The Borribles (review)

REVIEWS 111 vivendi, probably can't be disclosed short of a full-length biography. But, as these poems make clear, a decisive factor was Macleod's early attempt to assimilate and preserve the Western experiences of his youth through his experiments as a regional poet. His natural resistance to the urbanized landscape of industrial capitalism is communicated quite early in the poem "Subway," in which Macleod describes himself as a moose, hamstrung and bloodied by the alien environment of New York City. In his later, more philosophical, verse, the Western theme becomes transformed from mere nostalgia to a mood of lonely grandeur, as in "Chief Joseph the Nez Perce," one of the most moving poems in the entire collection. Macleod compares his role-as a poet, true to the original values of his generation-with that of the famed chief of a group of Nez Perce Indians. Chief Joseph resisted orders to leave land that had been ceded to the United States government by a fraudulently-obtained treaty. He has gone down in the history books as a triumphant figure, primarily because of the role attributed to him (somewhat inaccurately) as the mastermind of the heroic fighting retreat of the Nez Perces as they sought to evade confinement in a reservation by escaping to Canada. But Macleod's ending for the story is different: tomorrow the son I then will be will renounce not only the men who were his anchor in the past but also his race, name, those poems he will never know, there fore he will die as I will die grey as the ultimatum motorized transport move upon, atomizing our tablet in this world's mind. In characteristic fashion Macleod cannot accept the historical triumph of Chief Joseph in 1877 as anything but a mark to be corroded away. Like the experiences of the poet's own life-the dissolution of his four marriages, the estrangement from his beloved son, the eclipse of his literary reputation after the 1930s and 1940s-the victory of the moment begins to be undermined by the disintegrating process of time at the very instant of triumph. Alan WaId Michael de Larrabeiti, The Borribies. New York: Macmillan, 1976. 240 pp. $6.95. Fantasy literature is enjoying a boom these days, but there is very little of the fantastic in this literature which seeks to stretch our minds and go beyond the market expectations of the publishing business and the consumer interests of readers. Most fantasy literature either tries to capitalize on the profits garnered by science-fiction writers of sensationalism forecasting our doom or endeavors to imitate those fairy tales which conceive more idyllic worlds to escape the envisioned technological catastrophes awaiting us around the corner. Certainly the trend toward fantasy is a reflection of how impoverished and dangerous the computerized routines of everyday life have become for us. And yet, the value of fantastic literature as presenting solid social commentary on the erosion of humanist values has rarely been demonstrated by contemporary authors. Instead, fantastic fiction generally estranges us to remain 112 THEMINNESOTA REVIEW helpless and hopeless, unprepared to cope with the forces operating on us save for the escapist flight into the imagination. Rarely are we estranged positively to remain estranged, that is, to gain and retain critical distance through a fantastic narrative which makes us conscious of the need to reshape the reality of our situation. This is all the more reason why Michael de Larrabeiti's novel The Borribies should be recognized as one of the finest fantasy works in recent years: at a time when fantasy literature is being instrumentalized to divert us from dealing with crucial social problems, especially those confronting our youth, de Larrabeiti leads us on a fantastic adventure which can only move us to become more involved in the outcast state of young people and compel us to grasp the meaning of adventure as a struggle for survival. The Borribies comes from the land most famous today for bringing us hobbits. And to a certain extent, de Larrabeiti's novel can be considered a more radical creative endeavor in the direction taken by Tolkien in The Hobbit and Lord ofthe Rings in...