Guests by Michael Dorris

Guests by Michael Dorris

It is open to any one to say that these tales are barbarous, and what Mrs Meynell, in a very clever and amusing essay, hascalled decivilised. Certainly there is a wide gulf separatinglife on a Pacific island from the accumulated culture ofcenturies of civilisation in the midst of which such as MrsMeynell move and have their being. And if there can benothing good in literature that does not spring from that culture, these stories must stand condemned. But such a view is surelytoo narrow. Much as I admire that lady's writings, I never canthink of a world from which everything was eliminated that didnot commend itself to the dainty taste of herself and her friends, without a feeling of impatience and suffocation. It takes a hugevariety of men and things to make a good world. And ranchesand CANONS, veldts and prairies, tropical forests and coralislands, and all that goes to make up the wild life in the face ofNature or among primitive races, far and free from the artificialconditions of an elaborate civilisation, form an element in theworld, the loss of which would be bitterly felt by many a manwho has never set foot outside his native lan

Michael Dorris's
adult fiction includes A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, The Crown of Columbus, coauthored with Louise Erdrich, and the story collection Working Men. Among his nonfiction works are The Broken Cord, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a collection of essays, Paper Trail. His most recent work of children's literature is The Window.