Tracks Along the Left Coast: Jaime de Angulo & Pacific Coast Culture

by Andrew Schelling

California, with its scores of native languages, contains a wealth of old-time stories—a bedrock literature of North America. Jaime de Angulo’s linguistic and ethnographic work, his writings, as well as the legends that cloak the Old Coyote himself, vividly reflect the particulars of the Pacific Coast. In each retelling, through each storyteller, stories are continually revivified, and that is precisely what Andrew Schelling has done in Tracks Along the Left Coast, weaving together the story of de Angulo’s life with the story of the land and the people, languages, and cultures with whom it is so closely tied.


Born in Paris of Spanish descent, de Angulo came to America to become a cowboy, and he did—as well as a doctor, a linguist, an ethnomusicologist, and a writer. His poetry and prose uniquely represented the bohemian sensibility of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and he was known for his reworkings of coyote tales and shamanic mysticism. So vivid was his writing that Ezra Pound called him “the American Ovid,” and William Carlos Williams claimed that de Angulo was “one of the most outstanding writers I have ever encountered.”

Genres: Anthropology, History

336 pages, Paperback

Published June 12, 2018

About the author

Andrew Schelling is a poet, essayist, and translator of the poetry of India. He has taught at Naropa University for twenty years and from 1993–96 served as chair of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics founded by Alan Ginsburg and Anne Waldman. His publications include Tea Shack Interior and The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Reviews

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

This non-biography that profiles the complex and folksy narratives of a man who contributed greatly to anthropology and linguistics of Native Americans throughout Northern California (and beyond) is deeply touching and startlingly complex. The ins and outs of its own relationship with literary history and an admiration for a bioregional understanding of place and being make Tracks a fantastic personal journey into your own inner artist, your own inner human. Highly recommended for all, including but not limited to those who are at one with American poetry.

[Adam Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredible collection, Schelling is a master sharing everything he dug up on another master, Jaime de Angulo – a must-read for anyone with interests in Native American history, anthropology, linguistics, history, California, culture, language, poetry, mythos, legends, etc.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read to know something about California deep culture. De Angulo is the type of old Californian who studied indigenous languages and cultures and the regional biosphere of this great place.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wonderful romp through the earlyish days of California Native Peoples anthropology and real life culture. Kroeber and his "students" at UCBerkeley working hard and playing hard. Deep learning with regard to actual language and sound as the nature of communication and expression (voicing, dancing...) as actual life not just the study of it. All the sounds we no longer hear often codified out of existence come alive here. The ghosts continue to dance. Who can hear them? Going beyond the standard deviation.