| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 36.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Anguish of Snails: Native American Folklore in the West. By Barre Toelken. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2003. xii + 204 pp. Illustrations, index. $22.95, paper.)

There ought to be a special award for good books with bad titles. My nominees for 2003 would be Mark Winter and Barre Toelken. Winter's book tells us about the weavers from the Toadlena-Two Grey Hills area of the Navajo Nation. It is entitled, alas, Dances with Wool (Newcomb, NM, 2002). Toelken has chosen to call his collection of essays about Native American folklore in the West The Anguish of Snails. The title is not inappropriate, in fact, but not all prospective readers will read as far as page 9 to review his rationale. The snail shell is the "governing metaphor" of this book. Toelken argues that "we may use the 'clues' provided by Native American tales, songs, dances, architecture, and other arts—provisionally, of course—as if they were snail shells, as objects that have meanings beyond their physical existence but nonetheless are readable through their details of style and substance" (p. 9).

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