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What A Long Strange Trip It's Been...
May. 16th, 2011 10:15 pm
I picked up Jean Auel's The Valley of Horses in a bookstore in Washington D.C. when I was 10. I was on a field trip for GaTE kids, and needed something to while away the long tedious bus rides. The book struck me because it featured two of my favorite things at the time - horses, and better yet, prehistoric horses. I read it out of sequence from Clan of the Cave Bear, which I did go back and pick up at a later time.
I've been reading these books since 1985, and re-read them over the past few weeks so I could get back into the storyline for Land of the Painted Caves. I've had some realizations about the series.
1) Yes, the books did get me deeply interested in healing herbs. But looking back at some 27 years of independent herbal research, I kind of know that willow bark tea is a pain reliever and datura is a potentially dangerous psychoactive plant.
2) I know how to make tea. From scratch. On a fire made from scratch, both with a bow and platform and pyrite/flint. I've done it to prove to myself it could be done. Humans have been making tea and fire for a long Goddamned time - I don't need any more instructions, thanks.
3) At one time, thanks to Shelters of Stone, I memorized that whole fucking Mother Goddess saga/poem. This time through, when I saw the italicized print, I skipped ahead.
4) Repeated sex scenes between the two main characters have become as formulaic as 18 years of sex with my husband. I think they were formulaic before sex between me & Rob became formulaic. I also skipped those. Luckily for Rob, I'm still willing to cook according to the standard recipe.
5) Yes, men & women make babies via sex. It's not all that revolutionary.
6) Monogamy between characters in books about wildly polygamous people makes little sense & may have added some spice to the formulaic monogamous sex scenes, much as it does in real life.
7) Jondalar is a dumb jock.
8) Plains of Passage is too long. The Mammoth Hunters was too short.
9) Somehow, the Neanderthals were more human and had more character than any of the Cro-Magnons. They seemed to exhibit far more personality and depth for being the more 'primitive' people.
10) I think the whole series would benefit from illustrations.
11) I forgot that Jerika & Joplaya were basically Japanese or eastern Asian.
12) The books do paint a pretty good portrait of the geography of ancient Europe, but they seem more like a botanical & geographical study with people thrown in to add perspective to the environmental conditions of the Ice Age. With that in mind, Plains of Passage was still too fucking long.
I've been reading reviews for LoPC on amazon, and that's probably a mistake. Most of them (I didn't read all 600) are negative. I trudged through SoS, mainly because it was a fairly recent re-read for me (2002). There was some decent conflict in it, though, and I'm hoping some of those issues will be resolved in the last book. From what other people have written, it sounds like Auel got tired of Ayla & Jondalar, wanted to be done with them and suddenly decided to make them unlikeable to everyone, including themselves. I can understand that. You live with someone who is innovative, creative, the center of attention and good-looking for 20 years and see how long it takes you to want to murder them.
Some of the reviews just show a poor understanding of Auel herself. Many people bring up, over & over again, that Auel is guilty of 'Margaret Murraying' cavemen. She openly admits in almost every interview where the question is asked that she's a feminist, and that she made up the relative patriarchal/matriarchal religions & societal structures of the Neanderthals & Cro-Magnons. Her cornerstone of the matriarchy of the Cro-Magnons are the numerous Venus figures. Are they fat? Are they pregnant? Is it sympathetic magic - hoping to implore the spirits-that-be that the whole tribe would like to be blessed with enough food to be fat? Are they fetishes to ensure pregnancy? Do they have worms or severe body-wide edema? Does it matter? Anyone can see that they are female & that was that.
Auel has actually been a role model for me recently - she reinvented herself from a basic business woman into a pretty decent archaeological & anthropological researcher and writer in her late 40s, and she's 75 now. After re-reading the entire saga, I can honestly say she's not the greatest writer, and feels a constant need to fill in the back-story for those who haven't read the earlier novels, but I read and enjoy Stephen King, too. I can also honestly think Auel is a good sight better writer than say, Laura K. Hamilton.
There have been some revelations about ancient man in the news over the past 10 years, and seeing it in hindsight to the books was kind of weird for me. I wonder if Auel will include any of it in LoPC considering how much detail she's invested in the entire series. Sticking in new bits of technology to established cultures now would seem glaringly obvious. Obviously, the whole Denosivan thing came out too late to add a new encounter to the last book.
I've been reading these books since 1985, and re-read them over the past few weeks so I could get back into the storyline for Land of the Painted Caves. I've had some realizations about the series.
1) Yes, the books did get me deeply interested in healing herbs. But looking back at some 27 years of independent herbal research, I kind of know that willow bark tea is a pain reliever and datura is a potentially dangerous psychoactive plant.
2) I know how to make tea. From scratch. On a fire made from scratch, both with a bow and platform and pyrite/flint. I've done it to prove to myself it could be done. Humans have been making tea and fire for a long Goddamned time - I don't need any more instructions, thanks.
3) At one time, thanks to Shelters of Stone, I memorized that whole fucking Mother Goddess saga/poem. This time through, when I saw the italicized print, I skipped ahead.
4) Repeated sex scenes between the two main characters have become as formulaic as 18 years of sex with my husband. I think they were formulaic before sex between me & Rob became formulaic. I also skipped those. Luckily for Rob, I'm still willing to cook according to the standard recipe.
5) Yes, men & women make babies via sex. It's not all that revolutionary.
6) Monogamy between characters in books about wildly polygamous people makes little sense & may have added some spice to the formulaic monogamous sex scenes, much as it does in real life.
7) Jondalar is a dumb jock.
8) Plains of Passage is too long. The Mammoth Hunters was too short.
9) Somehow, the Neanderthals were more human and had more character than any of the Cro-Magnons. They seemed to exhibit far more personality and depth for being the more 'primitive' people.
10) I think the whole series would benefit from illustrations.
11) I forgot that Jerika & Joplaya were basically Japanese or eastern Asian.
12) The books do paint a pretty good portrait of the geography of ancient Europe, but they seem more like a botanical & geographical study with people thrown in to add perspective to the environmental conditions of the Ice Age. With that in mind, Plains of Passage was still too fucking long.
I've been reading reviews for LoPC on amazon, and that's probably a mistake. Most of them (I didn't read all 600) are negative. I trudged through SoS, mainly because it was a fairly recent re-read for me (2002). There was some decent conflict in it, though, and I'm hoping some of those issues will be resolved in the last book. From what other people have written, it sounds like Auel got tired of Ayla & Jondalar, wanted to be done with them and suddenly decided to make them unlikeable to everyone, including themselves. I can understand that. You live with someone who is innovative, creative, the center of attention and good-looking for 20 years and see how long it takes you to want to murder them.
Some of the reviews just show a poor understanding of Auel herself. Many people bring up, over & over again, that Auel is guilty of 'Margaret Murraying' cavemen. She openly admits in almost every interview where the question is asked that she's a feminist, and that she made up the relative patriarchal/matriarchal religions & societal structures of the Neanderthals & Cro-Magnons. Her cornerstone of the matriarchy of the Cro-Magnons are the numerous Venus figures. Are they fat? Are they pregnant? Is it sympathetic magic - hoping to implore the spirits-that-be that the whole tribe would like to be blessed with enough food to be fat? Are they fetishes to ensure pregnancy? Do they have worms or severe body-wide edema? Does it matter? Anyone can see that they are female & that was that.
Auel has actually been a role model for me recently - she reinvented herself from a basic business woman into a pretty decent archaeological & anthropological researcher and writer in her late 40s, and she's 75 now. After re-reading the entire saga, I can honestly say she's not the greatest writer, and feels a constant need to fill in the back-story for those who haven't read the earlier novels, but I read and enjoy Stephen King, too. I can also honestly think Auel is a good sight better writer than say, Laura K. Hamilton.
There have been some revelations about ancient man in the news over the past 10 years, and seeing it in hindsight to the books was kind of weird for me. I wonder if Auel will include any of it in LoPC considering how much detail she's invested in the entire series. Sticking in new bits of technology to established cultures now would seem glaringly obvious. Obviously, the whole Denosivan thing came out too late to add a new encounter to the last book.
