Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Erdrich, Louise - Nancy J. Peterson (essay date October 1994)

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Nancy J. Peterson (essay date October 1994)

SOURCE: "History, Postmodernism, and Louise Erdrich's Tracks," in PMLA, Vol. 109, No. 5, October, 1994, pp. 982-94.

[In the following essay, Peterson presents a poststructuralist interpretation of Tracks, noting in particular the novel's treatment of history as potentially fictive and relative.]

In a 1986 review of Louise Erdrich's second novel, The Beet Queen, Leslie Marmon Silko argues that Erdrich is more interested in the dazzling language and self-referentiality associated with postmodernism than in representing Native American oral traditions, communal experiences, or history. In Silko's view, the "self-referential writing" that Erdrich practices "has an ethereal clarity and shimmering beauty because no history or politics intrudes to muddy the well of pure necessity contained within language itself." Whether or not one agrees with Silko's characterization of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Peter Stitt (review date Winter 1984)
   2. Russell Banks (review date 1 November 1986)
   3. Louise Erdrich with Joseph Bruchac (interview date 1987)
   4. Christopher Vecsey (review date 4 November 1988)
   5. Thomas Matchie (essay date Summer 1989)
   6. Annie Finch (review date Summer 1990)
   7. James Ruppert (essay date Fall 1991)
   8. John S. Slack (essay date Summer 1993)
   9. Roberta Rubenstein (review date 14 November 1993)
   10. Sidner Larson (essay date 1993)
   11. Julie Tharp (essay date 1993)
   12. Lawrence Thornton (review date 16 January 1994)
   13. Susan Meisenhelder (essay date January 1994)
   14. Nancy J. Peterson (essay date October 1994)
   15. Sue Halpern (review date 16 April 1995)
   16. Mark Childress (review date 12 May 1996)
   17. Verlyn Klinkenborg (review date 16 June 1996)
   18. Julie Barak (essay date Fall 1996)
   19. Thomas Matchie (essay date Fall 1996)
   20. Susan Castillo (essay date Winter 1996)
4. Copyright

1. Louise Erdrich