Valerie's Reviews > Always Coming Home

Though the introduction describes this as 'an archaeology of the future', it's no such matter. It's an ETHNOLOGY of (part of) the future, after the style of the Bureau of American Ethnology Reports, to which LeGuin has no doubt had access for most of her life. Most people who read LeGuin's works apparently are unaware that she is the daughter of the famous anthropologist AL Kroeber, and of the writer Theodora Kroeber, both of whom specialized in Northern Alta California. AL Kroeber was a friend of Ishi, last of the Yahi, in his last years, and Theodora wrote at least one biography of Ishi, as well as several volumes of legends and folktales from the area.

Contrary to the comments of many reviewers, I don't see much sign of any global catastrophe so far. The story is set, not in the current location of Northern Alta California, but on an island in the North Pacific, created during the normal processes of continental drift. There may have been quite a few severe seismic events in the process (the area is very seismically active, after all). But continuing processes were probably predominant.

The island is not on any major shipping routes, evidently, and there may no longer be any widespread travel. This may be because of one or more pandemics, since epidemiologists have repeatedly warned that our current culture of continuous mass migration is extremely dangerous.

There is also evidently little in the way of mass communications, though I seem to recall some later in. The population is quite a bit less than present day...but there's mention of widely available contraceptives. There are also electrical devices, though few electronic ones that I can see. There are floodlights, for example--but they're not used generally to saturate the night: only for special festivals, etc.

The society in question is matrifocal (NOT 'matriarchal'. With the exception of the 'childish' (almost exclusively male) warrior societies, there are no customs of unquestioning obedience. Though there are normative customs (such as 'people are not property'), enforced by clowns, there is little coercive behavior, and pretty much EVERYTHING is the subject of negotiation and discussion.) There is kinship from both sides (Stone Teller is regarded as a halfling because she has no paternal grandparents to call on, and at one point acquires a 'side grandfather' to help in not only ceremonies but also in material support), but the primary kinship is through the mother. There is also a culture of adoption.

There's a trace of homophobia, at least in the early parts. The warrior societies are regarded as fairly childish because of their authoritarian and violent tendencies, and because they are almost exclusively male. But I didn't catch at first that one of the insults leveled against them is that they are presumed (accurately or not) to be homosexuals. There's no necessary connection between homosexuality and childishness, even in the book--but at least one of the characters implies such a connection. She herself is viewed somewhat askance as being prejudiced, but she's not argued with.

This is a rich and long book, and should probably be read in short segments, with a chaser. I've recently acquired some new Wodehouse books, so I'll use them as interfilers, until I finish them. Then I'll have to pick something else, because Wodehouse is a quick read.

I'll add more on this book as I go on: but it'll likely take a while to read. When I tried it at first, I didn't get more than about halfway in. I hope that by rationing it out, I can finish it this time.

If you do read the book from beginning to end in sequence, you run into problems at first, as things are foreshadowed but not explained until later. There's quite a careful attempt to avoid observer bias by presenting things from several perspectives. It's middling successful, but it's often strained, as people try to put themselves in other roles, and find themselves unable to leave their own perspectives completely behind.

The island in the book has not gotten very far in its progress into the North Pacific. Well, after all, it's only been about 50,000 years: a millisecond by geological reckoning. It has a Mediterranean climate: wet winters and dry summers, with virtually no snow, except at the highest altitudes. The flora and fauna are mixed: at one point the partially hidden narrator comments that the grass, for example, was introduced by Spanish (Mexican, but Mexico was still under Spanish rule at the time) missionaries. This is possible, but not certain. There are grasses in Alpine meadows in the mountain ranges bifurcated by the rifts, but they may not be native, and they probably aren't Bermuda shortgrass, or the other shortgrasses introduced by the missionaries. There's an oddly gappy ecosystem. Bats. for example, are mentioned at one point (but not elaborated). Honeybees are mentioned, but native bees are not. Honeybees pioneered the area about fifty years ahead of Europeans, following the clover which was also introduced at that time. But in no place did they completely replace native bees: and as of the present time, it's not likely that they will.

I don't much care for the sublimation and displacement of violence. The representation of violence as a childish behavior, disciplined and restricted even in children, and socialized out of adults by shame and gossip, doesn't really resolve the problem. And while several people admit (often in shame) that they don't really fit into their society (the tongue-tied, the maladroit, the lazy, and the tone-deaf too often become 'forest-living', because they can't participate in the society fully, even if they want to), and though this defection is marginally accepted, it's apparent that it too rarely occurs to people just to leave.

The traumatic changes that occurred to the world during the interim between our time and that depicted are pretty clearly not one common disaster. There are references to 'poisoned' places: but these seem to be mostly landfills, including nuclear waste dumps and defunct nuclear reactors. The people are inbred and subject to all manner of congenital and environmental illnesses (some are pretty clearly both). The incest taboos, which seem extreme by our standards (many of the forbidden people are what we would call 'kissing cousins') are probably at least partly an attempt to temper the results of the inbreeding.

The society as represented is a self-exiled part of a larger society that is in some ways more advanced than ours, technologically. The computer systems which are literally and figuratively subterranean in the isolated society are described as engaged in a massive experiment trying to model the cosmos, though it's not clear what the computers and their attendants hope to gain thereby. But even (or perhaps particularly) this complex is far from monolithic, and such self-exiled communities may be common in the solar system at the time.

Like such enclave communities in our own societies (Mennonite communities are the most obvious, but there are 'ethnic' communities in other places, which have a strong element of tourism, but do genuinely maintain a separate identity), the people of 'the Valley' select what technologies they will use and innovate on. They have solar-powered looms--and pedal powered ones, most likely. They have electricity, but they don't always use it. It's not clear what kind of hot water systems they have: in some places it seems to be geothermal (hot springs and suchlike). At one point it becomes positively abhorrent to a librarian: there's a repeated ceremonial purging of libraries and archives. Often a literal bookburning. Though the narratives, recipe books, etc are not fully lost (the computer archives keep copies, which are, however, very poorly indexed), still this perennial destruction (even with recycling) of history is disturbing.

LeGuin recognizes something that most people in our society aren't conscious of: the indecent (almost obscene) haste we live our lives in. There's too much hurry in everything: indeed, it's one of our predominant causes of injury and stress. The people in the stories and observations have made (and are still making) a conscious attempt to slow things down. The fact that their primary compliment is 'mindful' is important. Slapdash haste causes all kinds of ills: the deaths and injuries attributable to sleep-deprivation alone are so common that unless we make a deliberate effort we can't even notice them. The people in the book blame a lot of their ills on the haste as well as the simple massive numbers of their ancestors. And there's quite a bit of justice in that assessment, as there was when the indigenous peoples blamed the plagues that swept through them on the arrival of (often literally) unclean Europeans pouring into their lands.

Minor linguistic note: The name 'Shinshan' kept nibbling at my mind, and finally I tracked it down. Looking up 'Tsimshian' I found that they lived (among other places) in the 'Na'a' valley. I don't think this is a deliberate gloss. I think it was just one of those odd bits of unconnected data that float around in our minds, and alight on the page when we're looking for a name for something.