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Article: Earth as mother, earth as other in novels by Silko and Hogan. (Leslie Marmon Silko, Linda Hogan)
- Article from:
- CRITIQUE: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Heldref Publications. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Larry McMurtry's epic novel of the American West Lonesome Dove pits a ragtag, horse-rustling, Montana-bound outfit of former Texas Rangers against evil incarnate in a renegade Comanche named Blue Duck. The characters act out a life-or-death struggle against the backdrop of a relentlessly harsh, indifferent landscape. I bring up McMurtry's book not to trash it--in truth, it is not so cliche-ridden as my two-sentence synopsis suggests--but because it embodies a fundamental difference between the fiction of white Americans and that of native Americans. Simply stated, whites are taught (by the Bible, for one, which gives man "dominion" over the earth) to see the land as ...