child and as a result having that perpetual bond to her, like a chain, anchoring her life in a pair of cement-shoes. Babo Jones, another character, is interesting. While she has a relatively minor role throughout, and is Black, this single Mom of four children (adult children perhaps because we never meet them, or with Babo perhaps they really don’t exist) pops up (delightfully in my opinion) throughout the story and is as simplistic and contented towards life as Lionel is, and yet seems to be really present. One wonders if it’s a coincidence that Babo works at the same (mental) institution where four Indians, key to the theological aspect of the overall story, reside and from which they had recently escaped. Likewise there are other characters, like Latisha, Lionel’s sister, who has a presence but one that is not really substantial. Eli Stands Alone, Latisha’s former lover before she deviously left him to marry the white-fool George Morningstar and have his three children, is another strong and immensely likeable but (in my opinion) secondary character, a retired University of Toronto professor of English Literature, living now in a small cabin built by his native mother years ago, now sitting in the shadow and in defiance of the operation of a Dam. From the very beginning the four Indians tease us with promises of great things to come. One thing that the book consistently says about them is that they are old - very, very old according to Babo. I am inclined to think that they are incarnations of important figures in Indigenous myth and spirituality, although I am on a limb here. All, in accordance with their mythical identities but contrary to the names given to them in the book, are woman. The author relates each to a mythic heroine and couples each to a classic story in the Western canon: so we have Thought Woman (who becomes Robinson Crusoe), Old Woman (Hawkeye from Last of the Mohicans), First Woman (Lone Ranger) and Changing Woman (Ishmael from Moby Dick). But in their journey to Blossom it is Coyote who pops up continually. Coyote is the infamous trickster in Indigenous myth, a happy, spontaneous, mischievous (and someone perhaps because of my affinity for both dogs and coyotes found a really likeable) creature who infuses a dynamic into Green Grass Running Water, and apparently into any Indigenous story Coyote is part of, and as he does here. Coyote appears to possess a real power to change any physical aspect of the world, or person, when he wishes ‘to create a new story’. He is part – perhaps the very essence – of what I have called the theological aspect of this book, and has a somewhat mysterious role that’s hard to fathom. Another character, Coyote’s partner it seems, while never defined but only alluded to is simply identified in utterances to Coyote, suffixed with ‘I says’. To its credit, Green Grass Running Water has depth. I was surprised to see Thomas King explicitly mention four literary methods used to create a multifaceted tale. It seemed academic and out of place in a fiction, but that is the nature of this book. They are the historical or literal, the tropological or moral / ethical, the allegorical or typological and the anagogic or spiritual, generally a future-oriented look at possibility (or not). So in Green Grass Running Water, King constantly revisits aspects of his characters’ lives alluding to the historical experiences, say outright racism or colonialism, in a huge number of references to various Western classics and movies (such as the Mystic Warrior, starring John Wayne); the sheer immorality of Western domination exists in pretty well any Indigenous story, and King likewise gives vent to failings that continue to express themselves today and haunt their victims; allegorical is the typical critique of the overbearing colonial past; and finally that future-oriented look at possibility, which in Green Grass Running Water is exemplified in the Coyote’s and the Indians propensity to spearhead change for the better, respecting lands and cultures, through the symbolism of water, water, everywhere that permeates this book, perhaps reminding us readers that through commonly shared water and land, and reveling in our diversity, we are nonetheless one humanity. Wanting to be John Wayne: it is Lionel's dream of old, hypnotized as a kid by the allure of old Western heroes like John Wayne and continuing today this innocent and passive betrayal of Indigenous ways. But to paraphrase Eli's ask, can't I also be an Indian off the reservation? Ironically, and perhaps this is Thomas King’s point, Lionel more than anyone seems to represent the seven key aspirations professed by Indigenous sacred teaching: to be someone who is both loving and respectful; to have a quiet courage; to be honest and humble; to possess, in Lionel's case, a simple non-invasive gentle wisdom and, as Lionel almost laughingly is, to be inherently and almost childishly truthful. Most can’t see this – including his sometime lover Alberta, who's caught up in the drama of her own existence, laughing derisively during their first tryst at Lionel’s Bugs Bunny underwear, certainly can’t. Overall I found the story subliminally negative. It was written in the early 1990s, a period that I recall as having been a very hard time for most people, a time of the ascendance of the money-people and increasingly centralized control at both State and Church levels. It seemed a period where we decided that we could not do it all, or afford to. And in this book, seemingly right on cue nobody, neither gods nor man (or woman) of any race seem to be able to get it right. Coyote, characteristically, has the sense to giggle at it all. I wonder though in Thomas King’s dedication page to a “Helen” (perhaps Helen Hoy), who he hopes ‘will not think less of me for having written it’, whether it is this sense of despair is the reason why he seemed to have been apologetic from the very start. Nonetheless while the story left me wanting, I found the book as a whole enjoyable, memorable and penetratingly insightful, and I strongly recommend it. Spoiler alert (2): Coyote, yes the dog, is the father of Alberta Frank’s baby (page 416). I, characteristically, am ok with that. Edwin

Green Grass, Running Water

Reviews

Highlights