Bf Cameos In Literature

[Guest]

MIB, point taken.  I was recently participating in a discussion about "The Long Walk" on another (not specifically "crypto") board -- with head rather full of that discussion, jumped in impulsively here: indeed, without much relevance to the "thrust" of this thread.

[Guest Stan Norton]

John Green, in his 'apes among us' book mentions an obscure reference he found in a novel written (I think) about Texas which mentions 'three-toed wood apes'. I recall that the book was written many decades ago, before all the fuss about bigfoot.

[Guest StevieStrangeGlove94]

Im surprised "the strangest story ever told" hasent been mentioned. Its about a mans encounter with devil creatures in thomas bay alaska. Apparently they were monkey/men covered in smelly oozing soars.

[LeafTalker]

@Stan: Thanks! It would be fun to track down that Texas novel. Lot of good stuff goin' on in Texas!

 

@Thady: No worries. I saw that Wikipedia entry about The Long Walk, but I would still be interested in reading it..... MIB is right -- it's not so important (to me) that the account be factual -- although that's interesting, too.

 

The book that got me thinking about this actually was an autobiographical work; that is, a work of non-fiction. And what interested me about it was that the author had what was clearly (in my mind) a Sasquatch Experience, but didn't realize it. 

 

So that's what made me think, I wonder how many other people who have a consciousness of Sasquatch are reading things where information leaps out at THEM, even if it doesn't seem to leap out to the writer.  

 

And this could happen in fiction as well as nonfiction. Science fiction writers, for example, routinely write about supposedly fantastical things and inventions that subsequently become a lot less fantastical. "Regular" fiction writers, too, often have a similar prescience. They draw inspiration from all kinds of things: Things that have actually happened to them, as well as things that just come to them in their mind's eye. So novelists, like nonfiction writers, may sometimes also be reporting on experiences that are suppressed, fully conscious, or "received" -- experiences for which they may feel there are no real-world referents, but that other people (like us, for example) would recognize immediately as being Sasquatch-related.

 

@StevieStrangeGlove94: Wow! I've never heard of that one, either. And it's now also on my list!

[JDL]

Edgar Rice Burroughs,

 

Bolgani - gorillas

 

Tarmangani - white great apes - white men

 

Gomangani - black great apes - black men

 

Mangani  - the great apes that raised Tarzan, as large as gorillas, but not - some resemblance to the Lion Killers

 

Several of his other works include creatures suggestive of squatch.

 

Also recommend John Boston's Naked Came the Sasquatch.  Laugh out loud material.

And, of course, Tolkien, based in large part on European myth, legend, and folklore, plenty of coexisting hominids in his works.  No need to discuss his derivatives.

 

Another stand-out would be Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.  The Ogier reflect the most benign perspective held about squatch.

[indiefoot]

The First Americans series by William Sarabande contains a continuing, occasional reference to a large, hairy hominid in ice age North America.

[LeafTalker]

Thanks, JDL and Indiefoot! (And Inc1, Jack Black is the best.)

[Guest]

A bit more than a cameo – but, what the heck, I’ll submit it.  S.M. Stirling’s speculative-fiction novel  “Snowbrotherâ€, set in a North America thrown back into barbarism by a nuclear war some millennia earlier.

 

The area in which the action takes place, is the northerly parts of what is now the US’s Midwest.  There is strife between two different human communities in the area:  one, is a bunch of peaceable dwellers in the big forests (with cleared-for-farming patches of same): these characters live in permanent settlements, and are peaceable craftsmen / farmers / hunters / gatherers.  Their foes are “neo-Comanches†who roam the bare plains, and are predatory on other humans, whom they rob and enslave, whenever they can – which includes rapacious incursions by them, into the forest-dwellers’ territory.

 

The beleaguered forest-dwellers habituate and make friends with the Sasquatch people (the “Snowbrothers†of the title), who survived pre-the nuclear holocaust by “hiding in plain sightâ€; and have in comparison flourished since then, but still basically keep a low profile.  For the great majority of the novel, the “Snowbrothers†are in the background, only mentioned now and again – most of the book is about things happening directly between the forest-dwellers and the nomads.  Reading the book, I felt a sneaking sympathy for the nasty predatory nomads – I found them more colourful and entertaining, than the worthy but rather drearily goody-goody forest-dwellers – and the nomads have a splendidly sexy and assertive female war-leader, who takes no crap from anybody...

 

Late in the novel, the forest-dwellers deploy a Bigfoot in battle against their enemies.  The nomads are momentarily disconcerted, but then resolutely join the fight.  They are seriously bad-ass types, and they ultimately kill the squatch – at the cost of a number of dead and maimed, of their own – and ride off in triumph, with the creature’s severed head on the point of an upheld lance...

 

 

 

With my fondness for fantasy / speculative / alternative fiction – one from S.M. Stirling (as in my above post) ’s  fellow-practitioner-of-such, and personal friend, Harry Turtledove.

 

Turtledove has written a half-dozen-volume fantasy novel series – the “Darkness†novels -- modelled on the basic course of World War II, but set in a different “universe†where technology as in our world is at a primitive level, but that lack is offset by magic existing, and being standard and commonplace. (A novel series which most people – including otherwise-Turtledove-fans – seem to find ghastly or worse – but for some reason, I love it.)

 

Turtledove’s “Darkness†novels are set on a planet which is Earth-like and inhabited by humans, but with the geography – continents, seas, and oceans – altogether different. In the series, he tells now and again of – and has characters refer to -- creatures called “mountain apesâ€: giant, hairy ape-man-type primates, which are per context, known to exist (and are kept in zoos); they live in remote mountainous / frigid-zone areas of the planet, and are known in their wild state, to be hostile to humans, and dangerous to them – will, given the chance, seize humans and make off with them and eat them. Clearly, a “take†by the author on Bigfoot / Yeti / other in-our-world mysterious hairy giants.

 

Closest actual encounter in the “Darkness†series with a mountain ape, involves an army unit moving thorough high mountains actually running into one, and shooting it dead before it can do any damage. One of the soldiers, looking at the yeti’s corpse, muses: “Abominable creature – utterly abominableâ€. A “homageâ€, if ever there was one...

Edited December 31, 2013 by Thady

[JanV]

Check out Chinle Miller's Ghost Rock Cafe. BF is central to this mystery and her other books recounting the adventures of sheriff Bud Shumway have BF making occasional and mysterious appearances.

[LeafTalker]

Holy moly. I think I'm too much of a scaredy-cat to read the Stirling and Turtledove books, although they sound really interesting. "Ghost Rock Cafe" sounds like something you could read, and still also sleep at night (maybe)........

[Guest Stan Norton]

Not strictly bf related, but I'm reading Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates at the moment. One of the key threads is a nasty, ape-like character known as Dog-face Joe. Very creepy indeed...

[MarkGlasgow]

LT, references are made to the 'grey man' in Alister Borthwick's 1939 book about climbing Scottish mountains 'Always a little further'.

Some very interesting accounts that have many hallmarks of a BF sighting.

Since this thread has popped up I've read much more on the subject hence the need for a trip there in when the weather clears a bit.

[LeafTalker]

Awesome, Mark! Thanks!

[Gotta Know]

Great thread LT, and thanks for starting it. Though I haven't read it since the 8th grade (don't make me share how long that's been), I've often thought the monster Grendel in Beowulf likely originated from our big friend.

 

And with apologies in advance for this non-literary reference (understatement), I always get a kick out of the modern-day ogre Shrek. Living in a swamp, eating anything that moves, incredible size and strength. Folklore gave us orgres, but that had to start somewhere. Oh come on, I can't be the only Shrek fan and see the parallels to BF? And yes, sorry for going a bit OT.

[LeafTalker]

I've heard that, too, about Beowulf. It makes sense to me! And sure, Shrek can join the party. And you could be right that ogres were modeled on our friends. That also makes a lot of sense. 

 

And now I'm wondering where the idea for "Beauty and the Beast" came from... According to Wikipedia, "The first published version was a rendition by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, published in La jeune américaine, et les contes marins in 1740. The best-known written version was an abridgement of her work published in 1756 by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, in Magasin des enfants, ou dialogues entre une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves; an English translation appeared in 1757."