Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Ammahabas by Bill Hotchkiss

1985; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wal.1985.0033

1948-7142

Winfred Blevins,

American Literature and Culture

Reviews 345 ing the killing over eight hundred times and reliving it in the process, until Charley (who plays the murdered Jesse on stage) is haunted to suicide. Bob makes and loses several fortunes, becomes a gambler and a brothel owner in the Rockies, and is finally gunned down in a gold rush town. Hansen provides a marvelous blend of nemesis, history, legend, and Americana. While the narrative moves along irresistibly, the author packs it with intimate details that reconstruct the era that is at once so close to us and so remote. He has what Henry James called “the sense of the past.” Though the history is meticulous, the book is very much a novel, with a deadpan sense of humor both in the narrative and dialogue to counterpoint the deadly violence. The novel is both a compelling entertainment and a serious and important work of literature. Whether Hansen will continue with his study of western outlaws or go on to other subjects, he is definitely an author to watch. ROBERT E. MORSBERGER California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Ammahabas. By Bill Hotchkiss. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1983. 350 pages, $15.95.) Mountain-man buffs always welcome another serious addition to the remarkably good body of fiction about the mountain men. And the life of the mulatto trapper Jim Beckwourth is particularly rich in promise. So it is a pleasure to say that Bill Hotchkiss’sAmmahabas, the successor to his Medicine Calf, is distinguished, lyrical, spaciously conceived, and poignantly beautiful. And sad to have to add that it is also fitfully energetic, and often tedious. Medicine Calf took young Beckwourth to the mountains, saw him through some early trapping adventures, got him adopted as a Crow, and established him as a chief of that nation. Ammahabas (the Crow word for the Rocky Mountains, says Hotchkiss) takes him to a pinnacle of power as chief, to marriage with the warrior-woman Pine Leaf, and to the brink of his returning to the white-man life. Hotchkiss promises two more novels to com­ plete a tetralogy, The Crow, and The Death of Captain Jim. Like Medicine Calf, this second installment follows the loose form of the roman de fleuve, narrating Beckwourth’s life chronologically, some events being dramatized from Beckwourth’s autobiography and other sources, and some invented. As headnotes to each chapter are short poems, fashioned in supple masculine language of striking lyricism and often stunning beauty. Hotchkiss’s narrative style is not nearly as effective as his poetry. He often forsakes drama and narrative shape for a haphazard, this-is-what-happenednext quality, the principal danger of the roman de fleuve form. Though some­ times the narrative line is taut, it is as often lax. Reading is stylistically bumpy and rough, like sledding on patchy snow. The central figure is a first-rate achievement — a large, complex char­ acter grandly conceived and written. Beckwourth is larger than life in his 346 Western American Literature lusts, his boldnesses, his abilities, his willingness to be hugely and spontane­ ously himself. This is not simply a brash young trapper feeling his oats, but a man who sees the myriad, crazy possibilities of life and embraces them with an affirming, cosmic laughter. If the book’s other people run to fur-trade stereotypes, it does not matter beside the creation of such a splendid Beckwourth . Hotchkiss is quick to emphasize that his Beckwourth is fictional, and that seems to me right: Why not use the historical mulatto as a frame on which to build a character larger and more resonant than history? But other liberties with history are more dubious: Hotchkiss indicates several times that Moses Harris was a Negro, which he wasn’t; Jedediah Smith is sketched as small both physically and spiritually, a factual error com­ pounded by an interpretive one; emigrants are put into the mountains half a decade before they arrived; and other such small matters. The reshaping of history seems to me legitimate when done knowingly for large artistic purpose, but not when done out of carelessness or ignorance. And, considering Hotchkiss’s impressive ability to enter into the mind of Beckwourth, I hoped for a deeper...