The Hidden West: Journeys in the American Outback by Rob Schultheis (review)

264 Western American Literature the stars, and he made them from the same sand and clay, ashes and lime. As the real hero of this book, Chan K’in is a grand repository of cosmological lore and common sense. Recently, however, the Lacandon way of lifehasbeen seriously threatened by outside interests who want to log their mahogany and drill for gas and oil. Evangelists want to save their souls. Perera and Bruce want to stem the tide of exploitation and help preserve Lacandon culture. Therefore this book. Bruce has provided an informative introduction to the Lacandones, but most of The Last Lords of Palenque is Perera’sjournal accounts of their visits to Lacandon villages: meals and conversations, storytelling and balche (the local brew) sessions, dreams and rituals. This format has the disadvantages of repetition and encumbering detail. The book could well use genealogical tables, a brief bibliography, an index and some editing. On the other hand, these informal, personal transcriptions preserve a semblance of life as it islived in situ, and this particular fabric is unravelling. While The Last Lords of Palenque is filled with material about the Lacandones, it is equally about Victor Perera and Robert Bruce, romantic outsiders who want to “save” the Lacandones from outsiders (an irony they acknowledge), and perhaps find answers for their own spiritual needs and those of a decaying Western civilization. During the course of the book Perera matures from a wide-eyed quester for a rain forest Don Juan and altered states of consciousness to a more balanced observer of Lacandon people. He is convinced, however, that they “have much to teach us about our basic natures.” Anthropologists and novelists have long made similar claims for Indians in the Southwest (USA). The implied logic is that since they live more basic, close-to-nature lives, they should reveal something about human nature before it was corrupted by modern cities, capitalism and technology. The primary reason, however, for paying attention to the Lacandones is that, as human beings, they should be able to make choices about their own destinies. This book makes a contribution to that end. DAVID JOHNSON University of New Mexico The Hidden West: Journeys in the American Outback. By Rob Schultheis. (New York: Random House, 1982. 176 pages, $11.50.) Rob Schultheis first came west by hitchhiking across the plains in 1962. The Hidden West records his adventures and discoveries over the next dozen years. He roams the American “outback,” becoming an enthusiast delighted with himself at having seen the remote and overlooked parts of the region. Those who have also hitchhiked across the Great Plains, asking at strange farmhouses for bed and board, or who have called a drafty shack on the Colo­ rado Plateau “home” for a year, or who have trekked into slickrock and Reviews 265 canyon country, will understand the challenges recorded in this book, and the dangers. Those who haven’t made the journeys will, perhaps, find themselves wishing they could. You would not call Schultheis’ style engrossing, but vivid and active enough to keep you interested. You can put The Hidden West down, but you do not mind returning to it again .. .unless you are distracted by hisoccasional flirtations with the thesaurus, that is. There are phrases such as “the two gunsels dropped me off,” “seven xanthic cities,” “blank, analphabetic hills,” and “a necrotic, etiolated place.” mingled with ephemeral and allusive men­ tions of Eastern philosophy and lore — “The Buddhists and Hindus talk of time in kotis of kalpas” — but these are minor annoyances more than aggra­ vations. The two most disappointing chapters describe potentially significant jour­ neys anticlimactically. In “The Great Plains,” for instance, Schultheis’ visit with the medicine man Strange Bear seems to hold out to him the opportunity to learn Lakota and to attempt a vision quest, yet he must turn his back on it. Later, he spends “almost a year” in getting to Navaho Mountain. “It seemed the essence of everything reticent, unknowable, in the country of the Navaho.” At the top, finally, he only finds some Navaho workmen in plastic hard hats building a power line. They give him a ride back down in their vehicle. “On the way...