ABSTRACT
In his famous essay on Native American novels, William Bevis argues that whereas the classic American novel tends towards a tale of leaving home and ‘lighting out for the territory’ – the phrase is Huckleberry Finn’s – the typical plot of representative Native American novels is that of ‘homing in’. He states that:
[M]ost Native American novels are not ‘eccentric’, centrifugal, diverging, expanding, but ‘incentric’, centripetal, converging, contracting. The hero comes home. ‘Contracting’ has negative overtones to us, ‘expanding’ a positive ring. These are the cultural choices we are considering. In Native American novels, coming home, staying put, contracting, even what we call ‘regressing’ to a place, a past where one has been before, is not only the primary story, it is a primary mode of knowledge and a primary good.
