Lyric of the Circle Heart: The Bowman Family Trilogy

by William Eastlake

Overview

These novels face head-on the reality of the American Indian, perhaps the last great taboo in American culture. After all of the flag-waving, the wars to protect the Land of the Free, and interventions around the world in the name of democracy, how do Americans admit, even today, that America was not discovered by Columbus and not courageously cultivated by white Anglo-Saxons? The land was invaded and a people destroyed, all in the name of religion, political freedom, and money.

Long before Cormac McCarthy and even long before Tom Robbins, William Eastlake invented an American Southwest whose comic and tragic dimensions, as well as its hard beauty, encapsulates American myths and nightmares in much the way that Faulkner did with his invented Yoknapatawpha County. Against a background of New Mexico that transcends regional space, Eastlake explores race, greed, and tradition, evoking stereotypes for the sake of exploding them and laying bare an American reality that is a strange mix of pop culture, zany humor, biting satire, and a deep-seated respect for and love of the land.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564781369
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	11/01/1996
Series:	American Literature
Edition description:	REVISED
Pages:	518
Product dimensions:	5.48(w) x 9.16(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Editorial Reviews

"Eastlake's prairie-hard prose is as pure and clean as the wind-sanded land that fosters it." --Ken Kesey

Dalkey Archive Press

"Mr. Eastlake's language is direct and simple, and the effect he creates is one of urgency, as though time were running out." --New Yorker

Dalkey Archive Press

"Lyric of the Circle Heart puts on a fine, fleshy display of fantastic characters, biting wit and the best conversations you've ever heard (let alone read).... Since these novellas deal with race, loneliness and alienation, they might easily be tragedies. Perhaps they are. But if so, they're the most deftly humorous tragedies ever written." --Weekly Alibi

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

Originally published in the 1950s and '60s, Eastlake's trilogy of Southwestern novels use fantasy and humor to explore the relationships between whites and Navajos. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly