(no subject)

[darchildre]

So, I am reading Summerland by Michael Chabon and enjoy it immensely. It has exciting fantasy worldbuilding, and baseball, and neat magical creatures, and Norse mythology, and Coyote*, and is set in Washington.

I am about a third of the way through and I have Discussion Questions to share with you:

1) Okay, this one isn't really a discussion question but it's something I'd like to know and can't quite find on the internet, so I thought I'd ask, in case any of you know. Did Coyote invent the net? Because I know that Loki did and I know that Trickster is often associated with fishing and I'm pretty sure that I once read that Coyote invented the fish weir, but I don't know enough about Coyote to know about the net. The book says that he did, but I'm not sure if that's not another place where we're conflating Coyote and Loki.

2) The baseball thing: is there any other sport that people write stories about the Magic Of? Because, off the top of my head, I can think of several stories about the Magic Of Baseball, but I can't think of any about, say, the Magic of Soccer or Basketball or Rugby or anything like that. Is it only baseball that people write those kinds of stories about? Is it only Americans who do that?

tricksters_queen, I think you'd probably really enjoy this one.




*It does do this all-Tricksters-are-the-same-Trickster thing, which is kinda weirding me out: Coyote is called Coyote and Changer, but looks like Loki when he's human and was married to a woman named Angry Betty (heh) and sometimes turns into a raven. Loki and Coyote and Raven all feel like very different people to me.

Comments

[silveradept]

I think there's Magic of Baseball because Baseball is one of those sports that aggressively wants to market itself as a family-event kind of sport, where you go early to an affordably-priced event here you can theoretically keep score yourself. (Even at a young age.) So that way you get the nostalgia and the feeling of the magic, even if all you could ever afford is the local minor-league affiliate.

[tricksters_queen]

About Coyote having credit for creating the first fishing net...I am fairly certain that is correct...though I can not recall the myth I read that in at the moment.

I also feel I must agree with you about the all-Tricksters-are-the-same-Trickster thing... ::shivers:: The idea that Cy, Loki, and Raven, etc. are all supposed to be the same person creeps me the frell out. No, I am sorry, but they are not. They are too different.

[darchildre]

I really need to read more about Coyote, because he's interesting but I don't know much about him. Thanks for the answer - it's fascinating that there are multiple trickster gods from very different cultures who all invented fishing.

Even beyond the weird melding of very separate personalities, the conflating of Native gods with European one strikes me as a little bit appropriative and thus kinda skeezy.