Noopiming. The Cure for White Ladies, Leanne Betasamoskje Simpson (And Other Stories)
The Dance and the Fire, Daniel Saldaña París, tr. Christina MacSweeney (Charco Press)
Noopiming is a strange and haunting book about connections, ancestry and colonialism. The back cover tells us that the different characters in the book are mostly parts of the narrator, but they feel more like ancestral voices or spirit guides, perhaps even hallucinations due to the fact that Mashkawaji, who is telling the story, is a frozen corpse in an iced-up Canadian lake.
The many characters appear in mostly brief – sometimes a single sentence or aphorism – chapters of reported narrative, but there are also some poems, lists and brief lectures. Mashkawaji and his many parts, along with animals and other beings, all long for a return to traditional indigenous life in sacred territory but meanwhile make do with sneaking in to fenced-off land at night, partaking in rituals and ceremonies as best they can, and making use of modern items such as discounted tarps.
It is not always clear who is who or what, and there are many obscure references and unexplained words here, but gradually the reader gets sucked into this world of connections, dreamings and quiet resistance. There are many funny passages here but also tragicomic events and disappointments as spirits, relatives and strangers act upon what is called a ‘beautiful tendency to stick together’ in an attempt to form ‘a nation of stunning difference’, a nation in opposition to the whites who have stolen and are still stealing their land, denying them what is required for their way of life.
However, this book is neither propaganda nor diatribe, it is a discursive exploration of humans’ relationship to nature, the land and each other. It considers how we might support each other as and when required, and what being part of a flock or tribe or gathering might involve and be. It is an elegy but also a vision of what once was and what could be again, as well as a picture of what it feels like to be dispossessed and usurped. I haven’t read anything so original or immersive for many years
The Dance and the Fire is also a story in parts, but it is much more straightforward and thankfully bears no relationship to Philip Roth’s work, as suggested in one of the cover quotes. The book is about three friends returning to Cuernavaca, Mexico and the tangled relationship they once had as students, and how it affects them now.
Natalia is living with a dislikeable older male and obsesses about her collection of plants. She ends up choreographing and directing a performance piece informed by her reading about the German dancer Mary Wigman, Aleister Crowley’s occult magic, Hanz Prinzhorn’s psychiatry and his ideas about Outsider Art, demonic possession, witchcraft and examples of outbreaks of feverish dancing throughout history. Erre was for a while Natalia’s boyfriend and has returned to his home after a divorce. Conejo is the third side of the triangle, the one who has never left home (his father is almost blind) and who had an almost psychic rapport with Natalia as well as a close and at times sexual friendship with Erre.
Each of the three gets their own section of the book, so we get different takes on some events, inside knowledge about what each feels about the others, and different ideas about what happens on the night of Natalia’s performance. It is unclear if artistic provocations have upset the inhabitants of Cuernavaca or if her dancers have somehow awoken dark forces; either way the city is engulfed by waves of crazy dancing and convulsive movement, all against a backdrop of major fires, looting, destruction and death.
As a study of sexual longing, nostalgia, love, artistic desire and friendship, The Dance and the Fire is thought-provoking and emotionally turbulent. It articulates the difficulties of change as one grows up (or doesn’t) and the pain of friends losing each other or deciding to separate. Although narratively straightforward the differing points of view offer the reader detailed and varying interpretations of what is happening, with much left unexplained and open to interpretation. Just like real life.
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Rupert Loydell
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