Seth Kantner
Absolutely stunning novel about a white boy raised as an eskimo: hunting, fishing, and living off the land and not much else. His struggles to fit in both in the Eskimo town a days sled from his home and later in ‘white’ alaskan cities show that the only place he really fits is out on the tundra – living by his own hands.
The author, Seth Kantner is loosely the protagonist, having grown up himself in the wilds of northern Alaska. He got a journalism degree from the University of Montana, lived in the states for a bit, but is now back living in northern Alaska with his wife and their children.
Before I go on writing about the book I want to say that Kantner is living in a way that I’ve dreamed about seriously of late. I couldn’t tell you how great I think it would be if I could move up to my family’s land in central Minnesota and live by my own means, not by those of society.
There is a certain romanticism in living alone, or at least separated from most of what goes on daily around you – not necessarily the news, or the flow of information, but the constant flux of activity and energy that is inherent in any human community. The arctic life portrayed in the book seems so austere and perfect: work for what you need, not more; work in an enjoyable fashion, not just to earn whatever it is that allows you to assert your value to others.
The humble honest lifestyle of Abe is one of my favorite aspects of the book. He paints one picture at a time on his easel, throughout the book you see most of them thrown into the fire as soon as he finishes them. He doesn’t brag like the men and hunters from town. His personality also creates one of Cutuk’s largest dilemmas, how to slip between the world he grew up in and loves and the world of town and other people.
Kantner has a few sites on the web:
I found that a lot of Kantner’s ideas fit into my feeling that society these days is just too much, more then anyone needs, and that it’s excesses aren’t really doing anybody any good. Some of the things the world has going for it now are truly great, but most of the byproducts of human interest and industry these days really are doing bad to the world. Kantner illustrates this in how the white man’s culture helps bring about the downfall of the eskimo town, by the introduction of drugs, technology, and easy money to the indigenous people.
The only true eskimo hunter in the book is Enuk Wolfglove, the second best out there would have to be Abe and Cutuk – both white men transplanted into the tundra lifestyle. Very few eskimos in town honor their traditions, and small problems escalate quickly into town wide drug problems, problems with sex, problems with recklessness (usually caused by drugs), and problems with suicide. The whole lifestyle has been corrupted in the village.
”... City,” [Abe] rubbed his ears. “it’s everything about insulating you from the earth. I didn’t want to work some hob just to afford to get you out to the wilderness once in a while. You can’t have both. I like the life close to the earth. It’s alive. The city made me feel wrapped up and a long way from myself. 127
“People pretend they’re not animals. It makes them tired. So they pretend a whole bunch more. That makes the really tired.” [Jerry] grinned and peered at his arm, equally interested in the conversation and his elbow. “The biggest heroes are the ibggest pretenders. Actors. The big pretend story is it’ll-all-be-better-in-the-end.” He grinned, “It’s called heaven.” 217
Money and the telephone – I hated them – leaving you worse then alone, connected to a billion people with no way to buy what you really needed and no one to call. 227
“Life down there is… like your running before it runs out. Seems like people design great chairs then… then I don’t know. Pay bills in them? They make shoes that are beautiful and expensive, and water gets right in them. Scientists – who knows what they’re inventing or what poor animal they’re collaring so they don’t have to go outside to really learn about it. People hardly think about the animals. They argue about abortion, then get mad if you don’t ‘fix’ your dogs [...] When I think of humans as one big herd? I see winter coming and them scurrying around thinking about sex or losing their keys.” Cutuk, 254
Suddenly the past was over. It would never come back to protect us. We’d been pretending as well as any actors. The chasm between legends around the fire and surround-sound TV, snowshoed dog trails and Yamaha V-Mac snowmobiles was too overwhelming, and no hunting, no tears, no federal dollars could take us back across. I felt an avalanche of grief, and momentarily thought I’d lost Abe, and Janet, too. 273
I felt hollowness tunnel down my arteries and wondered why this was never enough – a man and his campfire. Didn’t anyone want “economic development” to have an edge you could walk to and look at what the earth had so perfectly developed? Didn’t people look at America and catch their breath, thinking, “Gosh, it must have been such an amazing country!” 301
I know I have.
On the bottom of page 307 Cutuk summarizes what he thinks is going wrong with people because they have been so isolated in their civilization that they can just hear over the radio that there is a huge bull moose, track it automatically by GPS, crash their airplanes into the tundra, and walk up and shoot the moose. Cutuk has known this moose for a year, seen is daily, hiding in the brush, wading in the stream.
Shooting him would have been as challenging as sport shooting a sofa. [...] Only the flap of head skin hung from the antlers, no thousand pounds of meat in sight. And I stood on the sand and wished, I just wished this fucking dentist could feel the other 364 days a year the moose had fought to live. 308
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