No reservations

THE simultaneous publication of “Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual,” David Treuer’s bravura work of criticism, and “The Translation of Dr Apelles,” his third novel and a stunning departure from the dark intensity of his highly praised earlier works, “Little” and “The Hiawatha,” reveals a creative symbiosis. Deeply considered and intrepid, Treuer’s new books are at once scholarly, cutting and entertaining, driven by a sense of mission and animated by wit and a bring-it-on attitude.

Before reaching the bottom of the first page of Treuer’s critique of Indian fiction, readers will be mulling over the consequences, intended and otherwise, of the multicultural movement. Although multiculturalism has secured places for female writers and writers of color in the Western canon, it’s an uncomfortable fact that such works are frequently assessed more for their cultural disclosures than for their aesthetic standards. Books by Native American authors, for instance, are primarily critiqued in terms of the “terrible twins -- identity and authenticity,” according to Treuer, who adds “[s]o-called Native American fiction (if there is such a thing), has not been studied, as literature, as much as it should be.” Instead, it has been read “with more stress placed on ‘Native’ than on ‘fiction.’ ”

This strict focus on text is, of course, the credo of New Criticism, which flourished in the middle of the last century and is an essential and revelatory approach. Yet it is instructive to note that the author biography on the back of the book begins, “David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota.” It is also useful to know that at Princeton, Treuer studied with Toni Morrison, who had her brilliant novel “Jazz” published at the same time as her paradigm-altering critical work “Playing in the Dark,” a dissection of the role African Americans have played in American literature and in the American imagination. Treuer, also a literature and writing teacher, now seeks to similarly dismember the romanticized image of Native Americans -- Indians are viewed as wise by virtue of their innate spiritual connection to nature and as relics who embody the past -- and decipher the ways this idealized and ghostly persona shapes novels by Native American writers, whether consciously or not.

Among the nine bold essays that comprise “Native American Fiction” are cogent analyses of novels by Louise Erdrich, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko and, most complexly, Sherman Alexie, whose novel “Reservation Blues” is fascinatingly compared to “The Education of Little Tree,” a once-beloved novel written by the impostor Indian Forrest Carter, who in reality was the prominent Ku Klux Klan figure Asa Carter. (As Treuer puts it, “it is like discovering Hitler was the true author of ‘Old Yeller.’ ”)

Treuer’s objective is to dispute the common critical assumption that their works are Indian in form and style, quoting a critic who airily explains Erdrich’s use of multiple narrators in “Love Medicine” by declaring that “Native American oral traditions have long reflected ... polyvocality.” In his own magnifying-glass reading of the novel, Treuer takes issue with Erdrich’s claim that the novel’s form emulates Ojibwe storytelling. He makes a careful study of Ojibwe stories, including one marvelously irreverent and wickedly on-point tale featuring a character named Wenabozho who, when asked how he got to be so smart, replies that he eats “smartberries” and tricks his interlocutor into eating rabbit droppings; when the man tastes them and protests upon discovering their true nature, Wenabozho says, “Now you are smart, too.”

Treuer concludes that Erdrich has improvised not on an Indian oral tradition but rather on two traditional Western literary modes, the naturalistic and the symbolic. Similarly, he discerns parallels to “The Odyssey” in Welch’s “Fools Crow.” What Treuer finds so compelling is how Indian writers convey crucial aspects of Native American life through the innovative use of classic literary forms. His electrifying readings enhance appreciation for all that these gifted writers have accomplished and place their works where they belong, within the great circle of 20th century fiction, not sequestered on a (forgive the allusion) reservation.

“Native American Fiction” also provides keys to Treuer’s decision to veer away from the harsh terrain he has so unflinchingly mapped in his novels of modern Minnesotan Indian life to write “The Translation of Dr Apelles,” a lush and wily romance. Observations about the difficulties of translating endangered languages surface often in “Native American Fiction,” and Treuer himself is active in the effort to preserve Ojibwe, so it makes sense that his reserved protagonist is a present-day Native American linguist who specializes in translating traditional languages.

The good doctor Apelles, a gentleman and a scholar, works in a vast closed-stacks library, a sort of anti-library that preserves every book ever published, yet holds them out of the reach of readers. This is a “prison for books” and the work is mind-numbing. But Apelles, who lives alone and has no lovers or friends, spends Fridays at a more hospitable library where he is translating a long-lost Native American manuscript. Treuer moves back and forth between Apelles’ sterile urban life (indicative of our estrangement from the land) and the pastoral dream of the translation, a spellbinding tale of innocence, nature’s fecundity, human greed, divine intervention and love.

Rendered in sensuous detail and set in the Midwest’s North Woods during the 19th century, the dramatic story Apelles has unearthed begins with tales of war and deadly winter storms and segues into the saga of two Indian foundlings, each the sole survivor of catastrophes, each miraculously saved from starvation by animals. Bimaadiz, a boy of 3, is nursed by a cow moose, and infant Eta, still lashed to her cradleboard, is suckled by a she-wolf. Each child is adopted by a loving and humble couple. As Bimaadiz and Eta grow, they are happiest alone together in the wild, but as these absurdly naive creatures come of age, they draw the predatory attention of lustful and unscrupulous people, Native Americans and whites alike.

Unlike many split-screen novels, one story isn’t more intriguing than the other, in part because the tales are subtly parallel. Like the hero and heroine of the manuscript he’s translating, Apelles is changed by an ice storm, but unlike the two virgins who have no idea how to satisfy their bodies’ clamorous demands, Apelles doesn’t hesitate when his beautiful co-worker Campaspe beckons.

So transfixing are the lavish descriptions, so supple the narrative, so involving the characters, that the reader readily accepts fantastic occurrences and the other tricks Treuer is up to. Bits of literary criticism blossom as though seeds from “Native American Fiction” took root here, and Apelles’ thoughts morph into mordant commentary: “He was not one of those professional Indians who were willing to dispense platitudes disguised as cultural treasure. He was not one of those for whom the past, because of how exotic it seemed to most people, could be used as social credit among the credulous or liberal. He was a private man, with private sorrows.” As for the bewitching tale of Bimaadiz and Eta, if it sounds familiar, it’s because Treuer, following his keen interest in the alignment of Native American experience with Western literature, has performed a virtuoso, scene-by-scene variation on the ancient Greek pastoral novel by Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe.”

And there’s more. Apelles was a renowned ancient Greek painter whose works have all been lost. A favorite of Alexander the Great, he fell so madly in love with one of Alexander’s concubines, Campaspe, that the conqueror gave him the young woman. It seems that the mammoth and diabolical library of unread books in which the modern Apelles and Campaspe labor is a contemporary version of the world’s most famous lost library, that of Alexandria.

For Treuer, translation is not only the means for making literature available to new readers but also for preserving art and history, crossing cultural divides and transmuting feelings into words. Treuer recalibrates our perception of Native Americans and Native American fiction, beguiles us with tonic pleasures and induces contemplation of the woeful fate of the tens of thousands of books that are published each year only to languish in limbo, unwanted and unsung. Treuer’s edgy romance celebrates our love for each other, love for the earth and love of story, the way we make sense of life in all its wildness.

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Native American Fiction

A User’s Manual

David Treuer

Graywolf Press: 214 pp., $15 paper

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The Translation of Dr Apelles

A Love Story

David Treuer

Graywolf Press: 318 pp., $23