Books & Islands In Ojibwe Country (12 page)

BOOK: Books & Islands In Ojibwe Country
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Birchbark Books is just off Lake of the Isles. I didn't even think about this before I left, but that's it—the whole thing about islands and books. There really are two islands on Lake of the Isles and they are both wild
islands, little places in the city where, from a canoe, I've seen great horned owls, black-crowned night-herons, arctic tern, dozens of black or painted turtles swirling off logs, and once a bald eagle. Maybe I live among the books and islands, and also must visit them in more remote places, because I've decided, in some deeply interior way unavailable to my conscious mind until I've started writing
this
book, that I will order my life to deal with a hoary old cliché.

This cliché has truly nagged at me. It is a question that I've asked myself periodically ever since I was nine years old. The question is: What book would you take to a desert island? I even have the question taped to the top of a cigar box on the bookstore counter, a request to customers to write their favorites on slips of paper, a way to find out about their tastes and discover titles that we've overlooked. What book would you take to a desert island—what a dismal thought! To have only one book to read over and over for years and years. Think of that miserable moment in the movie
Cast Away
when poor Tom Hanks opens a FedEx box and finds a
videocassette
. If only it had been a book! But which book should it have been? My solution is a dictionary. A dictionary would last and last. A dictionary would be a good thing to have arrived in that FedEx box. But even better to be like Oberholtzer and to store up 11,000. Or to be an Ojibwe raised on stories and to contain many books in mind. Or me, with a bookstore.

Books. Why?

So I can talk to other humans without having to meet them.

Fear of boredom.

So that I will never be alone.

Acknowledgments

Tobasonakwut, miigwech, kiizhawenimin. I would also like to thank everyone mentioned in these pages.

 

To Ojibwe speakers and other experts—I tried my best to get it right and went over it all with Tobasonakwut, but there are probably mistakes that should be corrected. If so, they are mine.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Louise Erdrich is a native of North Dakota, where she was raised by her Ojibwe-French mother and German-American father. She is the author of nine novels, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning
Love Medicine
and the National Book Award Finalist
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse,
as well as poetry and children's books. Her most recent novel, the highly acclaimed
Master Butchers Singing Club,
is a national bestseller. She lives in Minnesota with her four daughters.

OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES

JAN MORRIS
A Writer's House in Wales

OLIVER SACKS
Oaxaca Journal

W. S. MERWIN
The Mays of Ventadorn

WILLIAM KITTREDGE
Southwestern Homelands

DAVID MAMET
South of the Northeast Kingdom

GARRY WILLS
Mr. Jefferson's University

A. M. HOMES
Los Angeles: People, Places, and the Castle on the Hill

JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN
The Island: Martinique

FRANCINE PROSE
Sicilian Odyssey

SUSANNA MOORE
I Myself Have Seen It: The Myth of Hawai‘i

UPCOMING AUTHORS

ARIEL DORFMAN
on Northern Chile

KATHRYN HARRISON
on Santiago de Compostela

JAMAICA KINCAID
on Nepal

HOWARD NORMAN
on Nova Scotia

DIANE JOHNSON
on Paris

ROBERT HUGHES
on Barcelona

PETER CAREY
on Japan

ANNA QUINDLEN
on London

BARRY UNSWORTH
on Crete

GEOFFREY WOLFF
on Maine

PAUL WATKINS
on Norway

JON LEE ANDERSON
on Andalucia

WILLIAM LEAST HEAT.MOON
on Western Ireland

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DIRECTIONS
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DIRECTIONS

Featuring works by some of the worlds most prominent and highly regarded literary figures, National Geographic Directions captures the spirit of travel and of place for which National Geographic is renowned, bringing fresh perspective and renewed excitement to the art of travel writing.

BOOK: Books & Islands In Ojibwe Country
5.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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