|
|
|
|
The Nature of Discovery |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Annick Smith |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 6/1/1991 |
| Size: 2,631 Words, 15,097 Characters |
|
THE CROWN OF COLUMBUS
Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich
New York: HarperCollins, 1991
384 pp., $21.95
Say a dreamy island girl found a rose-cheeked baby in a raft washed up on her Caribbean turf. Then a drowning old man with a plastic zip-lock bag in his mouth washes up on the same beach. Say the words in the bag were written five hundred years ago by Christopher Columbus, who also arrived on that shore:
Wondrous are the tumultuous forces of the sea.
Wondrous is God in the depths.
You might wonder at such an opening. You might ask if the situation is believable or contrived. Or both. The key, of course, is discovery. "The novel is about the nature of discovery," Michael Dorris said in an interview. "Interpersonal, geographic, historical."
That's the setup for this collaborative story by the Native American husband and wife team, Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich. The prizewinning books they wrote as individuals (The Broken Cord, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and Tracks) have been about reservation Indians and country people of mixed blood who inhabit the fringes of American western experience.
Erdrich and Dorris (along with a talented bunch of native American authors including Scott Momaday, Leslie Silko, James Welch, and Linda Hogan) have taught us to see the tired old western freshly. These is magic in the mix of tribal cultures with European, a tradition of storytelling the dominant culture has not heard b...
Read Full Article
... were still clenched from letting go. The fact remained, though, that no matter what had happened in the end, she had been chosen in the beginning. This meant that other things might happen to her, too, she was sure. It was a while before Valerie started to think of the sea as a place to cross, but once she did, she couldn't stop. It's a lovely ending, the sea opens again, world upon world.
(1,552 of 15,097 characters)
|
|
|
Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
|
The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
