Mortality and Causality

“They are no longer solitary human souls; they are part of a single configuration of energy. Their spirits are close with us now as we all gather here. They love us and watch over us with our beloved ancestors.” (Almanac of the Dead 733)

“The novel describes a highly fragmented postmodern social world in which, following the decomposition of the metaphysics of Eurocentric temporality, many people have only partial, photographic access to their history, and these isolated strands of history entangle themselves until they are finally set into motion in a collapsing universe.” (Carren Irr)

“The snake didn’t care about the uranium tailings; humans had desecrated only themselves with the mine, not the earth. Burned and radioactive, with all humans dead, the earth would still be sacred. Man was too insignificant to desecrate her.” (Almanac of the Dead 762)

Through out Almanac of the Dead there is a severe confusion of temporal realities. The narrative presents five versions of “Darien” or Being-in-time mythic: linear, revolutionary, aristocratic, and relativistic. The aim is estrangement and alienation from the mundane and generic use of only linear story telling. Such estrangement challenges the reader to question place and history. In this way, the story cognitively maps the lives of several people in an all encompassing portrait of both time, space, and life.

Functioning much in the same vein as a jigsaw puzzle, Almanac of the Dead is not fully coherent nor understood until the final page. Each character has, on one hand, a singular life and can be superficially understood as such. Further, the novel could have been ten satisfactory novellas. A coked out blond searching for her child, a homeless vet fighting big government, a rags to riches mexican businessman drowning in wealth and corruption. Yet all these lives come together to build a much larger literary mosaic. Lives may be individual but life is not. Indeed, the narrative focuses on no single life but rather is a meta commentary on human society (a very critical one at that).

This greater web of historical and relative relations asks the reader to question his own present. While the reader may live in the mundane day to day, he also weaves a complex pattern through all of human existence. This higher web of interaction is almost entirely forgotten in the modern world. Much to the blame for this rests on the individuals fear of his own insignificance. Another reason lies in the avoidance of guilt for what day to day action causes. Almanac of the Dead entices the reader to face mortality and causality. In doing so, the reader may join the greater flow of energy without shame or trepidation. As well, when the mosaic is finalized, the reader receives a clear message of the novel underlying theme.

In encountering personal insignificance, the reader additionally comes face to face with the sacredness of the earth. Land is eternal. It bears the scars of history not for a single generation but always. It is so much larger than the individual or the nation, even the race of man. Earth defies ownership. Instead, land is borrowed for a lifetime. A life is temporary and until the permanence of death is conquered, the land is greater than any individual or collection of individuals. That is at least what the Almanac wants us to consider.