Andrew Schelling on Jaime de Angulo & the Pacific Coast - A biography of the man called the "American Ovid"

Andrew Schelling discusses his biography of Jaime de Angulo, the man Ezra Pound called "the American Ovid" and who was praised by William Carlos Williams as being “one of the most outstanding writers I have ever encountered." 

Schelling will be in conversation with Steve Dickison of the San Francisco Poetry Center for this event.

About Tracks Along the Left Coast:

More than an immersive tale of the picaresque life of cowboy linguist, doctor, ethnographer, and author Jaime de Angulo— the Old Coyote of Big Sur—but an exploration of the persecuted Native Californian cultures and languages that had thrived for millennia and endured into his day.
 
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. His poetry and prose uniquely represented the bohemian sensibility of the twenties, thirties and forties, 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.”
 
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 a life with the story of the land and the people, languages, and cultures with whom it is so closely tied.
 
Listen to de Angulo's classic 1949 "Indian Tales" recordings for KPFA here.