Word: cuscat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1972-1972
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
TUSHIM'S TALE--beginning with Cuscat's nativity, following him through his early spiritual indoctrination from his parents, Antun and Rosha, and later from the Dominicans, and concluding with his maturity as a visionary and revolutionary leader--unified the various historical, anthropological and folk sources which the novelist consulted and which he includes as notes at the back of the book. Two of the most haunting scenes in the novel have analogues in this source material. One, recorded by Harvard anthropologist Evon Vogt, is a myth from a town near Chamula, which explains how a bull was present when...
Another scene finds its source in an unsympathetic rendition by the Mexican historian, Vicente Pineda, of a crucifixion by Cuscat and his followers of one of their own people. But in the context of the novel, the crucifixion of Pedro's brother, Salvador, who is already a very sick man, seems a natural act of piety. And though afterwards Cuscat realizes that to the Dominicans his people dancing in frantic circles are only blasphemous drunken Indians, to him, their leader, they are "drowning people going toward a core which doesn't even have a name, certainly it is not called...
...buried with his father. But his special sensitivity is his knack of combining the ordinary with the lofty, comparing the ecstasies of the saints, for instance, to eating chiles ("The heat is fine for a time, but afterwards the discomfort in the back field is too great.") For Cuscat, as his Dominican teacher tells him, is "one of those who can hold opposites comfortably in his head." His natural response to a visitation from Santa Rosha is not awe but laughter. "We speak of God," the novelist explains, "the Indians speak...
...death is liquid," he remembers, "the camera turns and dances, the river ruffles at the men's legs." If this description--with its stark imagery and fluid camera work--is reminiscent of a dream memory, it is by no means coincidental. For the language of dreams mediates between Cuscat's life as he actually lived it and Wilson's imaginative portrait of this life. The documents and folk tales, the social details and visual images only let him help the reader see and hear the story. To help us understand it, he must relive the story through dreams. "For whatever...
...fill him with enough strength to lead the insurrection. For though political and social historians may begin to explain a revolutionary as a political and social actor, only a novelist can see into a man's dreams and breathe life into him. In a more modest way, Wilson repeats--Cuscat's visionary insights crossing back and forth over the borders of dreams with ease, and like his own hero, he sees how life might...