Black Hills

So this post started simply enough. I was going to write about how much I'd enjoyed Dan Simmon's Black Hills: A Novel. Simple. Thing is that during the process of blathering about it, I poked around the web looking for other stuff about Mr. Simmons', and I was reminded why I'd really rather I didn't do that.

For example, there's this piece published on his website, and here at Free Republic website Message from a Time Traveler. Hmmm.

And then there was the October 2005 message from Dan. Hmmm. I'm sure there's more stuff that might make my cheek twitch, but I stopped there.

I became troubled. It's not just that I find the content of the time traveler piece silly, it's also that I find it maliciously so, and that I find the structure of it to be manipulative. (ie- The fake conversation with a supernaturally intelligent stranger that knows more than me and slowly convinces me to be afraid, to be very afraid of those scary Muslims...) And it's not just that I don't think there's plenty to be criticized about all things Katrina-related, but that I would hope that a wealthy person looking out at the world from a perch on the Rockies might show some humility when discussing a social tragedy with complex origins. Also, the rambling, discursive structure of it lacks the clarity and empathy I so appreciate about his fiction.

If I had started with those pieces I wouldn't have been very interested in reading his fiction. This much is clear; Mr Simmons and I do not see the world with the same eyes politically. But... the guy can write (fiction). So do our differences matter in terms of my encouraging people to read his work? I'm not sure.

Certainly, I don't want my readers to only be people that are aligned with me politically. I've had some wonderful correspondences with readers that I know have a very different world view than me in terms of politics, social issues, religion, etc. I love those interactions, and I love it that it's the fiction that has created a connection that might not be there if we instead began by comparing and contrasting our political stripes.

It may be wrong of me to begin this by doing just that, but I couldn't help it. And I should point out that the things he wrote about in those pieces have nothing directly to do with the book in question. It's other stuff. So... with that jumbled opening I offer the words of praise I initially composed for Mr. Simmons. Here goes:

There are some writers that I read a bit of and politely fold the cover on. I'm not one to denigrate other authors, but plenty of what's published and praised leaves me a tepid. Then there are authors that I admire greatly, feeling (perhaps mistakenly) that they're my compatriots and peers in this writing craft. And there are others to whom I nod in reverence. Dan Simmons is one of these. I don't know who or what he is as a person, but as a writer he's a pro that has taken his talent and exercised it with admirable discipline. He is, in a lot of ways, the kind of writer I want to be when I grow up. Why?

Because he consistently produces ambitious, genre-hopping (and merging) novels, filled with an intelligent engagement with history, rich with ideas, fueled by a verve for storytelling and infused with heavy doses of the fantastic. He's prolific, but the finished products he manages to publish every year are dazzlingly in their reach and erudition. I've praised his work before. The occasion for this endorsement is his recent novel, Black Hills.

Now, I'll admit the description was not one that immediately grabbed me. The historical setting held interest, but I couldn't get the shape of the book from the dust jacket material:

When Paha Sapa, a young Sioux warrior, "counts coup" on General George Armstrong Custer as Custer lies dying on the battlefield at the Little Bighorn, the legendary general's ghost enters him - and his voice will speak to him for the rest of his event-filled life. Seamlessly weaving together the stories of Paha Sapa, Custer, and the American West, Dan Simmons depicts a tumultuous time in the history of both Native and white Americans. Haunted by Custer's ghost, and also by his ability to see into the memories and futures of legendary men like Sioux war-chief Crazy Horse, Paha Sapa's long life is driven by a dramatic vision he experienced as a boy in his people's sacred Black Hills. In August of 1936, a dynamite worker on the massive Mount Rushmore project, Paha Sapa plans to silence his ghost forever and reclaim his people's legacy-on the very day FDR comes to Mount Rushmore to dedicate the face.

It still doesn't exactly hook me. It's the kind of book that you just need to enter with an open mind, let it define itself, get to know the characters, and get swept along. That's what I did, and I enjoyed it very much.

I found Paha Sapa to be a compelling character, rendered with understated empathy. He has an interior life that he cannot and will not share with the white people that shape his life in so many ways. Simmons does a wonderful job of understanding that. He portrays a man that shares very little of himself with others, and he makes it clear how limited seeing him from the outside is. And yet the novel provides us an intimate exploration of his childhood, his desires, disappointments, loves and, ultimately, his singular destructive ambition.

Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say in a starred review:

Hugo-winner Simmons, the author of such acclaimed space operas as Hyperion and Olympos as well as Drood, an intriguing riff on Dickens's unfinished last novel, displays the impressive breath of his imagination in this historical novel with a supernatural slant. In the author's retelling of Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn in 1876, the dying general's ghost enters the body of Paha Sapa, a 10-year-old Sioux warrior who's able to see both the past and the future by touching people. The action leaps around in time to illustrate the arc of Sapa's life, but focuses on 1936, when, as a septuagenarian, he plots to blow up the monuments on Mount Rushmore in time for a visit to the site by FDR to atone for his role in constructing the stone likenesses. In his ability to create complex characters and pair them with suspenseful situations, Simmons stands almost unmatched among his contemporaries.

That's probably all the review one needs to enter the book. I'm actually glad that I didn't read any reviews before starting it. So, if you're inclined to pick up it you might want to stop reading here.

Or, stay with me... I looked up some reviews as I prepared this post. I found lots a positive ones, sure, but others like this Washington Post review written by Barbara Ehrenreich are a bit jumbled, though still positive. I like The Post and review for them myself. I certainly like it that Simmons manages - some times, at least - to get the critical attention that his work deserves. While I offer the link, the review seems a bit scattered to me. For some reason, she chooses to mention Jonathan Franzen.

Now is that necessary?

But, anyway, she is a fan when all the back and forth has run its course.

The guy that reviewed it for The Science Christian Monitor, Justin Moyer, is another story entirely. Personally, I think the reviewer gets pretty much everything that he snidely complains about wrong. But you can read it here if you’re so inclined.

Paha Sapa a "Sioux Forrest Gump"? That's a clever jibe. It’s definitely the type of line that would put me off a book, and that’s what it’s intended to do. Problem is, I read the book already, and I don't think that’s an accurate characterization. Perhaps the reviewer mistook Paha Sapa’s reticence when speaking to white people for a lack of intelligence. I didn’t. It’s a defense mechanism in a world in which he’s discriminated against at every turn.

Nor do I get why it offends the reviewer that the main character of the novel knows several famous people and is on the ground at a number of historic moments/settings. That's the reason he's the main character. That's why the story is about him.

He then appears to slight Paha Sapa's strange bond with Custer by saying it would make a good Sherman Alexie story. So... not a good Dan Simmons story, but a good story if a hip Native American writer wrote it instead? Maybe, but references like that seem less about the substance and more about the reviewer making sure we know he's read Sherman Alexie. We'll, I've read Sherman Alexie too.

So there. (Makes a silly face.)

Another thing that bugs me about when reviewers trash a book is that they have the advantage of being able to contextualize things that the reader of the review has not (assuming he/she hasn't read the book yet) had an opportunity to contextualize themselves. Take this, for example:

Close to death, Paha Sapa envisions the “rewilding” of the Great Plains at an unspecified date by the federal government – that is, the same government that blazed the Trail of Tears, murdered Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and commissioned Rushmore in the first place... Given America’s questionable management of its natural resources and the sham global warming debate, this Eden isn’t just an unlikely outcome – it’s bad fiction that neither reflects reality nor entertains.

Well, sure, that sounds a bit stupid when you put it that way. What the reviewer ignores is that the government gets around to the "rewilding" Paha Sapa envisions after a catastrophic collapse of the ecology of the middle of America. The land is turned into desert, abandoned and uninhabitable in a conventional sense. It's quite clearly explained that governmental/business/personal mismanagement of the land by the majority American culture is what caused it. So the “rewilding” is not a sudden liberal/environmentalist take over in 2020 or something. We're talking a response to disaster, suffering, mass-extinction, likely within a larger world of global calamities that are outside of Paha Sapa’s vision. Given that context - which is the true context of the book - I find his dismissal of the idea glib, and lacking in the imagination that makes science fictional meditations on the future so interesting.

So there. (Sticks out tongue.)

Oh, final bit on this one. He writes: Simmons thinks he can heal Colonial wounds with a good yarn...

I don't feel that way. Simmons isn’t trying to “heal Colonial wounds” at all. I’d say he’s showing the ways in which we move forward scarred by those wounds, creating fresh ones as we go, acknowledging some mistakes and making new ones at the same time, while hopefully aging into enough wisdom to be able to run our fingers over those wounds, recognizing and remembering them - and acknowledging that the truth of them lives on in our very blood. In our DNA, so to speak.

So that's what I wrote. I can't take any of it back. That's still the book I remember reading, and that was my reaction to it. Was I mistaken? Should I read it differently? Or is the book the book and my reaction to it should be what it is, regardless of other stuff?

You tell me.