<scp>Robert Bringhurst</scp>, A story as sharp as a knife: The classic Haida mythtellers and their world . Vancouver & Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 1999. Pp. 527. Hb $45.00; <scp>Robert Bringhurst</scp>, Nine visits to the mythworld: Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas . (Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers, vol. 2.) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Pp. 222. Hb $37.95; and <scp>Robert Bringhurst</scp>, Being in being: The collected works of Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay . (Masterworks of the Classical Haida Mythtellers, vol. 3.) Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Pp. 397. Hb. $35.00

• Published in: Language in Society
• Main Author: Hymes, Dell
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2003
• Subjects: Linguistics and Language; Sociology and Political Science; Language and Linguistics; McIntyre; haida
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047404503305056; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0047404503305056

These three volumes invite a volume in return. They bring Haida to the fore of what is known of oral narrative in Native North America. One finds a dedicated philological sleuth, tracking down original texts and unpublished manuscripts (see A story as sharp as a knife , pp. 221–2; Nine visits to the mythworld , p. 17); a historian of anthropology, reconstructing and relating the story of a young fieldworker who is now largely forgotten (John R. Swanton); a pursuit of detail that enters into a past world, identifying in footnotes and photographs the places and foods and material culture of that world; and a creative writer reimagining Haida men, on islands crumbled by disease and occupation, re-creating in narratives a world their minds could still imagine. Not least, one finds someone for whom the arts are a normal part of life, and for whom the conception and misfortunes of a painting by Velasquez (44–49) can illuminate the relationship between myth time and historical time in Haida. Finally, the writing displays an ease, indeed a gift for words, that befits an established poet, and the books themselves are attractive, as befits a typographer versed in visual arts. (Bringhurst was invited to bring out a new edition, Chappell & Bringhurst 1999, of a standard book. The new edition indeed displays two pages [298–99] in line and verse of Victoria Howard's “Gitskux and his older brother” [Clackamas Chinook]; see Hymes 1983. His book of 1992 has been a bestseller.