The Indian Lawyer by James Welch (review)

256 WesternAmerican Literature influential for him are the critical writings of Henry Nash Smith (whose work Girgus seeks to modify), Sacvan Bercovitch, Jacques Lacan, and Annette Kolodny. In the last analysis, Girgus’s method is more interesting than his findings. Much of what he says about literature and culture has been said. For example, in 1968 in Melville’s 1'hematicsofFormEdgar Dryden said almost all ofwhat Girgus says about Billy Budd. In fact, most of his material on nineteenth-century America seems strangelyfamiliar. Still, the book contains a new synthesis, and it often produces illuminating readings of passages from individual works. Another problem involves audience. It is difficult to conceive what kind of audience Girgus has in mind. Nonspecialists would have serious problems with the psychoanalytic and literary-critical jargon Girgus uses, especially in his earlier chapters, but specialists (and most non-specialists) would certainly not need to be told that “Melville lacked Freud’s faith in psychoanalysis.” The book’s best parts treat The Great Gatsby, Tender is theNight, The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell toArms in light of what Girgus calls “the chaos, uncertainty and fragmentation at the heart of the drive for intellectual and psychological security and wholeness.” Of most interest to scholars of western American literature is Chapter 6, in part on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, including the west coast phase of her career, and Chapter 7, on Mark Twain, especially the discussion of the ending of Adventures ofHuckleberryFinn. Still, Girgus’s method should be of interest to all serious students of American literature and culture. RICHARD TUERK East Texas State University The Indian Lawyer. ByJames Welch. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1990. 349 pages, $19.95.) James Welch’s fourth novel represents a return to the contemporary themes the author explored before his previous book, the very successful historical romance Fools Crow. With every novel, Welch’s artistic vision has matured, his principle characters growing in complexity, depth and breadth. Now we meet SylvesterYellow Calf, The Indian Lawyer, a tall, strong, intelligent, and lucky Blackfoot from Browning, Montana, who has moved gracefully from life on the reservation through the University of Montana, where he starred on the basketball team, on to Stanford where he took his law degree, and then back to Montana and a career in a politically powerful law firm in Helena, the comfortable state capital inhabited almost entirely by whites. Such meteoric rise is background for Yellow Calfs current ambitions.Just as he accepts the Democratic nomination for a seat in Congress, first Yellow Calfspolitical career, and then his life, arejeopardized. A member of the state’s Reviews 257 parole board, Yellow Calf is tabbed as the victim in an elaborate blackmail scheme concocted by inmateJack Harwood. Harwood’swife, PattiAnn, poses as a troubled client to gain leverage on Yellow Calf. But what begins as the first of many deceptions evolves into the first of many twists when Patti Ann and Yellow Calf tilt toward love. Consequently, the Indian lawyer finds himself threatened not only by criminal minds, but by his own desires and emotions as well. With the most complicated of Welch’s plots to date, the novel follows Yellow Calf through surprises and subtle ironies until all schemes unravel in a logical, mildly tragic, conclusion. The best of this very good book is its characterization. While Yellow Calfs history initially seems a little too good to be true, Welch soon proves that his protagonist is all too human. The supporting cast is even better. The characters Yellow Calf visits back in his little home town are wise and beautiful. And two truly bizarre ex-cons who haunt Yellow Calf and Patti Ann provide remarkable portraits of evil absurdity. While the book’s necessary overview of Montana politics is egregiously oversimplified (and this from characters who should know better), the views of prison life in Deer Lodge, and the contrasts between suburban Helena and reservation Browning are sharply detailed and insightful. At his best, Welch rises to lyrical description infused with psychological luminosity, as when The Indian Lawyer concludes. The last sentence is as rich and resonant as this reviewer has read in a long while. WILLIAM HOAGLAND Northwest...