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“The Night Watchman”
I have finished Louise Erdrich’s The Night Watchman, the No Strings Attached Book Club’s latest selection. For those who don’t know, the author is a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa band, and the book is a novel set in the 1950s, and dealing with the American Indians’ reaction to the attempt by certain politicians to “terminate” their tribes, meaning to take away their reservations, have the federal government abandon its treaty obligations, and “help” the individual Indians integrate into white society. This really happened; I remember reading an article in the National Geographic many years ago about the Menominee tribe, and how one of their members had later lead a successful fight for “de-termination.”
This is a novel, not a history textbook or a historical polemic, although it is based on real events and Ms. Erdrich clearly has definite views on the issues. We meet a number of characters, Indian and white, and see them interact; there are admirable people, there is at least one alcoholic mess-up Chippewa, there are white gangsters, and several decent and helpful whites. There are also a pair of Mormon missionaries, who do not achieve much success in their efforts, and there is a ghost, with other touches of the surreal.
For the most part, I found the narrative compelling, and I was curious to see how these people would deal with each other, whether they would succeed in their objectives (raising money to take the train to Washington and testify before the Senate is only one of them), whether and how some younger people would pair up, and so forth. Ms. Erdrich is a critically admired author of literary fiction who can actually write a book worth reading.
This is a novel, not a history textbook or a historical polemic, although it is based on real events and Ms. Erdrich clearly has definite views on the issues. We meet a number of characters, Indian and white, and see them interact; there are admirable people, there is at least one alcoholic mess-up Chippewa, there are white gangsters, and several decent and helpful whites. There are also a pair of Mormon missionaries, who do not achieve much success in their efforts, and there is a ghost, with other touches of the surreal.
For the most part, I found the narrative compelling, and I was curious to see how these people would deal with each other, whether they would succeed in their objectives (raising money to take the train to Washington and testify before the Senate is only one of them), whether and how some younger people would pair up, and so forth. Ms. Erdrich is a critically admired author of literary fiction who can actually write a book worth reading.