Peyote or My Friend the Indian

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Schьtz, a German writer who is often regarded as Bertolt Brecht’s
direct literary heir, has written a darkly comic work in which he finds
himself lost during a thunderstorm near Banff, Alberta. Written as an
extended monologue, he takes the reader through the effects of a
mescaline “trip,” watches a shamanistic initiation, journeys to the
land of the dead, and examines white–Native relationships,
materialism, Western ideas of self, and Native spirituality (the voice
of Peyote is a North American Native).

The translation and the German text appear side by side. The
translator, Harold Rhenisch, merits considerable praise for transforming
the original German text into an English-Canadian idiom while staying
true to the spiritual context decreed by the author. What makes this
extended monologue so intensely theatrical is the devastating mix of
humor and savage attack against a cynical and manipulative worldview.