William Eastlake (1917–1997)

A loose sequel to Go in Beauty, Eastlake’s second novel has been the most successful and accessible of the Checkerboard trilogy. Tied to its predecessor only by Big Santi (George) Bowman, My Prayer and occasional character references, it can (and should for those uninterested in the prequel’s artistic themes) be read on its own terms as a coming-of-age western epic, mixing the best of Kesey with Cormac McCarthy’s rare comedy (i.e., Suttree) amongst a dusty, lonely landscape, seemingly show more without law or outside influence.

Across the Checkerboard, it always starts with a misunderstanding: The novel opens with a bloody shootout, neither participant, the Gran Negrito (’…an awfully odd color…for a white man’) and Big Sant, sure of why they’re defending themselves at the Circle Heart. Water? cattle? Idunfrigginkno. Watching from nearby, two curious Navajos curiously watch these two ‘white’ outsiders act out their silly white ways, not really caring one way or the other. The Gran Negrito falls in a confused blaze to protect his son and protect his books. Big Sant rushes in to save the man despite the misunderstanding as a child rushes out the back. This is—right?—how the Circle Heart land comes to the Bowman line, and how Alastair Benjamin, the escaping child, joins the Bowmans.

[N.B. This review includes images, and was formatted for my site, dendrobibliography -- located here.]

The story itself is more in-focus this time around, and it follows the maturation of brothers Little Sant and Alastair Benjamin, their growings-up and growings-apart, each seeking to escape the Checkerboard region. Li’l’ Sant dreams of nothing but being a bronc man, riding rodeos for the pleasure of anonymous crowds; Alastair nothing but an education, he reads and reads the burned out stories left behind by the Gran Negrito, wanting to get away from the Circle Heart’s intellectual decrepitude, always quick to show off his advanced vocabulary (often incorrectly).

Again, the plot serves a series of vignettes set over 8-ish years, the boys exploring the landscape, spending more and more time away from the Circle Heart, getting involved with Navajo tomfoolery or corporate-slash-government misadventures. A favorite moment, Eastlake takes a dip into Aldo Leopold territory, attacking in one instance the government’s insistence on carnivore extirpation; their orders: ’Go out and kill all the coyotes because we have already killed almost all the big cats that prey on them and after you have killed all the coyotes then kill all the rabbits because when the coyotes are gone the rabbits will, of course, explode, and after the rabbits are gone whatever they feed on will be all over the place and then you exterminate that and then the next and the next until we are the only animal alive!’ Eastlake. 1958. Way ahead of his time.

And again, the insistence of the Christian world to convert the native entire and take nothing in return. A manic-depressive missionary devotes his life to the conversion of the locals, with nothing to show for his lifelong attempt at expounding ‘progress’ except for his garish European home and a single convert—whose death causes much confusion: Christian or Navajo? How the fuck is this handled? and what does the missionary do now? kill himself? leave, hands empty? burn? or…(’I must get downriver before they convert me.)?

Indian Fighter, Blue-Eyed Billy Peersall, 100-something years old, settled in the region long before, after the wars on the natives were halted, not liking the Indians but neither appreciating the whites’ coping, he cares for nothing and tolerates everything, telling amnesiac stories of a bullshit wild west or hushing for returned loneliness. The elder Navajo My Prayer shares his views during the climactic sweetie sweetie, reflecting in one of the most poignant commentaries on the white-red cultural divide:

As soon as we spoke, the day we spoke, that was the beginning of the end. That was the day the white man began to love the Indian to death. A white man can never commit a crime and forget it. When we stole this land, when the Navajo stole this land from the Gallina people, the Navajo forgot it. Except for some rather pleasant memories of the war, the Navajo forgot it. When the white man stole this land from the Navajo Nation he has got to compound the crime in order to forget it. He’s got to love us to death. Love is their way of not giving back something they have stolen….I wonder if the white man will ever learn that [to be tolerated]…is all any defeated people ever want….To be allowed to be different. Love is their way of intolerance. Love is their gentle way of grabbing you firmly by the ziz and twisting until an Indian hollers Uncle Sam. The whites never did anything wrong that wasn’t made up for by this love. Their love is like a gentle ziz-twisting thing. Their love.

Thirteen readers. Thirteen.

Don’t let me forget Little Sant and Alastair Benjamin.

[12] show less

A very original mix of journalism and poetry, mostly on the Vietnam war but also on Mexico and Native Americans. The themes are linked by Eastlake's despair for white America and empathy for its victims. The journalism is in the moment and occasionally startling, as in the account of the napalming of some Vietnamese. The poetry is spare, outraged, ironic - and really pretty good. This is my sixth book by Eastlake and it seems he can do no wrong.

Eastlake returns to the Checkerboard Indian country of northwestern New Mexico, the setting of his brilliant so-called trilogy, for a final hangout with the Navajo as White America threatens to explode, flood, develop, sell or otherwise despoil the last of their land from under them. The whiplash dialogue, equally comic and gnomic, is amped up even further now, sometimes wobbling on the verge of self-parody, and the scenes of the author-character and his wife screwing on the floor of their show more ranch house didn’t do a lot for me. But these are minor quibbles set against (i) the excellence of Eastlake’s satire of this society that hunts eagles with helicopters and stripmines the desert to feed redundant power plants and (ii) his empathy with the Indians, such that there’s never a question of who’s the “other” here. show less

Blurring the line between fiction and travelogue isn't a new idea - viz Mandeville, or Sterne's Sentimental Journey. But I don't think it's ever been done as naturally as in these eight pieces by Eastlake, split equally between Morocco and Spain. His trademark ping-pong dialogue is here, although not so much as in his straight fiction, and Eastlake the traveler shows the same detached curiosity, with moments of brilliant engagement, as the protagonists of his novels. His style is simply show more unique, I'm running out of books by him, and that makes me sad. show less