The Ways of the Calawo

The Ways of the Calawo is a novel published in Deysachin in 54 PC by Nyhttôn a'Ryukurds Letauk. It is considered to be one of the most important pieces of modern deysachni literature, and one of the greatest novels of all time. The novel follows an unconventional style, featuring layers of stories within stories, blending of fiction, nonfiction, and metafiction, and various elements of nonchronological and nonlinear storytelling.

Development

Letauk began work on what he refered to as his "Great Big Pompous Novel" some time around 43 PC, while he was still a college freshman. He continued working on the book for over a decade, alongside several smaller novels which he wrote and published, to little success. In the winter of 47 PC, fresh out of college, he moved to Aomt, to join the burgeoning Gyelsy Street scene. There he met Thyn'l Pongwuaif, another up and coming author, with whom he developed a friendship. Pongwuaif claims to have provided Letauk with some inspiration for Calawo, and also claims Letauk wrote a portion of Pongwuaif's Rain On My Wedding, but asked to not be creditted.

Plot

In the frame story, the unnamed narrator (refered to as "The Protagonist" in a single footnote), meets with and interviews Nemnor Haes, an elderly man living alone in an out-of-the-way area. The date is not given, but it can be inferred from context it is some time within The Great Hesitation, or shortly after. It is unclear for what purpose the narrator has sought out Haes, other than to write down an account of his stories with the Calawo for use in some sort of "report." It is heavily implied that Haes is a windower, and that if he has children they do not speak to him often. The narrator's inner monologue make it clear he does not think much of Haes, and continues listening to his lengthy story out of pity.

Haes's story, which encompasses the bulk of the plot, begins in the Deysachni year 384, when he was a much younger man. Nemnor, a land surveyor by trade, is a self proclaimed drifter, working odd jobs to finance gambling and drinking habits, and in the opening of the story is offered a high paying gig scoping out a swath of land out east, for quarrying and landfilling. Haes accepts the offer, only to then be informed the area is the hunting grounds of the Calawo, a mysterious tribal people known to shun society. Haes, en route to the hunting ground, perchases and begins reading the only extensive documentation on the Calawo, "Calawotani: A Hidden Folk" by Sko'end F. Djeizal, published fifty years prior. Haes immediately finds Djeizal suspicious, as any reference he finds to the man portrays him as a pseudoscientist and quack, but decides to work with what he has.

Djeizal's sections are dry, and primarily academic, outlining the various traditions and customs of the Calawo, loosely strung together by a retelling of their history. According to Djeizal, the Calawo have inhabited the eastern woodlands for all of known history, and live as hunter gatherers, in an identical manner in the modern day as they did in ancient times. He states that they have wholey resisted conversion to Modhesianism, or any luxeries of Deysachni society, yet they also do not shun the faith, for as he writes, they have no religion whatsoever. Djeizal's sections appear when Nemnor reads the book, as well as in random intervals throughout his story, breaking the plot up into chunks.

Haes arrives at the edge of the woodlands, and attempts to speak to the locals he finds, but is quickly laughed when he asks about the Calawo. According to the locals, he is the seventh person to attempt to secure the land, with the rest either being forced away, dissapearing, or in the case of the last one, dying. Nemnors, realizing what he has gotten himself into, cloysters himself away in the only bar in the area, and continues reading Djeizal's book. As he continues with it, he increasingly finds it to be written in a shoddy, hokey manner, and begins to heavily question the authenticity of the information, which he believes may be heavily warped so as to portray the Calawo as a simplistic, overidealized people. After a confrontation with the locals, where he finds they know less about the Calawo than they claimed and only rarely interact with them, Nemnor goes off into the woods to finally meet the Calawo. He wanders the forest for days with no sight of man, and numerous failed attempts at foraging for food. As he begins to consider giving up, he hears the snapping of a twig, and come across a boy, identifiably a member of a Calawo tribe, who tripped and twisted his ankle. Nemnor helps the boy up, despite the boy angrily yelling at him in an unknown tongue. Haes gives the boy a portion of what little food he had scrounged up, and attempted to begin communication with him, only to find the boy already knows standard deysachni. The boy, who identifies himself as Horflan, insults Nemnor for aiding him, and reveals that he is a scout, who has been spying on him since his arrival in the hunting grounds. Nemnor convinces Horflan to let him take him back to the Calawo camp, so someone can fix his leg, though secretly Nemnor wishes to use the oppertunity to finally come to understand the Calawo.

On the way to the camp, Nemnor and Horflan discuss, and Nemnor comes to understand the Calawo are not as disconnected from society as once thought; they secretly having been travelling in and around the wider area, living quietly in Deysachni cities undetected for years, with only the old people staying in the woods year round. Haes tells Horflan that though he came to the land as a land surveyor, he has no intrest in infringing upon them, though his inner dialogue claims this a lie, and he just wants to satisfy his curriosity before moving on. After a day the two arrive back at the Calawo settlement, not a camp as belived but rather a whole longhouse-town. Horflan is tended to by a healer, and Nemnor is brought before the head of the tribe, Skindelfbairn, "Skelf" for short. Skelf is immediately friendly towards Haes, as Haes's gaunt appearance reveals him to be an inept hunter rather than a missionary or researcher. Nemnors once again identifies himself as the land surveyor, and again iterates his lack of intent against the Calawo, but the tribesmen care little and instead invite him to festivities. Nemnors, unsure what their motives are, accepts.

[END OF ACT 1]

Style

Besides the story-within-story framing, The Ways of The Calawo stands out in other ways of structure. The differing sections are written in different voices; The unnamed narrator speaks in the first person, and the sections of Haes's story which are told within the outer frame are as well, but the sections which take place within the story are in the third person, but Djeizal's story is the inverse, being read in the third person by Haes and in the first person in their own section. The narrator's story is however in the present tense, whilst Djeizal's is in the past tense, and inverse for Hae's story and Djeizal's story as read by haes, providing each of the four with a unique combination of tense and voice. The Calawotan myths are told in such a way as to be unclear, and the conversations between Myeraidt and Gostuom change convention every time they appear. The second to last page features the only second person passage in the novel.

Formatting shifts around often. In contrast to usual deysachni litarure, which flows about the page, Calawo is written such that sections of the text form distinct blocks, visually resembling nondeysachni literary stylings. This often takes the shape of a nest, wherein inner layers of story are surrounded by footnotes, implied to have been written by outer frames. In one particular example, page 837, seven different layers are nested within eachother: The narrator records Haes's recount of Djeizal's dictation of Myeraldt's stating of Gostuom's reciting of a Calawotan myth, itself continaining the retelling of a story, all of which is appended with a footnote, presumed to be written by the unnamed narrator at a point in the future from the outermost frame.

Several fonts are used within the novel, though this was not an intentional choice, as it was simply that Letauk wrote the novel on a series of proto-printers, which at the time were a new technology, with the only ones he could afford being prone to breaking down often. Despite this however, the font changes occur with such regularity as to neatly break the novel into 15 or 16 sections.

Parallels to Real Life

The titular Calawo are based on the Carawo People, who can also be transcribed as the Calawo due to not distinguishing between rhotics and laminals. Letauk is himself half Carawo, as his paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother both were Carawo. Much of the material contained within which describes the Calawo is accurate to the real life customs, traditions, and history of the real Carawo, and a little over half of the sources mentioned in the footnotes are real documents. Sko'end F. Djeizal is based loosely upon Kreylsakt T. M. Ujomr, an early anthorpologist who documented much about the Carawo, as well as numerous other less known peoples, but who is seen in the modern day as largely an unhelpful and unreliable source.