The Lariat [SEP] narrative location
The Lariat
The Lariat is a 1927 short novel by the poet and anthropologist Jaime de Angulo, set in Spanish California. It is reprinted in Bob Callahan, ed. "A Jaime de Anglo Reader" (Turtle Island Books, 1974).
Plot summary.
"The Lariat" is a story told through myriad voices with frequently shifting verb tenses, ultimately dissolving into a patchwork collection of scenes and impressions. Sometimes, we hear the voice of an unknown historian/narrator attempting to piece together the life of
Crawford's "long narrative poems [that] have received particular attention." "Old Spookses' Pass" is a dialect poem, set in the Rocky Mountains, concerning a dream vision of a midnight cattle stampede towards a black abyss that is stilled by a whirling lariat; "The helot" makes use of the Spartans' practice of intoxicating their helots to teach their own children not to drink, as the starting-point for a highly incantatory and hypnotic poem that ends in Bacchic possession and death; and "Gisli