Customer Reviews

The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests

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To merely say that the prose is lyrically buoyant is not enough, to say that the writing is merely insightful is not enough. I'd probably need the gifts of Paul West to be able to adequately get across to you just how beautiful the experience of reading this book (3x) was for me.

For me to comment on the book's story or plot would be a waste of time, because turning the pages for me was not a matter of what will happen next but a matter of what deftly rendered prose was waiting. You can get lost in it like a Faustian moment, a Coltrane solo, or an inspiration that makes you miss every exit home.

This is West's best work by far, as well as one of the best works to come out of 20th century literature. He is in absolute command of his voice, of his subject, and of his characters. If you love to read for the sake of reading, read this book. You won't be disappointed.

Back when the now-infamous Top 100 Books of the Century list was proposed, there were a number of glaring omissions, including Djuna Barnes's Nightwood, William Gaddis's The Recognitions, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and, yes, The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests. With the exception of William Gass's The Tunnel, I have never read such stunning prose so effortlessly rendered. The book centers around Oswald Beautiful Badger Going Over the Hill; too primitive to adopt white mentality, he is "too tainted with book smarts to be at ease among this tribe." He is overshadowed by the looming presence of his uncle, George The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests, a legendary carver of kachina dolls. Haunted by his involvement in the death of a porn actress, Oswald is forced to leave the low-budget film industry. A short time later, the Vietnam War pushes him to the perimeter of sanity. Whitmanesque in its simplicity and affinity for nature, West achieves a lyricism that brings concepts as overarching as constellations into the drawing room and hangs them there like bright mobiles. So detailed and incisive are West's descriptions-whether of life on the mesa, George's carving or Oswald's thoughts-the book is more an experience than a piece of literature. Uncle George tells Oswald "a doll covered with chisel scars is not more beautiful than the universe, of course not; but it is cut to our size, like the television." So West takes art, myth and Hopi cosmology and gives them to us in something handy enough to carry on the subway or leave on the bedstand. West's inexhaustible imagination and uncanny skill with language make the reader realize, as Oswald does, that she or he is part of something as eternal as the seasons and as incalculably vast as what surrounds us.

This is a difficult, provocative, awesomely beautiful book -- easily one of the great novels of the twentieth century. I can only think of a handful of other books I've ever read that are as brilliantly and thrillingly written: Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner; Robert Penn Warren's All the Kings Men, and Faulkner's Sound and the Fury come to mind. It is the story of a man looking for his place in the universe, a member of a dying tribe trying to keeps its legends alive. It is the story of an artist, the story of someone merely trying to live and make sense of what living means. It is the story of every person, every culture, every tribe. I loved it.

Back in the fifties, a writer named Jack Green wrote a series of articles blasting the critics for ignoring the genius of William Gaddis's `The Recognitions'. By and large, the reviews were incompetent and had been cribbed from one another-most reviewers had not even read the book. Green went so far as to take out a full-page ad in the Village Voice, at his own expense, exhorting people to buy `The Recognitions'. That is the way I feel about `The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests'. The reviewers were anything BUT incompetent-all the reviews I have read have extolled its lyricism, its out-and-out originality and the sheer vision of the author. Readers, however, seem not to have given it its due.

Set on the Hopi mesas of northern Arizona and in the jungles of Vietnam, the book is told alternately by George The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests, his nephew Oswald Beautiful Badger Going Over the Hill ("not so much a name as an expedition") and even Sotuqunangu, a Hopi god. "Unhandy names, these," West writes, but they bring something to life on the mesa: a touch of color, which is the obvious thing to say, but also, to the very act of naming, something narrative, as if all of nature had been in motion at the moment of your birth. It was."

Oswald, who has learned to speak English and made his living in Los Angeles as a porn actor, returns after the accidental death of one of the actresses he was working with. He tries to re-establish the relationship with his "uncle", George, a carver of one-of-a-kind kachina dolls (a kachina is a kind of Hopi angel) who is considered the Picasso of his art. Nearly blind and hampered by a failing heart, George, for the first time, has need of Oswald-who is in fact his son-not only as someone to guide him through his perpetual dusk, but to listen to his stories of Hopi gods, Jimsonweed girls and the ghosts of his past. Ironically, it is Oswald who, in his confusion of two cultures, receives guidance and it George's voice, perhaps, that is Oswald's salvation while fighting in Vietnam.

Returning to the mesa after his tour of duty, Oswald tries, after his uncle's fashion, to get up-close and personal with stone formations, with the desert wind and even, after picking up a book on astronomy, with the stars.

There is no page you can turn to in this book where you will not find a sample of an extraordinary prose style or an observation that a lesser novelist would have saved as the punchline to end the book. For example, on the topic of happiness, West writes, "Don't try. Don't try not to try. Happiness is an incidental thing like feathers falling from a bird in flight. Fly, be a bird, and feathers will fall." In these few sentences West has captured the essence of the Baghavadgita and its "Way of Right Action." The book is simply loaded with stunning insights and beautiful sentences--the kind that put many younger authors of "Big Books" (Franzen, DeLillo) to shame. One of the absolute best novels I have ever read, readers have far too long ignored this masterpiece.

PS -- the Voyant edition has two previously unpublished essays at the back of the book; "The Backlash Against the Novel" is a fascinating read all by itself.

I am more than halfway through this novel and am so impressed with it that I had to stop to write a review. Then I read what others have written and realized they had already expressed what I had intended to say. Not only is Paul West a true master with the language, but he has created powerful insights about life, death, art, love, the human condition... I think this work is definitely comparable to Joyce's Ulysses - a different style, of course, but of the same literary consequence - a classic. The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests is well worth the effort it takes to read it. This novel is a great gift.

As others have remarked here, this is a genuine classic, covering all the bases: profound, elegant, bawdy, highfalutin, funny -- ultimately, human. I would only add that West, for whatever reason, does not have the name recognition of a Pynchon or a Gass or a Roth. In this respect, he is in the fine company of other equally important yet undersung writers; for example, if you like this book, check out Stanley Elkin.

I haven't looked at the other reviews. I read this book because I've recently finished "One Hundred Names for Love," by Diane Ackerman, Paul West's wife. I had not heard of him before. He suffered a massive stroke in 2003. This book was written about 7 years prior to that event.
West uses a stream of consciousness and switches (by chapter) from one character to another. There are two main characters: George, "The Place In Flowers Where Pollen Rests" his name, and his son/nephew, "Beautiful Badger Going Over the Hill," otherwise known as Oswald. The first half of the book shows the uncle and nephew relationship. George is old, living on the reservation where he has a permanent place by a wall for he attracts tourists. He is known far and wide for his kachina doll carvings. These dolls are derived from the characters of the gods who reside on the San Francisco Mountains. Twice a year, tribal men dress up and play the part of a particular god but not as an actor. The intention is to become the god which allows that god to visit the tribe. The same gods do not show up every year. As the story unfolds, we see that Oswald doesn't have a solid footing in the tribe, mainly because he is a bastard. After George's wife was mysteriously drowned, George wooed his older brother's wife and Oswald was the result.
The book begins with Oswald fleeing his pornography film when an actress is accidentally killed. Oswald fears he will be blamed. Nobody in the tribe knows he acts in pornography. He describes Western movies when asked. This is not an easy book to understand. Oswald is a conflicted character and so is George. Both have many layers. George has never told Oswald he is his father. If Oswald didn't take care of George, supplyng him with diabetes, heart medication, George would die. But George wants to die, and periodically enacts his death, not deliberately but because he is TRYING to die. It is not an easy matter. Oswald fights George to stay alive, coaxing, cajoling, always patient with him. Oswald admires George because George doesn't kowtow to anyone. The interest derives from how these two understand and do not understand each other.
In the second half of the book, George has died. The chapters that used to belong to George are taken up by the god Sotugnangu, who reports on Oswald's going to Viet Nam and what he experiences there. This is a dark and brutal section of the book. Oswald resorts to taking body parts of the slain to make an entity. His fellow soldiers are wary of him. Oswald eventually disposes of his Frankestein and I could not figure out if he were imaginging himself being like George in this activity or what. He is NOT a vampire.
Oswald returns to the village on the mesa. Oswald's background is covered. We go into the mind of his mother, her memories of George. Because Oswald is the youngest child, his older brothers taunt him, knowing George is his father and their father leaves, building himself another house. So, Oswald, not a member of the inner circle of men who meet in the Kiva, decides or is compelled by a mysterious visitation to enact the part of a god. He studies an image of this god in a book of kachina dolls and makes himself up. He sallies out and enacts this god's temperament in the village. Even those who did not give their approval comment and recognize the god. This I understood as a major breakthrough for Oswald, for he is doing a traditionally approved activity and the writing suggests that he does well enough to be recognized. This god is one who has not been seen for a long time. The women and chidren and others interact with him in his costume. The men play the "gods" must exit and disrobe out of sight, which Oswald does. His mother sees him after he has disrobed and is estatic that he has participated. I took this as meaning that Oswald will do this again in six months, that he has found a calling, something he needed to do.
The writing is not dense but intense. I liked the book because I'm fascinated with Hopi culture and was placated by the ending. I was puzzled many times during the reading, but would recommend it as worth the effort.