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The Strait: Book of Obenabi, His Songs
The Strait: Book of Obenabi. His Songs
Posthumous novel. A wide-ranging imaginative account of history. Narrator Obenabi records in 1840 the histories of his ancient and recent grandmothers. Set in the North American woodlands, these tales begin before the Invader's arrival and trace how his Progress imposed - both insidiously and brutally - devastation on Obenabi's kin. The Strait subsequently became known as The Motor City.
Posthumous novel. A wide-ranging imaginative account of history. Narrator Obenabi records in 1840 the histories of his ancient and recent grandmothers. Set in the North American woodlands, these tales begin before the Invader's arrival and trace how his Progress imposed - both insidiously and brutally - devastation on Obenabi's kin. The Strait subsequently became known as The Motor City.
- GenresFiction
399 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
3 people are currently reading
94 people want to read
About the author
Fredy Perlman
40 books59 followersFredy Perlman (August 20, 1934 – July 26, 1985) was an author and publisher. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, is a major source of inspiration for anti-civilisation perspectives in contemporary anarchism.
Perlman was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. He emigrated with parents to Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1938 just ahead of the Nazi takeover. The Perlman family came to the United States in 1945 and finally settled in Lakeside Park, Kentucky.
In 1952 he attended Morehead State College in Kentucky and then UCLA from 1953-55. Perlman was on the staff of The Daily Bruin, the school newspaper, when the university administration changed the constitution of the newspaper to forbid it from nominating its own editors, as the custom had been. Perlman left the newspaper staff at that time and, with four others, proceeded to publish an independent paper, The Observer, which they handed out on a public sidewalk at the campus bus stop, since they were forbidden by the administration to distribute in on the campus.
In 1956-59 he attended Columbia University, where he met his life-long companion, Lorraine Nybakken. He enrolled as a student of English literature but soon concentrated his efforts in philosophy, political science and European literature. One particularly influential teacher for him at this time was C. Wright Mills.
In late 1959, Perlman and his wife took a cross-country motor scooter trip, mostly on two-lane highways traveling at 25 miles per hour. From 1959 to 1963, they lived on the lower east side of Manhattan while Perlman worked on a statistical analysis of the world's resources with John Ricklefs. They participated in anti-bomb and pacifist activities with the Living Theatre and others. Perlman was arrested after a sit-down in Times Square in the fall of 1961. He became the printer for the Living Theatre and during that time wrote The New Freedom, Corporate Capitalism and a play, Plunder, which he published himself.
In 1963, the husband and wife left the U.S. and moved to Belgrade, Yugoslavia after living some months in Copenhagen and Paris. Perlman received a master's degree in economics and a PhD at the University of Belgrade's Law School; his dissertation was titled "Conditions for the Development of a Backward Region," which created an outrage among some members of the faculty. During his last year in Yugoslavia, he was a member of the Planning Institute for Kosovo and Metohija.
During 1966-69 the couple lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Perlman taught social science courses at Western Michigan University and created outrage among some members of the faculty when he had students run their own classes and grade themselves. During his first year in Kalamazoo, he and Milos Samardzija, one of his professors from Belgrade, translated Isaac Illych Rubin's Essay on Marx's Theory of Value. Perlman wrote an introduction to the book: "An Essay on Commodity Fetishism."
In May 1968, after lecturing for two weeks in Turin, Italy, Perlman went to Paris on the last train before rail traffic was shut down by some of the strikes that were sweeping Western Europe that season. He participated in the May unrest in Paris and worked at the Censier center with the Citroen factory committee. After returning to Kalamazoo in August, he collaborated with Roger Gregoire in writing Worker-Student Action Committees, May 68.
During his last year in Kalamazoo, Perlman had left the university and together with several other people, mostly students, inaugurated the Black and Red magazine, of which six issues appeared. Typing and layout was done at the Perlman house and the printing at the Radical Education Project in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In January 1969 Perlman completed The Reproduction of Daily Life. While traveling in Europe in the spring of 1969
Perlman was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia. He emigrated with parents to Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1938 just ahead of the Nazi takeover. The Perlman family came to the United States in 1945 and finally settled in Lakeside Park, Kentucky.
In 1952 he attended Morehead State College in Kentucky and then UCLA from 1953-55. Perlman was on the staff of The Daily Bruin, the school newspaper, when the university administration changed the constitution of the newspaper to forbid it from nominating its own editors, as the custom had been. Perlman left the newspaper staff at that time and, with four others, proceeded to publish an independent paper, The Observer, which they handed out on a public sidewalk at the campus bus stop, since they were forbidden by the administration to distribute in on the campus.
In 1956-59 he attended Columbia University, where he met his life-long companion, Lorraine Nybakken. He enrolled as a student of English literature but soon concentrated his efforts in philosophy, political science and European literature. One particularly influential teacher for him at this time was C. Wright Mills.
In late 1959, Perlman and his wife took a cross-country motor scooter trip, mostly on two-lane highways traveling at 25 miles per hour. From 1959 to 1963, they lived on the lower east side of Manhattan while Perlman worked on a statistical analysis of the world's resources with John Ricklefs. They participated in anti-bomb and pacifist activities with the Living Theatre and others. Perlman was arrested after a sit-down in Times Square in the fall of 1961. He became the printer for the Living Theatre and during that time wrote The New Freedom, Corporate Capitalism and a play, Plunder, which he published himself.
In 1963, the husband and wife left the U.S. and moved to Belgrade, Yugoslavia after living some months in Copenhagen and Paris. Perlman received a master's degree in economics and a PhD at the University of Belgrade's Law School; his dissertation was titled "Conditions for the Development of a Backward Region," which created an outrage among some members of the faculty. During his last year in Yugoslavia, he was a member of the Planning Institute for Kosovo and Metohija.
During 1966-69 the couple lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Perlman taught social science courses at Western Michigan University and created outrage among some members of the faculty when he had students run their own classes and grade themselves. During his first year in Kalamazoo, he and Milos Samardzija, one of his professors from Belgrade, translated Isaac Illych Rubin's Essay on Marx's Theory of Value. Perlman wrote an introduction to the book: "An Essay on Commodity Fetishism."
In May 1968, after lecturing for two weeks in Turin, Italy, Perlman went to Paris on the last train before rail traffic was shut down by some of the strikes that were sweeping Western Europe that season. He participated in the May unrest in Paris and worked at the Censier center with the Citroen factory committee. After returning to Kalamazoo in August, he collaborated with Roger Gregoire in writing Worker-Student Action Committees, May 68.
During his last year in Kalamazoo, Perlman had left the university and together with several other people, mostly students, inaugurated the Black and Red magazine, of which six issues appeared. Typing and layout was done at the Perlman house and the printing at the Radical Education Project in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In January 1969 Perlman completed The Reproduction of Daily Life. While traveling in Europe in the spring of 1969
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 6, 2016
The last book written by Fredy Perlman (in fact, unfinished at his death: this is the first volume of a two volume work he planned), "The Strait" is the story of Indians and whites in and around present day Detroit, starting in the 17th century (or the beginning of time) and ending in the 19th. It is narrated by a series of characters whose lives are progressively more uprooted by the European invaders, their diseases, technology, and eventually ways and means. The book chronicles the different ways people of the community deal with the invasion and the destruction of their world.
I fell progressively more in love with this book as I read on; by the end I didn't want it to end and spent hours looking up any extra information on the characters and events that i could find. The portrait of a human community in slow free-fall is moving and instructive. Having only briefly seen what a human community looks and acts like in my 32 years, I couldn't get enough of the ones depicted here. Fredy Perlman is acutely aware of what it is that makes people living among each other more than a mere collection of individuals, and the ways in which this unity is inherently fragile. I think Fredy is on the same page with Wendell Berry and others who have suggested that joy is not real unless it is shared. Said otherwise, our lives are meaningless without joy, and joy is impossible without a shared human context. The "constraints" of old-fashioned cultures are revealed to be the opposite of what we've always been told they are (namely, fetters): the framework which makes joy and self-realization possible.
"The Strait" is initially hard to get into, in part because Fredy Perlman refuses to give his narrative conventional time markers or common place names, and in part because of the nature of the writing, which is verb-heavy and song-like, definitely no popular fiction here (Detroit is Tiosa Rondion, its Iroquois name; the lack of time references was circumvented in this Black & Red edition by putting corresponding dates at the top of every page). After a while, this seems perfectly natural, and pretty soon you are immersed in the story. Perhaps this is what the accounts of people who inhabit cyclical time would sound like. Once acclimated, the book is more than rewarding of the effort.
Like "Against His-Story, Against Leviathan," "The Strait" is deceptive in that it reads like poetry, but is thoroughly researched and accurate with regard to what goes on. I read an academic history of the Indian-European relations in the great lakes region earlier this year ("The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815" by Richard White), and as a result noticed early on that the events described here are historically accurate. Reading this book with the internet browser handy has been fun as well, since the characters are largely historical, and easily researched on the web.
"The Strait" and "Against His-Story, Against Leviathan" are both amazing books which will unfortunately go unread by the vast majority of people because they are unconventional and uncompromising with regard to the expectations of the average reader in our culture. The low expectations and short attention spans will not go unappeased as long as there are NYT best-seller lists, while books that require the kind of work from the reader that this one does are few. Once that "work" has been put in, the reader is amply rewarded; knowledge of the entire world and one's place in it can be this book's gift to those willing to try.
Lorraine Perlman's "Having Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman’s Fifty Years"
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/L...
"Keepers of the Fire," a review of "The Strait" at "the Anvil Review"
http://theanvilreview.org/print/keepe...
I fell progressively more in love with this book as I read on; by the end I didn't want it to end and spent hours looking up any extra information on the characters and events that i could find. The portrait of a human community in slow free-fall is moving and instructive. Having only briefly seen what a human community looks and acts like in my 32 years, I couldn't get enough of the ones depicted here. Fredy Perlman is acutely aware of what it is that makes people living among each other more than a mere collection of individuals, and the ways in which this unity is inherently fragile. I think Fredy is on the same page with Wendell Berry and others who have suggested that joy is not real unless it is shared. Said otherwise, our lives are meaningless without joy, and joy is impossible without a shared human context. The "constraints" of old-fashioned cultures are revealed to be the opposite of what we've always been told they are (namely, fetters): the framework which makes joy and self-realization possible.
"The Strait" is initially hard to get into, in part because Fredy Perlman refuses to give his narrative conventional time markers or common place names, and in part because of the nature of the writing, which is verb-heavy and song-like, definitely no popular fiction here (Detroit is Tiosa Rondion, its Iroquois name; the lack of time references was circumvented in this Black & Red edition by putting corresponding dates at the top of every page). After a while, this seems perfectly natural, and pretty soon you are immersed in the story. Perhaps this is what the accounts of people who inhabit cyclical time would sound like. Once acclimated, the book is more than rewarding of the effort.
Like "Against His-Story, Against Leviathan," "The Strait" is deceptive in that it reads like poetry, but is thoroughly researched and accurate with regard to what goes on. I read an academic history of the Indian-European relations in the great lakes region earlier this year ("The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815" by Richard White), and as a result noticed early on that the events described here are historically accurate. Reading this book with the internet browser handy has been fun as well, since the characters are largely historical, and easily researched on the web.
"The Strait" and "Against His-Story, Against Leviathan" are both amazing books which will unfortunately go unread by the vast majority of people because they are unconventional and uncompromising with regard to the expectations of the average reader in our culture. The low expectations and short attention spans will not go unappeased as long as there are NYT best-seller lists, while books that require the kind of work from the reader that this one does are few. Once that "work" has been put in, the reader is amply rewarded; knowledge of the entire world and one's place in it can be this book's gift to those willing to try.
Lorraine Perlman's "Having Little, Being Much: A Chronicle of Fredy Perlman’s Fifty Years"
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/L...
"Keepers of the Fire," a review of "The Strait" at "the Anvil Review"
http://theanvilreview.org/print/keepe...
December 19, 2012
excellent review by rocinate posted here:
http://theanvilreview.org/print/keepe...
this book is really important. i want everyone who lives in the broad great lakes region to read it.
a dream-like, song-like, fictional but well-researched and fact-based story of colonization and its effects on the indigenous people of the great lakes region. the narration shifts generation to generation through several indigenous folks over the timespan of the 1500s to the mid-1800s.
beautiful, phenomenal story that evoked immense grief in me. i learned more about the personal effects of colonization and the process of how folks made meaning and understanding about the different waves of Invaders (Quakers, missionaries, priests, fur traders, British soldiers, Spanish soldiers, people who defected and wanted to live with the Native Americans, "landgrabbers," folks who married in to the tribes or were adopted) than i ever did in school or articles or anywhere else.
thank you, fredy perlman, and my unending grief and sorrow, apologies and commitment to solidarity with the native people of these americas.
http://theanvilreview.org/print/keepe...
this book is really important. i want everyone who lives in the broad great lakes region to read it.
a dream-like, song-like, fictional but well-researched and fact-based story of colonization and its effects on the indigenous people of the great lakes region. the narration shifts generation to generation through several indigenous folks over the timespan of the 1500s to the mid-1800s.
beautiful, phenomenal story that evoked immense grief in me. i learned more about the personal effects of colonization and the process of how folks made meaning and understanding about the different waves of Invaders (Quakers, missionaries, priests, fur traders, British soldiers, Spanish soldiers, people who defected and wanted to live with the Native Americans, "landgrabbers," folks who married in to the tribes or were adopted) than i ever did in school or articles or anywhere else.
thank you, fredy perlman, and my unending grief and sorrow, apologies and commitment to solidarity with the native people of these americas.
April 30, 2010
This is an incredibly moving, dream-like story (or collection of stories) about indigenous displacement in the Great Lakes area. It jumps around through a lot of different time periods, but maintains a very vivid and credible non-European perspective.
December 25, 2025
Like bedtime lullabies, our ancestors trials, tribulations, victories, celebration, fears, anxieties, happinesses, sorrows, joys–the ups and downs of life–can be recovered through the mask, the song, the dance.
June 15, 2013
A difficult read not helped by problems with vision in one eye. I'm going to go back to it at a later date and give it another shot.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews