Blood Thirsty Savages by Adrian C. Louis (review)

Reviews 211 tion ofrifles created starvation, which furthered cultural genocide. Vollmann’s technique is chimerical: his narrative is a metamorphosing blur of John Franklin’s doomed 1840s attempt to locate the Northwest Passage, the 1950s Canadian government’s removal of Inuit from the sub-arctic to the Arctic Circle, and a fictionalized account of Vollmann’s own trips to Canada to research his novel. Readers who like their literature hallucinatory and solipsistically anti-realistic (Subzero, Vollmann’sfictional alter ego, believes he is Franklin, and Vollmann’s narrator supports this belief and others as cute) may be charmed by Vollmann’s method; I feel that its frippery both masks inanityand asserts there isno meaning to be found, inwhich case the novel isof lessvalue than TheLoneRangerreruns. Vollmann’s sociological approach is evident throughout the novel. The characters, especially the Inuit, are insubstantial, and the text isfootnoted and followed by69 pages ofglossaries and sources. These I find to be more interest­ ing and thought-provoking than the fiction. Also detrimental to the novel is Vollmann’s adolescent prurience. He footnotes Inuit slang for female genitalia, has Subzero hope “he would find the Northwest Passage between Reepah’s legs,” and describes a lake as having “a little knob like a clitoris.” If the far north interests you, try Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez or Brian Moore’sBlackRobe. JAMES P. CANTRELL Mt. Sequoyah, Arkansas Blood Thirsty Savages. ByAdrian C. Louis. (St. Louis: Time Being Books, 1994. 112 pages, $12.50.) The currentboom in NativeAmerican literature isallabout empowerment: more and more native people are discovering their own voices. The poetry of Adrian C. Louisjarringly reminds us, however, that while the Native American intellectual community may be thriving, life for the many Indians living on reservations remains as bad as ever. On the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, Louis’s home since 1984, people continue to wake each morning to grinding poverty; some drink too much and eventually kill themselves or each other. Lust—for drink, for sex, for violence—isa recurring theme in Blood Thirsty Savages. The people about whom Louis writes, himself included, fight a con­ stant and intense struggle with lust, and often they succumb. It’s as if Louis is reveling in the stereotype of the savage that white society applied to Native Americans in order tojustify its campaign of genocide against them. Youwant to see savages? Louis delivers. His point, Ibelieve, isto expose the accusations of 212 WesternAmerican Literature savageryasaself-fulfillingprophecy. Historicallywhiteshave believed Indians to be sub-human, and that’sexactlywhat the reservation system has succeeded in turning them into. In “The Blood Thirst of Verdell Ten Bears,” an interior monologue in fourteen parts that is the centerpiece of this collection, a Pine Ridge man stalks an unidentified enemy, intending to kill him with the gun he has purchased byforging his girlfriend’swelfare check. I can’t think ofa more apt metaphor to mark the decline of a once proud culture. In other poems, Louis occasionally allows himself to picture a better life, one lived with structure, meaning, and dignity. As in Among theDogEaters, Louis’s previous book, Louis claims a role for himself as the nasty, sardonic cousin of the Native American literary commu­ nity. Read him at the risk ofupsetting the happy notion that NativeAmericans, as a group, have regained a measure of control over their own destiny. Ignore him at the risk ofremaining in denial. PAUL HADELLA Southern Oregon State College HeavenlyR ofB:Poems 1982-1993. ByHarald Wyndham. (Pocatello, Idaho: Blue Scarab Press, 1993. 157 pages, $12.00.) Bythe time readers finish HeavenlyR&B, theymustfeel theyknowHarald Wyndham quite personally, for he includes poemsabout seeminglyeveryaspect ofhis life and his circle offamily and friends. Perhaps the most poignant poem in the volume, “ElegyatThirtyThousand Feet,”includesan unexpected conver­ sation between the speaker and his deceased father as a jetliner makes its descent toward the funeral destination of another family member. At such times Wyndham connects powerfully—one soul to another—poet to reader. Much of the volume celebrates yet questions the poet’s isolation in Idaho. Certainly Idaho seems like some kind of poetic utopia except for the fact of necessary obscurity. Poems about the poet’s struggle for recognition in the midst...