Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers Part II CHANGES OF THE MOON, p. 365 – 447

Some possible points of discussion for future generations of readers:

I was really taken with this book, and I know I've made some missteps in my comments along the way, in that my concerns in one chapter are often well resolved by what comes later (viz. my comment about not addressing language and communication issues). But anyway:

-In the Grammar of Daughters, the second section of Part II, did you get the impression that the Powhatan Indians seemed a bit simple-minded? There are a few factors that could contribute to this impression. 1) There is a dialect shift, away from the faux-17th-Century dialect associated with the English, towards a more "modern" voice. 2) This is coming at precisely the time of a major narrative shift. Gone is John Smith, gone is even Ratcliffe, and gone with them is the perspective of the alien observer. What might have appeared as simplicity in earlier chapters was preserved from such an impression because we could suppose it resulted from the Indians' otherness, their inscrutability from the English P.O.V., the presumption that still waters run deep, and the obvious historical perspective that is taken, in which we know that the English have left us records but the Indians never recorded their thoughts in writing. The author may speculate somewhat, but he may also feel constrained in speculating too wildly. The result, after the shift, felt to me like simple-mindedness, though I later lost this impression when I had had a chance to adapt to the shift. On some level, though, I think I wanted the author to be more bold in speculating, in giving more of a fictional but plausible insight into the culture and internal strife of the Powhatans. Maybe.

Now, there's a counter to this, which also seems like a bit of conventional sociology (that I'm not sure I buy)... it was presented very subtly, but it's the supposition that preliterate tribal societies have a separate-but-equal kind of intelligence from literate cosmopolitan societies, namely the knowledge and analytic skill to comprehend their physical environs, with complex, detailed, analyzed world-maps, knowledge of hunting grounds and factors of survival, tool-making lore, etcetera. (Yet we know that the Powhatans are a developed agrarian society, not purely hunter-gatherers of the more ancient variety, and the main obstacle to getting insight into their society is the lack of a written record).

I guess, on some level for me this is all right, but I felt some lack of social complexity, or something... And while I enjoyed the emblematic scene of the crafting of the bow, terminating in the arrow piercing the deer's heart, at the same time it seemed perhaps... too emblematic? Hmmm...

-More General question: How do you feel about the sudden absence of John Smith who has been our guide throughout the book, and whose concerns have largely defined our concerns up until now?

-Further conversation: What do you think of Argall? He's a bastard, but is he more terrible merely because of his personality, and because he seems the most fit to thrive with his wry but pragmatic attitude? Can thinking like a cold-hearted snake, or behaving like a cruelly mocking bully actually make him more terrible than a leader like Percy who experiences moral qualms, yet presides over the most terrible attrocities and through his incompetence allows his colonists to starve en masse?

I think when reading any volume of Seven Dreams it is important to keep in mind that each individual novel is part of a greater work and that there are many interrelations going on between the novels. Thus, Argall is a complementary piece to Fathers and Crows (just as The Rifles is to Ice-Shirt, and as both sets complement each other in their complementarity), and I suspect (rather than "think" because it's been a year since I read the novels) that quite a few of those question have to be answered in relation to the earlier novel. Fathers and Crows had a similar two-part structure, and that novel was (kind of) about how good intentions can do worse harm then open greed. Argall seems to make the exactly opposite point that good intentions (personified in John Smith) aren't quite as bad as naked greed (personified in Argall). So I think Vollmann actually presents this an open question, something Seven Dreams gives its readers to ponder rather than providing them with an answer.

In the context of which, I wonder about the didactic impetus of the series. I think Nathan mentioned somewhere that Vollmann views / intended the novels making up Seven Dreams as textbooks, so I guess the question as to what they try to teach their readers is a legitimate one if it's understood that this isn't about distilling something like a "message" from the books.

I admit that ever since The Ide-Shirt I've been a bit frustrated with Vollmann's reticence of giving us a glimpse of the native perspective.I can see why he is doing it, and that in the absence of documents the novels would all too easily end up reducing the natives to sock-puppets for the author-ventriloquist, but even so... It might be one of the reasons why Fathers and Crows is my favourite among the Seven Dreams so far because that novel gives the most space to the native voice.