THE MASK MAKER
by Diane Glancy
Mixed-blood Cherokee Native American Glancy—a widely talented prizewinner writer-poet-essayist-playwright, holder of the Cherokee Medal of Honor (Pushing the Bear, 1996)—now explores her roots imaginatively through the agency of masks. She offers a new twist on format for novels by inserting brief parallel passages, either of commentary or narrative, in a different typeface on the same page as the ongoing story, much as movies enjoy simultaneity and tell parallel stories—a narrative structure that here never feels forced. Edith Lewis, a mixed-blood Cherokee, recently divorced from Bill Lewis, drives about Oklahoma giving lessons in mask-making. Edith lives in a universe of masks, has students or those seeking her help make their own masks to project their inner being, sense of outrage, or whatever, much like a Jungian symbol-seeker or Joseph Campbell gathering up the masks of God: ”Everything was broken. The masks got together. They decided they could stop the breaking. They could restore. They could stop the breaking.” FREELY SCATTERED CAPITALS, NOT TO MENTION EXCLAMS!!!, help evoke Edith’s MIXED-UP SPIRIT AS SHE STRIVES TO PULL OFF HER OWN MASK!!!
Like the film Koyaanisqatsi, fearlessly morose about a world out of joint and lives out of balance.