It’s the birthday of novelist Louise Erdrich, born in Little Falls, Minnesota in 1954. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her mother was French-Ojibwe, and her father was German; she and her six brothers and sisters were raised in a close, loving family. Instead of watching TV—they didn’t own one—the children were encouraged to write and to memorize poems.
She went off to Dartmouth in 1972, the same year the university started admitting women and the first year of its new Native American Studies program. The program’s director was Michael Dorris. Years after she graduated, Erdrich was invited back to Dartmouth to read some of her poetry, and she became re-acquainted with Dorris, and they ended up getting married.
She started off as a poet. Her first book was Jacklight (1984), a book of poems based on the thesis she wrote for her master’s degree in 1979. She said, “I began to tell stories in the poems and then realized that there was not enough room.” So she moved on to fiction. She published her first short story, “The Red Convertible,” in 1981, and “Scales” in 1982. Later that year, Dorris convinced her to enter a new fiction-writing contest, so in the space of two weeks she wrote “The World’s Greatest Fisherman,” and she won the $5,000 prize. Two years later, she published Love Medicine (1984), a novel made up of 14 interrelated stories.
Love Medicine is populated with characters who live in the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota, or its nearby reservation. . . . After Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich wrote many novels set in the same fictional universe, and Marie, Lulu, and Nector all reappeared, along with others connected to them. Her novels include Tracks (1988), The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001), The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003), The Plague of Doves (2008), Shadow Tag (2010), and LaRose (2016).
She said, “We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif—books in piles on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are the boxes waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books. They are a sort of insulation, soundproofing some walls. They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and, disguised by quilts, function as tables. . . .
She said, “By having children, I’ve both sabotaged and saved myself as a writer. […] With a child you certainly can’t be a Bruce Chatwin or a Hemingway, living the adventurer-writer life. No running with the bulls at Pamplona. If you value your relationships with your children, you can’t write about them. You have to make up other, less convincing children. . . .
Without my children, I’d have written with less fervor; I wouldn’t understand life in the same way. I’d write fewer comic scenes, which are the most challenging. I’d probably have become obsessively self-absorbed, or slacked off. Maybe I’d have become an alcoholic. Many of the writers I love most were alcoholics. I’ve made my choice, I sometimes think: Wonderful children instead of hard liquor.
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