BOO K S
607
The insights in
The Return of the Vanishing American
are, how–
ever, achieved at a pretty high price. For example, the very interesting
chapter called "The World Without a West" pairs off two views of
American Indians held around 1600 - Montaigne's, that the new men
in the West
were
men, culturally different from Europeans but human
and humanly important, fit objects for anthropological curiosity and
maybe even covert primitivist admiration, and Shakespeare's, that the
Indian (Caliban
=
cannibal
=
Carib) is a dark enemy, a bestial rapist
who threatens the White pieties of marriage, feminine culture, and order
generally. It probably does no good to protest that
The Tempest
is not
"about" Caliban, that in pursuing a large and complex dramatic purpose
Shakespeare found current lore about Indian cannibalism and sexual
prepotency useful in imagining a figure of brute passion and (which
Fiedler doesn't mention) low comic cunning, just as he did lore about
blackamoors and amphibians.
The Tempest
is
not
"a violent attack on
the whole Indian race, disguised as a Mystery Play," nor does Fiedler's
point about the mythic value of Indians really demand that it be taken
as such; it's just a provocative remark, one that comes all the easier for
Fiedler's lack of interest in literary works as whole expressive objects,
his concern, like some crazed Ph.D. candidate, only for what they
contain
that fits your investigative category.
If
you are looking for
Indians in the Renaissance you will find Caliban; just so, if you're look–
ing for certain myths you will be surprised and irritated when they're not
there - Fiedler calls Irving obtuse for not having put some Indians
into "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and Twain disingenuous for pre–
tending not even to notice "the woodland romance between the White
Man and the Indian" that was
really
what irked him about Cooper.
(When someone doesn't see what you want him to see you conclude
that he's covering up what he's secretly afraid of - we owe lots of
nonsense about Jane Austen, for example, to this kind of reasoning.)
By a happy chance, Fiedler's own story "The First Spade in the West"
suits his critical purposes better - the right ingredients are
there,
and he
cites it three times.
But even this sort of thing, which I don't assume Fiedler is unaware
of or unamused by, doesn't account for my reservations. For all the
hocus-pocus, Fiedler's exploration of his main myth - the enmity be–
tween men (secret anarchists and escape artists) and women (all posses–
sive, castrating, culture-mongering Jewish-mother types) -is intriguing
and often subtle.
If
the myth seems a little large to be just American, it
gets adequately domesticated through a fourfold division into the sub–
myths of The Runaway Slave (Rip Van Winkle), Love in the Woods
(Pocahontas and John Smith - the
false
myth), The White Woman
