Deborah L. Madsen - Louise Erdrich: Tracks, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, The Plague of Doves

Bloomsbury Academic
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Deborah L. Madsen, 2011

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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-1045-9
PB: 978-1-4411-0097-9
ePUB: 978-1-4411-4206-1
ePDF: 978-1-4411-5696-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Louise Erdrich

Bloomsbury Studies in Contemporary North American Fiction

Series Editor: Sarah Graham, Lecturer in American Literature,

University of Leicester, UK

This series offers up-to-date guides to the recent work of major contemporary North American authors. Written by leading scholars in the field, each book presents a range of original interpretations of three key texts published since 1990, showing how the same novel may be interpreted in a number of different ways. These informative, accessible volumes will appeal to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, facilitating discussion and supporting close analysis of the most important contemporary American and Canadian fiction.

Titles in the Series include:

Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho, Glamorama, Lunar Park

Edited by Naomi Mandel

Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road

Edited by Sara Spurgeon

Don DeLillo: Mao II, Underworld, Falling Man

Edited by Stacey Olster

Margaret Atwood: The Robber Bride, The Blind Assassin, Oryx and Crake

Edited by J. Brooks Bouson

Philip Roth: American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America

Edited by Debra Shostak

Toni Morrison: Paradise, Love, A Mercy

Edited by Lucille P. Fultz

LOUISE ERDRICH

Tracks, The Last Report on
the Miracles at Little No Horse,
The Plague of Doves

Edited by Deborah L. Madsen

Contents

Deborah L. Madsen

Deborah L. Madsen

Allan Chavkin and Nancy Feyl Chavkin

Connie A. Jacobs

David Stirrup

Deborah L. Madsen

Mark Shackleton

P. Jane Hafen

Patrice Hollrah

Deborah L. Madsen

Gina Valentino

John Gamber

Catherine Rainwater

Series Editors Introduction

Each study in this series presents ten original essays by recognized subject specialists on the recent fiction of a significant author working in the United States or Canada. The aim of the series is to consider important novels published since 1990 either by established writers or by emerging talents. By setting 1990 as its general boundary, the series indicates its commitment to engaging with genuinely contemporary work, with the result that the series is often able to present the first detailed critical assessment of certain texts.

In respect of authors who have already been recognized as essential to the canon of North American fiction, the series provides experts in their work with the opportunity to consider their latest novels in the dual context of the contemporary era and as part of a long career. For authors who have emerged more recently, the series offers critics the chance to assess the work that has brought authors to prominence, exploring novels that have garnered acclaim both because of their individual merits and because they are exemplary in their creative engagement with a complex period.

Including both American and Canadian authors in the term North American is in no sense reductive: studies of Canadian writers in this series do not treat them as effectively American, and assessment of all the chosen authors in terms of their national and regional identity, as well as their race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, religion and political affiliation is essential in developing an understanding of each authors particular contribution to the representation of contemporary North American society.

The studies in this series make outstanding new contributions to the analysis of current fiction by presenting critical essays chosen for their originality, insight and skill. Each volume begins with a substantial introduction to the author by the studys editor, which establishes the context for the chapters that will follow through a discussion of essential elements such as the writers career, characteristic narrative strategies, themes and preoccupations, making clear the authors importance and the significance of the novels chosen for discussion. The studies are all comprised of three parts, each one presenting three original essays on three key recent works by the author, and every part is introduced by the volumes editor, explaining how the chapters to follow engage with the fiction and respond to existing interpretations. Each individual chapter takes a critical approach that may develop existing perceptions or challenge them, but always expands the ways in which the authors work may be read by offering a fresh approach.

It is a principle of the series that all the studies are written in a style that will be engaging and clear however complex the subject, with the aim of fostering further debate about the work of writers who all exemplify what is most exciting and valuable in contemporary North American fiction.

Sarah Graham

CHAPTER 1

Louise Erdrich: The Aesthetics of
Mino Bimaadiziwin

Deborah L. Madsen

The author of thirteen novels, four volumes of poetry, a short story collection, two books of non-fiction, five childrens books and a textbook on writing, Louise Erdrich is one of the most prolific, most read and most acclaimed contemporary North American writers, though she is often specified as an ethnic Native American writer. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 2000 she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. In 2009 she received an Honorary Doctorate from Dartmouth College, her alma mater. Among the writing honors she has received is the Pushcart Prize for poetry and the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award for her first novel, Love Medicine; the short story Fleur was awarded the 1987 O. Henry Prize; The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award; and she received the 2006 Scott ODell Award for Historical Fiction for the young adult novel,