“corruption / Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet”

Wednesday reading, continued — which is to say, still reading Always Coming Home. I’m into the Back of the Book section of technical appendices.*

I am once again struck by the structure of the ending of the main part of the book. Stone Telling’s final section sets us up to think the book title is riffing off her new name upon returning to the Valley, Woman Coming Home. (It is, but there’s more.) After that there’s one more section, another selection of songs, these all of ritual use, and their formality further prioritizes Stone Telling’s story as the book’s primary narrative. And then the last poem of the fourth section, a Finder’s Lodge ritual for seeing someone off on a journey, ends with a book title drop — a recognition that makes it click into place as The End Of The Book. It’s a really powerful landing.

But it isn’t the end. There’s one more thing, a poem addressed to the people of today as spoken by the people of the Valley. Making it last already emphasizes it, but all that final structure adds even more weight. (As do all the Pandora sections, the author-stand-in who’s the anthropologist studying the Kesh — acting as a Finder for the readers.)

A master at work, this.


* Talk about ways to directly evoke comparisons to Lord of the Rings. Earthsea is frequently mentioned as an example of responding to Tolkien, but Always Coming Home is as well, in entirely different directions. Though speaking of things I don’t see mentioned, why isn’t ACH ever described as a further development of the narrative strategies of The Left Hand of Darkness?

---L.

Subject quote from Shine, Perishing Republic, Robinson Jeffers.