As of writing this I am only about half way through The Storyteller, but considering I’m missing a few blog posts I thought I would give my opinion of the book so far. The book has yet to truly catch my interest. The Storyteller seems to be more of a book about cultural acceptance rather than mythologies. There are a few brief paragraphs on some of the tribe’s myths and practices, but the bulk of the story appears to be about the attempts to change their culture.
The character Mascarita is a very unlikeable character. While I can sympathize with him and his desire to preserve the native cultures, his reactions and solutions are very radical and impractical. Mascarita is extremely opposed to any form of outside contact with the tribes. I will admit that he does have a good reason to be distrustful of western contact with the native tribes, past interactions between the two have never gone very well for the natives, but I think that Mascarita is hasty to say that all contact should there for be cut off between the two worlds. I completely understand why he is so distrustful of outsiders, but by his logic we can preserve all the great works of art, the mona lisa, the pieta, and the sistine chapel by locking them away and never letting people come in contact with them. It preserves them and protects them from people like Laszlo Toth, but what good is that? What is the point of preservation if not to share it with the world?
Hopefully the second half of the
book can change my mind.
