In terms of writing a character that vacillates between the male and the female so organically, how was that as a writer for you?
I’m surprised to say that it was not a difficulty. Maybe that is because I think we all do vacillate between male and female in some ways. I have no idea how it affects the reader. But for me the only difficulty was that for a while in the writing of it I had Agnes change dramatically. First she was Agnes and then she was Father Damien and there was a great divide in the book. But it didn’t seem to work and I couldn’t admit to Agnes being lost. It didn’t seem realistic. It seemed as though a person who was able to be this consummate actor — so skilled that she inhabited entirely the role that she was playing — that did not mean changing oneself. It would mean incorporating every skill in order to enlarge oneself so that she became two people. She became twice the person she was.
Near the very end of the book there is a sly reference about a local writer who has been intercepting Father Damien’s reports to the Pope.
All of these reports that have been sent off to Rome — because Father Damien doesn’t want to talk too frankly to the local bishop because of course that would blow everything. And someone has been sending these reports up for years to the Pope — really being the closest person to God. Originally the whole purpose of the book was different. I wanted to somehow explain how this writer, me, came into the possession of all these first person accounts belonging to all these other people. These outrageous voices, the confessions in Love Medicine and Tracks. It’s a way of explaining to myself where the books originated because I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why suddenly I begin to think in a certain voice and the writing comes out in a certain voice. And some little flare of an image suggests a certain story. It’s a process that is mysterious to me. I originally began forming the idea of this novel as a way of explaining my role as a writer — I must have somehow appropriated dozens of confessions of people I’ve never met or known.
That’s not some kind of admission that you’ve been jimmying the lock on the archdiocese mailbox all these years.
That too perhaps. Why don’t I just leave this as a question mark?
Questions for Discussion
Do you find Father Damien to be an attractive character? If so, why? Does it bother you that he is an impostor, a thief, a liar? Does it bother you that he spends money on a piano rather than on some other cause? He easily forgives others their sins, but can we forgive him that he has an affair with another priest?
The novel invites comparisons between Leopolda and Damien. Make lists of some of their similarities and differences. Does Erdrich seem to want us to favor one over the other, or is she making through the strangeness of both of them a comment about the “miracles” of Catholicism?
Father Damien goes to Little No Horse to convert the Ojibwe to Catholicism. By the end of the book has he nearly become converted to the very paganism he set out to replace?
What do you make of the black dog that hounds Father Damien? Is it the devil? Does it really speak? Is it evidence that Damien is insane? Why did Erdrich risk having us even ask that last question by including the dog in the first place? If it is a devil who tempts Father Damien in the wilderness, does Damien become some sort of a Christ figure?
Consider the various meanings of “passion” in this novel? Why does Erdrich use the word so often? What do you make of the implied allusion to the passion of Christ — or do you see no such implication?
In this novel a very passionate woman spends most of her life impersonating a man. Along the way she becomes aware of certain ways that men typically behave, as well as how they are typically treated by others. Is there a message here about male-female roles and attitudes? Does Erdrich’s use of both genders of pronoun (he/she, etc.) to refer to Father Damien confuse you, or does it make sense in the context of the story?
In this novel more than any previous one, Erdrich gives untranslated words, phrases, and even sentences in the Ojibwe language. Why does she do this? Is it effective? Can you usually figure out from the context what the words, phrases, and sentences mean?
Do you find Nanapush to be as attractive a character as Father Damien does? Is he, like his namesake Nanabozho, a trickster figure of mythological proportions, or is he just a funny, oversexed, foolish, and sometimes wise old man? How would you compare his sexuality with that of Father Damien?
What are we to make of the Pope’s failure to reply to any of Father Damien’s letters during his lifetime? What are we to make of the Pope’s willingness to write at the end of the novel after Father Damien is dead? Does this last make the novel feel more like comedy or tragedy? That is, does the final fax give the novel a happy or sad ending?
About the Author
LOUISE ERDRICH grew up in North Dakota and is a mixed blood enrolled in the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe. She is the author of seven novels, including the National Book Critics Award — winning Love Medicine, as well as poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood, The Bluejay’s Dance. Her short fiction has won the National Magazine Award and is included in the O. Henry and Best American collections. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark.