Native American Fiction: A User's Manual, and: The Translation of Dr. Apelles: A Love Story (review)

To look at this historical novel and reduce it to a quaint descendant of the nineteenth-century literary imagination, nineteenth-century "Cooperspeak," and Homer's Odyssey, rather than address the genius of Welch's creation of what is indeed a translated world for a predominately...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in American Indian literatures 2008-07, Vol.20 (2), p.113-116
Main Author: Kalb, John D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
19th century
Alexie, Sherman (1966- )
Ceremonies
Erdrich, Louise
Essays
Faulkner, William (1897-1962)
Fiction
Literary criticism
Literary translation
Momaday, N Scott (1934-2024)
Morrison, Toni (1931-2019)
Mythology
Native literature
Nonfiction
Novels
Rites & ceremonies
Silko, Leslie Marmon (1948- )
Tales
Translation
World Literature
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Summary:To look at this historical novel and reduce it to a quaint descendant of the nineteenth-century literary imagination, nineteenth-century "Cooperspeak," and Homer's Odyssey, rather than address the genius of Welch's creation of what is indeed a translated world for a predominately non-Native readership, is to miss much of the art that Treuer claims to be his focus. Ironically his characterization of Silko's myths, that they betray a "tribal naivete that has been the stock and trade of literary representations of Indian myth from the eighteenth century onward" (135), more accurately applies to Treuer's fanciful rendering of Indians in this novel.
ISSN:0730-3238
1548-9590
1548-9590
DOI:10.1353/ail.0.0017