Just finished this novel last night.  I don't read a lot of novels, but I have a few on my shelf which have always come to me strongly recommended by someone I trust.  I don't remember who gave me this one.  It might have been B.  She is very much into all things native.

The book is excellent.  It also was a 1984 bestseller and got a book critics circle award for fiction.  It was Erdrich's first novel, and I am sure that many of the subplots in it are bits and pieces from her upbringing as a half-Chippewa in North Dakota.

What strikes me about it, first, is the variety of perspectives the author is able to take.  She writes from first and third person perspectives of male and female characters, young and old.  She takes a hard look at alcoholism, and PTSD, at our legal system, at the rivalries and drama of siblings and marriages and humanity.  In the end I was lifted by her compassion, by knowing that there is a person out there who sees the love inside of troubled people and can write about it.

The book tells tales on Lulu Lamartine throughout the book, but you don't get to hear about the world from her point of view until the very end.  I liked Lulu, and many of the other characters.  Lulu took pleasure in life, in men, in her many sons.  She saw the beauty in things.  She forgave.  She kept her secrets.  There are those who would judge her for her sexuality, but there were many in the tribe that didn't, because they participated in it.

Another striking thing about this book is the way the stories unfold over time as each chapter tells another point of view.  The stories gradually work from long past to present, but sometimes in the present the truth is buried, instead of revealed.  Other stories come to light and make a difference for someone.  One of the most basic stories is that of a person's origins.  Who are your parents?  Where did you come from?  Do you know?  In a world full of illegitimate children, it's not a given.

I have a copy here to give away.  I recommend it.  

Grant me the tenacity to beat the living shit out of a line until it fits
The courage to cut what I cannot fix
And the wisdom to feign indifference.
--Sir Christopher Jelley

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
--E.F.Schumacher

What do you think? Have you ever fallen into that pit where you had no "real" life and your entire life existed through a keyboard and screen? Have you found your way back into the land of living and breathing? Have you discovered your body? Are you OK being alone with yourself??

Got me started thinking about this (again):
http://vimeo.com/70534716

I had a housemate once who would become completely obsessed with a new video game and play it continuously until he had completed all the levels. It took a couple months for him to master Grand Theft Auto. He took me for a ride in it. Our virtual reality was shared in living and breathing space, and he was not a lost cause. I don't think. I hope not.

I have a friend who lives a good fraction of her life in second life. She is married in this life and has a significant other in second life. Her 2nd life SO is known to her and her husband. He has a wife and kids. They visit together, eat icecream, break ankles, breathe the same air. Second life has merged with first life.

I have a sister whose occupation is building things for the second world. That is, she obtains or develops images and sounds that she can sell for virtual money. Her reality is beyond my comprehension, except that when she is there beside me she is just as solidly herself as she has ever been, with a sharpened wit.

I have a boyfriend who barely exists on the internet. I told him how many fb friends I have now and he laughed at me. I think he is afraid that I will go where my sister went, or my friend. He likes to exercise and play his guitar and garden and read. Doing all those other things sounds far better than this. I'm outta here.

Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
--Norman Maclean

Have you been noticing it? It seems that every author, journalist, pundit and commentator these days is juxtapositing things, as if to show off how they can use a five syllable word (with an X in it!). Two syllables will suffice. The word is CONTRAST. Excellent writing uses an economy of words. Great writing streamlines syllables. Let us remember high school English, when we learned to compare and contrast, and stop trying to sound brainy by wasting syllables on stupid words. Please?

I now await the comments comparing and contrasting "contrast" with "juxtaposit".

You have enemies?
Good.
That means you have stood up for something,
sometime in your life.
--Winston Churchill

I don't know much about this bill, but I ran across this today: 87% of Wikipedians despise the bill and support a Wikipedia Blackout to protest it. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, and it goes before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee this Thursday, December 15.

I can relate that at the public library in the town of my birth, if you type "finish it" the computer system changes your "sh it" to xxxx. Pain in the A$$. But I have a feeling that's not the kind of censorship that's coming down the pipe on this one. Can anyone give me a primer on what this law would really do? I'd appreciate it.

[Error: unknown template qotd] A queen sized bed.