Must agree with Alga and Nutria.
Swanwick's reading seems cockamamie to me. I mean where do we point at the text and say: There! He's a totally untrustworthy narrator? See? Where do we see some evidence of self-delusion, true psychosis? Where do we see him as murderous? All the violence in the story is directed at himself. And in self-defense at the end. Where do we see him threatening, wishing harm or ill on the coyote, his son, his children, his wife? Cloning? Where do we get cloning? Sure there's an analogy between the 3 woman and the women in his life. But cloning?
The text does not suggest this to me after 4 readings.
This reading, as far as I can tell, demands that we deny 90% of what we're told happened in the story.
Wish I could expand, but must go. It's a dreadful interpretation of what I take to be a story of reconciliation between the sexes not madness or incest.
But that's my take.
Rave on lupines!
Patrick O'leary