La parola da casa, Serena Piccoli

The Daily Glance

Paul Nelson's A Time Before Slaughter is an encyclopedic work mostly about the Pacific Northwest, U.S. history in that area, Native American history in that area, and the rise of corporate power. It's political and grand in the Olsonian sense of pinning down a place on the map. It's narrative but playful, including things like beer ads and quotations into the work. Ultimately, Nelson sweeps in all things useful, and the accumulation of history in the text is fascinating but also sad, for Nelson points to the slaughter of Native Americans, the consolidation of power in the hands of a few, and the techniques used to take away freedom slowly.

The first jail was also
an animal pound.

To this day Slaughter
gets all this confused.
Overcrowded jail.
Humans, like rats, packed
some shipped
to Yakima

Slaughter becomes personified in this book and repeats in different places and historical times. Still,while the book is composed of individual pieces, it seems to read best as a single collection, even though a few pieces, like the ones composed to his father, might at first seem out of place. This book definitely makes me want to read more of Nelson's work.