Transatlantic Voices: Interpretations of Native North American Literatures

13. Clowns, Indians, and Poodles: Spectacular Others in Louis Owens's I Hear the Train

simone pellerin Clowns, Indians, and Poodles Spectacular Others in Louis Owens’s I Hear the Train Crossing conceptual horizons can be, and in fact must be, hard work. louis owens, Mixedblood Messages When I met Louis Owens in his Parisian hotel lobby some seven or eight years ago, he was on a tour organized by his French publishers, Albin Michel, to promote the French translation of one of his novels. I had been a translator, off and on, for the same publishing house for some time, and, though the translation of The Sharpest Sight, to my great disappointment, had not been “given” to me, the editor of the “Terre indienne” collection had informed me of the fact that Owens would be “free” on that afternoon and arranged a meeting for my benefit. At the time I was amazed to be favored in such a manner, and I still cannot figure out what the reason was for helping a scholar like me, one of the academics the house did not like to see nosing into their translation policy too much, meet one of the most promising Native American authors of the day. The man waiting for me in the rather dim, disheartening first-floor lobby turned out to be unexpectedly open and generous with his time, words, and ideas. The gist of our long conversation is immaterial, but the encounter moved and impressed me deeply—so much so that, when I heard about Owens’s suicide in 2002, that did not quite come as a surprise to me. At the time, however, he had not confided in me any specifics about his personal life and certainly not that he was just then undergoing the kind of ordeal he was later to describe in “In a Sense Abroad.” Anyway, even though I did not trust 13 250 Clowns, Indians, and Poodles the publisher’s interest in human beings, there was no way one could have suspected that the current experience could be so damaging for Owens. Had I known, I would have tried to help—but I was too young, certainly, too shy in the presence of a writer I admired, to trust my impressions that something was amiss. I failed to see the seriousness of what was going on, and I have felt guilty of some sort of coarse insensitivity ever since; the feeling will not go away. Reading “In a Sense Abroad” rekindled those emotions, and, unlike other critics in the field, what I am aware of in those pages is no masterly touch of humor. On the contrary, I am struck again and again by the pathetic, now become tragic, tone of trapped sincerity and betrayed naturalness. Here, then, is to Louis Owens, in respectful, too late, affectionate memory. I Hear the Train (2001) is divided into three main parts: “Reflections” consists of ten autobiographical texts, two of which relate travels, respectively , in France and in Italy; “Inventions” contains seven fictional stories, with one of them, “The Dancing Poodle of Arles,” bearing interesting resemblances to the ninth section of the first part, the one about France; finally, “Refractions” is a series of three critical essays on Native American literature. Because both “The Dancing Poodle of Arles” and “In a Sense Abroad” explore the same themes, albeit in very different styles, I propose to focus on those two pieces, while keeping an eye on what Owens expresses as his literary concerns elsewhere. Now, to make my intention clear from the outset, in a sort of friendly mimicking and echo of Louis Owens ’s own statement—“As an American of deeply mixed heritage and somewhat unique upbringing, I speak on behalf of and from the perspective of no one else” (ihtt 207)—I will readily concur and state that, being myself a Frenchwoman (or am I?) of deeply mixed heritage and somewhat unique upbringing, I will speak on behalf of and from the perspective of no one else. I would also like to stress that I believe my reaction to “In a Sense Abroad” cannot be too offhandedly explained away by my being more or less a French citizen, equipped with a predictably peeved chauvinism; simone pellerin 251 I rather intend to demonstrate that in its deepest meaning, Louis Owens ’s account is less an offense toward the French than it is problematic per se for what it tells us about Owens himself, and as...