Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan (review)

Reviews 261 much or more by her relationship with him. Although he wants to believe there is “a betterwayfor men and women to be together”,he finds that there probably is not. “The reason,”he says, is “simple. Separate heads. The human condition.” No matter what we share, no matter what we tell each other, the “ultimate mystery of selfhood remains.” At one point, when asking a bookstore clerk for a book that might help explain reladonships between women and men, Light says he prefers nonfic­ tion because fiction “tends to obscure the matter.”That is certainly not the case with Epstein’sfiction. While the matter itselfmilitates against certitude, Epstein explores it lucidly and sheds light on it from which all of us on the frontier can benefit. TERENCE A. DALRYMPLE Angelo State University Mean Spirit. By Linda Hogan. (New York: Atheneum, 1990. 375 pages, $19.95.) The discovery of oil in Oklahoma in the 1920s proved a greater curse than a blessing to the many Indians who, thanks to this sudden stroke of “luck,” became rich overnight. According to Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw, this instant wealth not only set the Indians on a reckless and spiritless quest to acquire the white man’s symbols of status (big cars and houses, fine furniture and clothes), but it marked them as targets for his boundless capacity for greed. Backed by a legal system they manipulate for their own gain,John Hale andJess Gold, the villains of Hogan’s Mean Spirit, cheat, intimidate, and murder the Osage of Oklahoma in a vicious campaign to wrest their oil-rights away from them. The idea that the material comforts of white culture are destructive rather than redemptive is, by now, a staple of Native American literature. But Hogan, by telling the story from a fresh angle—and by telling it with such compassion, vividness, and epic breadth—avoids stumbling into cliché. Mean Spirit, the first novel by this acclaimed poet and essayist, is a tragedy in the most profound sense; we care for the characters, we recognize our own aspirations and failings in them, and we are trulysaddened when they lose. Their defeat at the hands of wicked men is à loss notjust for Indians, but for all humanity. Yet, for all its violence and sadness, the world of Mean Spiritis enchantingly lyrical. Bees, bats, and horses are in the thick of the action in the novel; an Osage man rises from the dead. Amid brutality, avarice, and grief, Hogan’s respect for the essential beauty and mystery of life neverwavers. With her poet’s eye, she records marvelousjuxtapositions ofdetails; of Grace Blanket, an Indian woman who has spent part of her oil money on a piano, only to become frustrated with trying to learn the songs that the white ladies play and sing, Hogan writes: “After several months she gave up and moved the piano outside 262 WesternAmerican Literature to a chicken coop where it sat neglected, out of tune, and swelling up from the humidity. When a neighboring chicken built a nest on the keys, Grace didn’t even bother to remove the straw and feathers.” A novel this large and ambitious—the cast of characters numbers no fewer than thirty—is bound to be slowed at times by its own complicated design. Nevertheless, no one could read Mean Spirit through to its apocalyptic final pages without feeling that, overall, Hogan has created something vital and deeply touching. Mean Spiritis much like the meteorite that the heroine, Belle Graycloud, wears on a thong around her neck; it is rare, wondrous, and alive with a certain sympathetic power. PAUL HADELLA Arkansas State University Nordi’s Gift. By Clyde Rice. (Portland: Breitenbush Books, 1990. 457 pages, $21.95.) A sequel to his critically-acclaimed autobiography, A Heaven In The Eye (1984), this volume continues the Oregon (1934-1955) adventures and misad­ ventures of the octogenarian Clyde Rice. The predominant portrait here is Rice as dualistic Penitent Male—former husband of Nordi whose displacement, divorce, and death shape the book—and lover of Virginia, his second wife. Nordi becomes compelling when the reader learns in Chapter III (1937) that Rice has developed an affection for Virginia...