Trickster In The Land Of Dreams

Zeese Papanikolas forges seemingly disparate events and movements in western history?including some of its strangest and most exotic strains?into a coherent whole by examining them against the laughter and wisdom of Shoshonean trickster tales. Seen against these tales, the West becomes both a canvas for the projection of utopian dreams and the site of their shattered remains. ø Papanikolas undertakes a dramatic retelling of Shoshoni creation stories and examines, along with other topics, the mythologies embedded in the ?Dream Mine? of Mormon folklore, the heroic images of cowboys and Wobblies, the MX missile, the dark side of Oz, and the Las Vegas of tourists, dam builders, and gamblers. ø Among those whose visions are played out against the mirage-haunted background of the West are Cabeza de Vaca, Winston Churchill, Big Bill Haywood, and Native American wise man, Antelope Jake. It is a testament to the power of Papanikolas's conception that he can weave the themes and topics of each chapter into a book that is both eloquent and intellectually stimulating.

Profiles history's notable tricksters--from P.T. Barnum to Stephen Colbert--and their spectacles from the 1600s to the present, considering how pranksters have used humor to expose larger truths and, on occasion, incited social change.

Americans have had an enduring yet ambivalent obsession with the West as both a place and a state of mind. Michael L. Johnson considers how that obsession originated, how it has determined attitudes toward and activities in the West, and how it has changed over the centuries.

At once criminal and savior, clown and creator, antagonist and mediator, the character of trickster has made frequent appearances in works by writers the world over. Usually a figure both culturally specific and transcendent, trickster leads the way to the unconscious, the concealed, and the seemingly unattainable. This book offers thirteen interpretations of trickster in American writing, including essays on works by African America, Native America, Pacific Rim, and Latino writers, as well as an examination of trickster politics. This collection conveys the trickster's imprint on the modern world.

Tricksters are known by their deeds. Obviously not all the examples in American Tricksters are full-blown mythological tricksters like Coyote, Raven, or the Two Brothers found in Native American stories, or superhuman figures like the larger-than-life Davy Crockett of nineteenth-century tales. Newer expressions of trickiness do share some qualities with the Trickster archetype seen in myths. Rock stars who break taboos and get away with it, heroes who overcome monstrous circumstances, crafty folk who find a way to survive and thrive when the odds are against them, men making spectacles of themselves by feeding their astounding appetites in public--all have some trickster qualities. Each person, every living creature who ever faced an obstacle and needed to get around it, has found the built-in trickster impulse. Impasses turn the trickster gene on, or stimulate the trick-performing imagination--that's life. To explore the ways and means of trickster maneuvers can alert us to pitfalls, help us appreciate tricks that are entertaining, and aid us in fending off ploys which drain our resources and ruin our lives. Knowing more about the Trickster archetype in our psyches helps us be more self-aware.

Mathematicians often use imaginary numbers to compute formulas that cannot be completed with real numbers. In the same way, modern philosophers and religious leaders sometimes use the imaginary philosophies of imaginary Indians to form a basis for their own profound and spiritual systems of thought. The Book of Imaginary Indians examines several such philosophies, focusing especially on Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon and Hyemeyohsts Storm's Seven Arrows. It then examines what some actual Indians believe in and why that should matter to non-Indians who want to use Indian philosophies as a basis of their own belief systems. Phil Hart, a student of religion and cultures, researched an array of concepts including creation myths, Jung, archetypes, medicine wheels, vision quests, Mormon philosophies, and a variety of religions to create this compendium of information about Native American and new age culture. He discovers that despite all of the differences, threads of commonality unite all people everywhere and that no one has a total monopoly on the truth.

Free Gift Inside! offers an alternative solution to the difficulty of selling to an already sated and sophisticated consumer. * Based on the article "Torment Your Customers (They'll Love It" which Harvard Busines Review chose as one of 2002's Six Breakthrough Ideas * A new concept that turns marketing on its head and offers a more effective answer to customer relationship management and permission marketing