SOURCE: Chavkin, Allan. “Vision and Revision in Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine.” In The Chippewa Landscape of Louise Erdrich, edited by Allan Chavkin, pp. 84-116. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1999.

[In the following essay, Chavkin compares and contrasts Erdrich's original version of Love Medicine with the 1993 expanded edition, noting similarities and differences throughout the text.]

Love Medicine (1984) made Louise Erdrich famous almost overnight. This novel prompted an unusual amount of critical attention, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has since become a work frequently anthologized and taught in college. Yet in 1993 Erdrich published the novel again after revising it, adding four new chapters and a new section that became the second part of “The Beads,” and resequencing the chapters; the title page of the book was changed from Love Medicine: A Novel to Love Medicine: New and Expanded Version. Although occasionally writers have revised and “corrected” published books, there have been very few instances in which a major modern novel has been so substantially revised and expanded as Love Medicine was.

If Love Medicine is a collection of stories, as Gene Lyons in a review in Newsweek insists, the importance of Erdrich's publishing a new edition of her book would be less problematical than if it were a novel. Adding a few more stories to a collection would not result in the kinds of critical problems that occur when adding new parts to a novel; on the other hand, if Love Medicine is an integral work, the addition of the new chapters should influence one's reading of the entire book. Hertha Wong, who sees Love Medicine as a short-story sequence, challenged Erdrich and Michael Dorris, her collaborator on Love Medicine, to defend their claim that it was a novel. “It's a novel in that it all moves toward a resolution,” Erdrich responded, and Dorris quickly added, “It has a large vision that no one of the stories approaches.” After Erdrich stated that she was not worried about the issue, Dorris then elaborated upon why they regarded the book as a novel:

If it had been a collection of short stories, it would have been very different. … we went through the entire manuscript. We wove in all the changes and resolutions and threads to tie them [the stories] all together. By the time readers get half way through the book, it should be clear to them that this is not an unrelated, or even a related, set of short stories, but parts of a large scheme.

(Wong, “An Interview” 47)

In an interview with Malcolm Jones, Erdrich stated that while she knew she would have been able to write the plot as a traditional novel, she decided to use an experimental but legitimate novelistic form of interrelated stories because it was “something I have always loved reading” (4).

Love Medicine should be regarded as an experimental novel unified by a variety of methods. Focusing on several interconnected Chippewa families over three generations, Love Medicine tells the story not of a central protagonist but of a reservation community in northern North Dakota. Helen Jaskoski explains the structure of the novel as “a complex series of … tales, interlocking through recurrence of character and event and through variation of point of view” (59). The original Love Medicine consists of fourteen chapters narrated by seven first-person narrators and a third-person omniscient narrator. The first chapter begins in 1981, and with the second chapter Erdrich shifts the story back in time to 1934, whereupon the book progresses in its fragmented narrative to 1984.¹ On the first page of the chapters Erdrich indicates the year and, if the story is not being told by the omniscient narrator, the name of the first-person narrator. Erdrich also unifies Love Medicine by the inclusion of a common regional setting, repeated images (especially water), recurring themes, repetition of events narrated from different perspectives by different people, and humor (Wong, “Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine” 170-87). As critics have observed and Erdrich has acknowledged, not only has Faulkner with his interrelated stories and interweaving divergent points of view been a major influence, but also American Indian oral tradition with the “storyteller's use of repetition, recurrent development, and associational structure” (Wong, “Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine” 172).² In fact, in her interview with Malcolm Jones, Erdrich stated that the novel was influenced by a traditional Chippewa storytelling technique—a cycle of stories focused on a central subject. Like some of Faulkner's highly innovative works, such as Go Down, Moses and As I Lay Dying, Love Medicine makes a large demand upon its readers, who must assemble the fragments of the narrative to see the “large vision” that Dorris insists is there. This experimental novel challenges its readers to see connections and patterns in its intricate text where much is implied but rarely made explicit. Believing that “one of the attractive characteristics of Love Medicine is its subtle complexity,” John Purdy sees this novel as an integral work revolving “around four of its characters: June, Marie, Nector, and Lulu.” The latter three are involved in a “love triangle” over a half-century in duration. Though she does not appear much in the novel and does not narrate her own story, June is a haunting presence at the heart of the work because of her self-destruction (Silberman 101). The novel begins with her death and concludes with her son Lipsha symbolically bringing “her home” (LM [Love Medicine: A Novel] 272, LMN [Love Medicine: New and Expanded Version] 367). The reverberations of her life throughout the book serve as another unifying device.

But if Love Medicine is a novel and not a collection of stories, then the existence of two versions of the work becomes much more problematical and raises some perplexing questions. Which version reveals Erdrich's “real intentions”? Which version of Love Medicine is “definitive”? Which version is the better work of art? Why did Erdrich decide to substantially change a novel that was so highly regarded by both the critics and the public? What constitutes Love Medicine, a work with a complicated textural history that includes the publication of parts of the book, sometimes in different form, in periodicals before incorporation in the novel? Is a work that exists in multiple versions, such as Love Medicine, “a single version of the work or all the versions taken together?—and if it is all the versions taken together, is the work constituted by the process of its revisions, one after another, or by all the versions considered as existing simultaneously, as they might in a variorum edition giving a complete account of the successive readings? (Stillinger v).

LOVE MEDICINE AND TEXTUAL PLURALISM

The usual assumption of scholars who have published criticism on Love Medicine is that while the two versions of the novel are not substantially different, the 1993 Love Medicine must be the more authoritative because it is the latest version of the text. This assumption of the textual stability of Love Medicine is a commonplace belief founded upon one of the basic premises of twentieth-century criticism and editing—the idea that there can be only one “definitive” or “correct” or “best” text, which is the latest one the author has approved. Since the 1960s this assumption has been challenged by James Thorpe, Hans Zeller, Jerome McGann, Donald Reiman, Peter Shillingsburg, James McLaverty, and most recently by Jack Stillinger. Stillinger has explored the problem of multiple versions with greater thoroughness and sophistication than any other contemporary theorist, especially in his Coleridge and Textual Instability, and I will summarize his ideas on multiple versions that are relevant to the problem of the two versions of Love Medicine.

Stillinger rejects the traditional notion that the latest text must be the best; he also refutes a more recent theory that the earliest text is the best because it reveals the author's first and therefore real intentions. Instead of textual stability and the notion of a single best text, he argues for “textual instability” or “textual pluralism”—the idea that there is no one version of the text that is “correct,” “most authoritative,” or “best.”

These theories are also related to ideas about authorial intention. The latest-text theory is based on the notion that the latest is best because it is the best representative of the author's intention; the earliest-text theory is based on the notion that the earliest text (rather than the latest) is where the author's “real” intention resides; and the newest theory, which I shall here call textual pluralism, is based on the idea that each version of a work embodies a separate authorial intention that is not necessarily the same as the authorial intention in any other version of the same work.

(119)

Stillinger argues that for obsessive revisers like Wordsworth and Coleridge (and I would add Erdrich as another good example) the theory of textual pluralism, which allows for the uniqueness of aesthetic character and authorial intention of each version, is a much more sensible way to see their work than the other approaches that neglect the work's “extended textual history” (121). In addition to being true to a work's textual history, Stillinger's notion that “a work is constituted by all known versions of the work” and not one single most authoritative version, has the advantage of enhancing the “richness” and “complexity” of the author's writing (132, 140).

Stillinger also suggests that obsessive revisers like Wordsworth and Coleridge become readers and interpreters of their own writing and deliberately add “their intentions in the process of revision” (107), and thus their poems can be profitably examined by critics who are trying to ascertain the author's ideas (or “ideology”) embodied in the work. Prompted by his realization that the two most difficult of the Coleridge's seven major poems have “relatively little revision” in them, Stillinger presents this tentative generalization: “the more revision in a Coleridge poem, the greater the likelihood of receiving determinate (authorial) meanings—and, conversely, the less revision, the greater the indeterminacy in situations where the lines come ‘by chance or magic … as it were, something given’” (246). If Stillinger is correct, then an analysis of the revisions in Love Medicine reveals Erdrich's ideas that are embodied in the novel since it has been so extensively revised. In short, by regarding Love Medicine as constituting both versions of the novel, instead of merely selecting the early or late version, readers can comprehend the textual history of the book and have a better chance of understanding it in all its complexity and richness.

Although the paperback cover of the 1993 book proclaims that “this is a publishing event equivalent to the presentation of a new and definitive text,” it is probably best to conclude that neither Love Medicine is “definitive,” and that each should be regarded as unique. Sounding like a deconstructor of her own work, Erdrich rejects the idea of a single “best text” when she was asked if the expanded 1993 Love Medicine was intended to replace the original 1984 Love Medicine: “I have no great plan for the reader here—some may prefer the first version without the additions, others the next. I don't think of the books as definitive, finished, or correct, and leave them for the reader to experience” (Chavkin and Chavkin 247). In fact, Erdrich seems to share with some contemporary critics and theorists influenced by deconstructionism, such as Jack Stillinger, the belief in the legitimacy of multiple versions of the text and has remarked: “There is no reason to think of publication as a final process. I think of it as temporary storage” (Chavkin and Chavkin 232).

THE POLITICS OF THE NEW LOVE MEDICINE

While the 1984 book attracted enormous attention, the 1993 edition did not. Reviewers and critics, with few exceptions, ignored the publication of the 1993 edition.³ Critics have continued to select for their study either the original Love Medicine or more often the expanded version of the novel, with little or no explanation for their choice.⁴ The assumption seems to be that the two versions are not substantially different and the additions to the novel do not change one's interpretation of the work.

In the few cases where critics provide any explanation for the purpose of the new and expanded version, they suggest that the main reason for it is to “help make clearer and more coherent connections to the planned tetralogy” (Wong, “Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine” 181). It is likely that the source for this explanation is the author herself. Marion Wood, Erdrich's editor at Henry Holt, reports: “New things were taking shape that she [Erdrich] felt needed a beginning [in the first novel]” (Devereaux 30). Perhaps because some interviewers were puzzled or even unsympathetic to the idea of revising such a successful and admired novel, Erdrich seems to downplay the difference between the two versions. While admitting to Elizabeth Devereaux that she would not be pleased if a novelist changed a book that was important to her, she claims that after the original publication of Love Medicine she discovered more stories that appeared to belong to it and therefore the additions to the expanded Love Medicine seemed the natural step (30). “I feel this is an ongoing work, not some discrete untouchable piece of writing,” Erdrich informed David Streitfeld (15). But she also qualifies that statement: “When I went back to Love Medicine, I didn't tamper with what is there. If I did that, I'd feel funny” (15).

Actually Erdrich did revise parts of her novel, and in any case, the addition of four new chapters and the new section of “The Beads” influences one's reading of the entire book. And while she does include material that provides bridges and links to her other novels that comprise her vast Chippewa epic, the revisions and additions to the expanded Love Medicine are much more elaborate than her comments would suggest. In fact, she added so much new material that it is difficult to grasp exactly how the two versions of the novel differ and what the primary purpose of the changes and additions is.

Although one might be tempted to conclude after examining the numerous and varied changes and additions in the 1993 Love Medicine that the revision is extraordinarily complex and that no argument can explain the source of the new edition, actually a careful exploration of the changes reveals the premise behind the 1993 version—the need for a Love Medicine that is more effective than the 1984 book in conveying its political ideology. Erdrich has emphasized that “any human story is a political story” and that writers do not have to express political opinions openly in fiction to convey their politics; actually, she suggests, such overt expression is often counterproductive, for the subtler and more artistic work can change more minds than the preaching of didactic protest novels. With these assumptions in mind, Erdrich created the 1984 Love Medicine. Art must come first, and the politics would be implicit in the art. But for those whose first concern is more for political intent rather than art, Erdrich's subtle writing lacks force and commitment. In an essay-review of The Beet Queen, Leslie Silko harshly attacked Erdrich's fiction, which she believed lacked political commitment, and even suggested that Erdrich was ambivalent about her Native American origins.⁵ According to Erdrich, as a result of careless reading Silko criticized her characters in The Beet Queen because she incorrectly assumed they were Chippewa when in fact they were whites and thus “they must have seemed shockingly assimilated” (Chavkin and Chavkin 237). Even more sympathetic reviewers than Silko, however, have grossly misinterpreted Erdrich's work, and they may have caused her to wonder if perhaps the 1984 Love Medicine might be too open to misreading, especially by those inclined to view the characters as the usual negative stereotypes of Indians.

James McKenzie relates how his students at the Turtle Mountain Reservation feared that the 1984 Love Medicine would confirm white stereotypical views of Indians as drunk, violent, and sexually deviant and encourage racism. McKenzie believed their fears unfounded until he consulted some of the reviews of the novel, especially those of Robert Towers and Marco Portales, which unsettled him because of their misreadings in which the characters are seen in the stereotypical ways his students feared. In the New York Review of Books Towers generalized:

From the medley of individual faces and voices a few generic, or tribal, features gradually emerge. The men get drunk as often as possible, and when drunk they are likely to be violent or to do wildly irresponsible or self-destructive things. Even Grandpa Kashpaw (Nector), the most able and ambitious of the lot, achieved his political standing in the Chippewa community only because Marie repeatedly dragged him back from the bootlegger's and sometimes sat “all night by the door with an ax handle so he would not wander off in search of liquor.” … Meanwhile the women, with the exception of the stalwart Marie, are likely to take up with any man who comes along.

(36)

In the New York Times Book Review, Portales describes June Kashpaw as a “leggy Chippewa prostitute who has idled her days away on the main streets of oil boomtowns in North Dakota,” certainly a gross simplification of June (6). Portales also simplified and misinterpreted another scene in which Nector and Marie have consensual intercourse; he concluded incorrectly that Nector raped Marie when in fact Marie deliberately “snares” Nector. When Erdrich revised Love Medicine for the 1993 version, she altered this scene in “Wild Geese” to make clear that sexual intercourse does not occur, probably because some people such as Portales misinterpreted the sex act for rape in the 1984 Love Medicine. Erdrich explains: “And the encounter between Marie and Nector was mistakenly ambiguous. I never meant it to be a rape and took a word or two out in the republished Love Medicine to make that clear. Reading it over, I too found it confusing and wanted to clarify his act (wrong, but not technically a rape)” (Chavkin and Chavkin 234). Erdrich makes clear the nature of their sexual encounter by having Nector state in the 1993 Love Medicine: “I touch her with one hand and in that one touch I lose myself” (LMN 65). Erdrich also alters another line to leave no doubt that the sexual encounter here does not culminate in coitus. When Marie says, “I've had better,” Nector, the narrator of “Wild Geese,” informs the reader: “I know that isn't true because we haven't done anything yet” (LMN 65). Originally the line suggested otherwise: “I know that isn't true, that I was just now the first …” (LM 61). In “Flesh and Blood” Marie remarks to her daughter Zelda that this place is “where I met your father” and then reflects to herself, “For all I knew, it was the place we made Gordon” (LM 114); but in the 1993 version of the novel, this reflection is omitted since the sexual encounter between Marie and Nector does not culminate in intercourse (LMN 149). Because Marie is so young, Nector's sexual behavior is improper in this scene (and more so in the 1984 version of it) in which she “snares” her husband, but intercourse does not occur. Now the revisions reduce the chance a reader can stereotype Nector as a rapist. In any case, Erdrich's dramatic revision of this scene suggests that after the publication of the 1984 Love Medicine she was concerned about misreadings, especially those where the Chippewa are simplified and reduced to whores, rapists, drunks, and other traditional stereotypes of Indians.

Although Erdrich has stressed that people should be politically committed in their personal life but not in their art, for to do so makes the art “polemic and boring” (Chavkin and Chavkin 241), apparently she decided at some point after the initial publication of Love Medicine that it did not adequately express her political ideology, and she needed to revise the novel to make it more political without becoming polemical. It is worth noting that in interviews Erdrich and Dorris stated that they deliberately set out to compose a novel that would not be as political in its subject matter as other Native American fiction. Instead, Dorris stressed, their focus would be on a reservation community, “not on the conflict between Indians and non-Indians,” in order to remind readers “that in the daily lives of contemporary Indian people, the important thing is relationships, and family and history, as it is in everybody's life, and not these sort of larger political questions, although they do impinge” (Jones 7). In another interview, Dorris returns to this subject and remarks that while in some early drafts of the novel the work was more political they made a “conscious decision, in the way Louise wrote the book, to have it all centered in a community in which the outside world is not very present or very relevant in some respects. This is a world that is encompassed by that community, and it isn't so much the outside world of discrimination or wealth or anything like that” (Coltelli 23-24). When the Chavkins asked Erdrich about the reason for the few references to political and historical events in the novel, she responded: “In later books, there is more involvement with the political life of the country, and of course reservation people are gravely impacted. There wasn't room for a large political spectrum but I think the suggestion that great events influence the way people live day to day is implicit” (251). Erdrich and Dorris' intention to write a novel that attempted to universalize Indian lives and make them accessible to non-Indian readers while not ignoring the impact of white civilization was praised by Louis Owens, who suggested that readers could identify with Erdrich's characters “much more easily” than some others by major Native American writers (205). Apparently Erdrich decided after the publication of the 1984 Love Medicine that she had been too successful making her novel “accessible,” and she needed to make it “more Indian.”

Like the 1984 Love Medicine, the expanded version is not overtly political; it avoids didacticism and expresses its politics subtly. Nevertheless, the 1993 Love Medicine embodies a powerful political vision that is absent in the original novel. This new vision includes four interdependent objectives: (1) to argue for the importance of preserving American Indian culture and resisting complete assimilation into the dominant white culture; (2) to undermine the popular stereotypes of American Indians; (3) to promulgate a feminism that is in accord with traditional American Indian culture, underscoring the crucial role of motherhood and independent women who are activists for Indian rights; and (4) to present a more affirmative vision than the one in the 1984 Love Medicine, which for some readers reinforced the notion that the situation of American Indians today is hopeless, and to suggest that there are possible political solutions to the dire problems confronting American Indians.

In order to see how these interrelated objectives manifest themselves in the 1993 Love Medicine, I will focus on the five major new additions to the novel, where the new vision of the work is clearest. My intention is to reveal how the inclusion of “The Island,” the second part of “The Beads,” “Resurrection,” “The Tomahawk Factory,” and “Lyman's Luck” completely transforms the 1984 work by adding a political dimension to the novel absent in the 1984 book. My analysis is not intended to be exhaustive but to describe the major changes and reveal the ideology behind them.

“THE ISLAND”

In an article published in 1985 entitled “Where I Ought to Be: A Writer's Sense of Place,” Erdrich stated: “Contemporary Native American writers have … a task quite different from that of other writers. … In the light of enormous loss, they must tell the stories of contemporary survivors while protecting and celebrating the cores of cultures left in the wake of the catastrophe.” This is an eloquent expression of her purpose in Love Medicine, and it is likely that in the 1993 expanded version of the novel Erdrich, not happy how this task was accomplished in the original Love Medicine, intends to add to and to clarify the stories of her contemporary survivors so that readers will respond more sympathetically to them. The theme of preserving and celebrating the core of Chippewa culture that has survived historical and contemporary oppression gains prominence in the 1993 Love Medicine, where some of the key characters reveal much greater awareness than in the earlier version of the novel of the need to reject assimilationism and instead return to traditional Chippewa values.

This theme of the importance of repudiating assimilationism and returning to one's heritage is central to “The Island,” which focuses on Lulu Nanapush as a young woman. “The Island,” the only undated story in Love Medicine, is narrated by Lulu, who has just returned to the reservation after unhappy years at a government boarding school. Erdrich has placed the new story between “Wild Geese,” narrated by Nector, and “The Beads,” narrated by Marie. “The Island” provides the voice and perspective of Lulu, the third party in the love triangle that might be viewed as the main plot of the novel. “Wild Geese” and “The Beads” present the interpretations and perspectives of Nector and Marie on the crucial times of their youth. “The Island” adds balance to the novel by providing Lulu's perspective, and as a result the reader has a greater understanding of the roots of her unconventional behavior that scandalizes her community. The reader gains insight into Lulu's formative years, absent in the 1984 Love Medicine, and better understands the nexus of forces that helped shape her character and outlook.

Although in the 1984 Love Medicine Lulu is at times vital and exuberant, it is quite possible readers will view her as a sexually promiscuous woman whose primary goal is shamelessly seducing men. Erdrich regards Lulu as “heroically sensual” (Chavkin and Chavkin 224) and does not intend for the reader to see Lulu as a heartless man-chaser.⁶ The problem occurs because the 1984 Love Medicine does not clarify the source of Lulu's wildness. In the 1984 edition of the novel, Lulu is a major character only in “Lulu's Boys,” “The Plunge of the Brave,” and “The Good Tears,” all of which focus on her affairs. It is quite possible that many readers will share Marie's harsh view of Lulu as a slut who “went with anybody in the bushes” (LM 125, LMN 161). While Erdrich does include in the 1984 Love Medicine material that supports her view of Lulu as “heroically sensual,” the cumulative impact of the numerous details of Lulu's sexual behavior undermines the positive interpretation of her character. “The Island,” first published in Ms. in 1991 and revised and expanded for publication in the 1993 Love Medicine, corrects this problem by allowing the reader to understand the origin of Lulu's “wild and secret ways” (LM 216).

Although it is not clear in the original publication of Love Medicine, the loss of her mother Fleur Pillager profoundly influences Lulu's character; in fact, “The Island” implies that it is the single most important formative influence. Lulu's narration of her return to the reservation to live with her Uncle Nanapush and his wife Rushes Bear, after a disillusioning time at a government boarding school, continues the story where Nanapush's account ends in Tracks. “The Island” begins with this young woman's lyrical confession: “I never grew from the curve of my mother's arms. I still wanted to anchor myself against her. But she had tore herself away from the run of my life like a riverbank. She had vanished, a great surrounding shore, leaving me to spill out alone” (LMN 68). Water imagery helps unify the fragmented narrative of this novel, and the metaphoric evocation of Lulu alone in a boat and her mother Fleur as a shore or riverbank is suggestive. As the novel makes clear, the worst death for a Chippewa is drowning, for according to traditional Chippewa belief, the victim becomes a wretched ghost who can never find peace but is forced to wander forever. The water imagery of the novel implies that surviving in this world is a matter of not sinking but staying afloat despite all of life's trials and tribulations. Lulu's mother abandoned her and left the child adrift on the hostile seas of life. Lulu had wanted to “anchor” next to her mother, but Fleur “had tore” herself away, like a receding riverbank. Except in nightmares, a riverbank or shore remains stationary and secure; it is the boat that pulls up anchor and leaves. The metaphor that Lulu uses here evokes the perversion of the natural order by suggesting that the riverbank or shore has deliberately moved away and abandoned the boat, which is then left to drift about and find, if possible, a safe port in which to anchor.

Yet implicit in this feeling of being abandoned is the unconscious and irrational feeling of responsibility for the situation—and the origin of this peculiar feeling requires some explanation. Abandoned by her mother, Lulu is sent to a government boarding school, where the primary objective is to transform “uncivilized Indians” into “true Americans.” At these schools Indians are punished for speaking their native languages and are encouraged to forget their heritage. A victim of the government's exploitation herself, Fleur is implacably opposed to assimilationism, and “The Island” implies that Lulu feels guilty for betraying her mother by attending a government boarding school. In the early version of this story in Ms., her guilt is clearer than in the expanded but subtler version published in the 1993 novel: “I had come back from government school. While I was there, I had turned my back on my mother, and now I needed her forgiveness, but she didn't live in the old house in the woods anymore” (39). Although the 1993 Love Medicine is not so explicit about Lulu's feeling of guilt, Lulu does reveal that she continually ran away from the government school mainly because she missed “the old language in my mother's mouth” and was punished for doing so (LMN 68). Both in the Ms. and 1993 Love Medicine versions of the story, mother and ethnic heritage are inseparably linked. In both stories, the sought-for mother who has vanished is present in spirit and aids the daughter. Lulu imagines that she hears Fleur's consoling words in Chippewa, “mysteriously keeping me from inner harm” (LMN 69).

The insertion of Chippewa words into the 1993 Love Medicine underscores the importance of language as the foundation for culture and identity. Erdrich believes that there is a connection between self and language; “what you express and who you are” are related, she explains to Mickey Pearlman (154). Moreover, the government's suppression of Lulu's speaking Chippewa had to “have been an act that destroyed the self” (Pearlman 154-55). The association of speaking your native tongue, remaining true to your heritage, and empowering yourself is suggested in the 1993 Love Medicine by the inclusion of actual Chippewa words. Some might consider the inclusion of these foreign words, which almost all readers will not understand, as exotic; actually Erdrich is merely suggesting the inextricable connections between identity, heritage, empowerment, freedom, and language. In both texts of “The Island,” the old language is associated with Chippewa heritage; in contrast, English is associated with assimilationism.

Lulu's search for her mother is, then, a search for her language, her heritage, and her identity. “I needed to find a person who would tell me where I was from,” Lulu says in the Ms. text (39). On the literal level, she must travel to the island where her eccentric relative, the primitive Moses Pillager, lives alone with his numerous cats, in order to find out where her mother resides; but, in a symbolic sense, Lulu must go to the island to unite with the Pillager spirit (the embodiment of her heritage) and discover her roots; and then she must purify herself by burning out the corrupt assimilationism that still clings to her after her residence at the government boarding school. In fact, Lulu does “unite” with Moses not only spiritually but also sexually, and that results in the birth of Gerry Nanapush, who eventually grows up to become an activist and trickster hero, inspired by the legendary Chippewa trickster Nanabozho (Chavkin and Chavkin 252).

The source of Lulu's unconventional moral code which leads to many affairs and her unconventional behavior is evident in “The Island.” The conventional moral code with its rigid definitions of right and wrong that she must have been taught at the government school is replaced by the relativistic code born out of her love affair with Moses. “Nothing would look the same after loving Moses Pillager. Right and wrong were shades of meaning, not sides of a coin” (LMN 76). Lulu's repudiation of her government-school values and her embracing the Pillager spirit also results in her rejection of a white goal-oriented lifestyle. “The richest plan is not to have one,” Nanapush tells her, and she lives existentially in the moment, without regrets for the past or hopes for the future (LMN 76). Lyman succinctly explains his mother in “The Tomahawk Factory” of the expanded novel. “You know Lulu Lamartine if you know life is made up of three kinds of people—those who live it, those afraid to, those in between. My mother is the first” (LMN 302). The intrepid Lulu lives passionately for experience, refusing to curtail her desires to adhere to the codes of others. It is the primitive Moses Pillager who leads her to envision the Promised Land of her heritage and her freedom from the values and moral codes of the dominant culture.

Lulu's affair with Moses initiates a pattern of relationships with men in which she feels empowered by being in control of the affair. The two become lovers and at the same time mother to each other, for each of them has been profoundly hurt and desperately needs a parent and a protector, someone with whom to experience unconditional love. Lulu has been without love at a time when she was especially vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and therefore the union with Moses is a transforming one. Lulu indicates that she is permanently changed as a result of her being abandoned and then visiting the island where she is reconnected with her heritage; she is able to reconstruct her identity and create a new self forged out of the crucible of harsh experience.

I was not immune, and I would not leave undamaged. To this day, I still hurt. I must have rolled in the beds of wild rose, for the tiny thorns—small, yellow—pierced my skin. Their poison is desire and it dissolved in my blood. The cats made me one of them—sleek and without mercy, avid, falling hungry upon the defenseless body. I want to grind men's bones to drink in my night tea. I want to enter them the way their hot shadows fold into their bodies in full sunlight. I want to be their food, their harmful drink, to taste men like stilled jam at the back of my tongue.

(LMN 82)

It is useful to note that at the beginning of “The Good Tears,” Lulu repudiates this cat metaphor: “They used to say Lulu Lamartine was like a cat, loving no one, only purring to get what she wanted. But that's not true” (LM 216, LMN 276). The implication is that Lulu's self-perception has changed, perhaps as a consequence of how she is viewed by the community.

With her pregnancy in the final stage, Lulu realizes that she must leave the island, even though Moses will not be able to go with her. The early version of the story published in Ms. is more explicit than the 1993 Love Medicine:

For the first time since I went to the island, I couldn't sleep. I was watching the air, the heat go from the fire. I was hoping that I would bear the baby well, hoping that I wouldn't die. As I thought these things, I understood that I had followed the directions to my mother's house. By coming here, I had done what I needed to do.

(42)

Lulu desires a mother in this crucial time of her life but realizes that she cannot reunite with her actual mother; instead she must be supported by her spirit. This idea is subtly suggested in the 1993 Love Medicine, where Lulu imagines that Fleur speaks in Chippewa and sings to her. The brief reference to the protective spirit keeping Lulu from harm is more explicit in the Ms. version, which concludes the story with boat and water imagery:

“You must get up now,” she said. “Daughter, it is morning and you must travel. You must start out on the road that leads into this life. As the day-lengthens the road is steeper, harder to walk. You must keep going. On the black rocks, by the edge of the lake, I will wait for you. I will not go away as evening gathers. Don't be afraid. Cross the water, cross the rough waves. Where the owls drop the bones of mice and bent seed of pines, I will be sitting. I will be mending your boat.”

(42)

The water imagery in the 1993 Love Medicine version of the story is not extensive at the conclusion, but the penultimate sentence of this new chapter suggests a parallel between the need to leave the island for a safer pregnancy, with a guiding midwife or mother, or remain and sink to one's death in a permanent Chippewa hell: “I knew that this baby, still tied to my heart, could drag me under and drown me” (LMN 84). Even though Lulu realizes that she cannot literally reside with her mother again, her search for her is successful—she has found her through a return to her heritage and will be with her in spirit. Her mother will “speak” to her—her Chippewa belief and culture will provide the guidance and support that she needs as she crosses the water with its rough waves.

“THE BEADS”

While Lulu's search for her mother leads to her reconnection to her heritage, Marie's search in “Saint Marie” for a maternal figure results in an encounter with Sister Leopolda, who, as Jaskoski observes, turns out to be not a “true ‘parent’” but “a wicked stepmother” whom one sees in fairy tales (55); in fact the search culminates in a grotesque and disastrous confrontation in which Marie is physically and psychologically brutalized by Sister Leopolda, a deranged mixed-blood nun, whose self-hatred and contempt for Indians have caused her to assimilate so totally that she is unable to acknowledge her Indian ancestry. The 1984 Love Medicine implies that the mixed-blood Marie is ashamed of her Indian ancestry; for example, she calls Nector a “damn Indian” (LM 59) in “Wild Geese” and in “Saint Marie” she also reveals her contempt for her Indian lineage: “the black robe women … were not any lighter than me. I was going up there to pray as good as they could. Because I don't have that much Indian blood” (LM 40); “I looked good. And I looked white” (LM 45). By the end of the 1984 Love Medicine she does not seem prejudiced, but there is no reason presented for this dramatic change. While the 1993 expanded Love Medicine also suggests that the young Marie is ashamed of her Indian ancestry with these same passages (LMN 43, 48), the added second part of “The Beads” makes clear why Marie changed. Here Marie reconnects with her heritage, primarily as a consequence of bonding with her mother-in-law, the old-time traditional Rushes Bear. In short, the second part of “The Beads” parallels “The Island” in its political ideology.

Both stories stress the importance of motherhood, a major theme in the 1993 Love Medicine, which is associated with the preservation and perpetuation of Native American heritage. In the novel mothers are not only responsible for giving birth to the new generations but also for acting as standard bearers of traditional Chippewa belief and customs. Marie and Lulu will carry on the tradition of Rushes Bear and Fleur. When daughters are separated from the mothers, as is the case with June, the danger is that they will lose contact with their heritage and suffer the consequences, such as loss of purpose, destruction of identity, and alienation from their culture.

In the second part of “The Beads,” Marie tells the story of the unexpected arrival of her mother-in-law, Rushes Bear. She is a strong-willed, extremely difficult woman who seems to consider Marie her enemy. Although Marie had faced down the raging nun in “Saint Marie,” she feels anxious in the presence of Rushes Bear. After a period of enduring her increasingly irascible behavior, Marie orders her to leave, only to be told that Rushes Bear has no place to go. Marie does not throw her out, as she had intended to do.

Marie's tolerance and generosity reap rewards. The second part of the new section of “The Beads” focuses on Marie's pregnancy in which her life is saved by Rushes Bear and Fleur, with her legendary knowledge of old-time Chippewa medicines. During the difficult delivery, Marie hallucinates and at one point sees herself “as from a distance, floating calm, driven by long swells of waves” (LMN 102). Perhaps influenced unconsciously by her association with these traditional women of the older generation, she also recalls a word “out of childhood, out of memory, an old word I had forgotten the use of, Babaumawaebigowin” (LMN 102). Marie knows that “it was a word that was spoken in a boat,” but she cannot recall its precise meaning (LMN 102).

Later Marie dreams of eating with Rushes Bear and Fleur, who accept her as she is and do not make the kinds of critical comments about a woman's appearance that Nector and other men do: “Nobody said, ‘Two years ago your waist was thin as a girl's’” (LMN 103). Marie moves in and out of consciousness, as Rushes Bear and Fleur sit by her bed, speaking “only the old language” (LMN 103). At one point Marie hears her word, “Babaumawaebigowin, and I understood that I was to let my body be driven by the waves, like a boat to shore” (LMN 103). Marie follows these directions and “that way, sometime the next afternoon, my child was born” (LMN 103).

Erdrich uses the boat metaphor to suggest a connection between Lulu and Marie. Both are in boats adrift on the perilous seas of life, where the possibility of drowning is never far away. Both women have been cut off from their heritage, and both are in search of a mother to protect and guide them. Erdrich also implies that Rushes Bear and her daughter-in-law Marie “are in the same boat” and that they recognize this reality at the end of this chapter. Both Fleur and Rushes Bear demonstrate their disgust with the wayward Nector by rejecting his offer of money for helping Marie during her life-threatening pregnancy. Rushes Bear tells Nector that he shames her and that she no longer has a son but only a “daughter,” only Marie. Looking over the bleak edges of their lives, both Rushes Bear and Marie realize they can not depend upon Nector and that they need each other as they face their common enemy of existential loneliness. At the conclusion of “The Beads,” the two women establish a bond of love that transcends their past differences. The story concludes with an explanation of their transformations:

I never saw this woman the same way I had before that day. Before that birth of the child, a son after all, Rushes Bear was a hot fire that I wanted to crush. After that, things were different. I never saw her without knowing that she was my own mother, my own blood. What she did went beyond the frailer connections. More than saving my life, she put the shape of it back in place. … I took care of the old woman every day of her life because we shared the loneliness that was one shape, because I knew that she was in that boat, where I had labored. She crested and sank in dark waves. Those waves were taking her onward, through night, through day, the water beating and slashing across her unknown path. She struggled to continue. She was traveling hard, and death was her light.

(LMN 104-5)

“RESURRECTION”

“Resurrection,” the fourteenth chapter of the expanded Love Medicine, consists of two interrelated stories. The first story occurs in 1982 shortly after the death of Nector and reveals both the toughness and tolerance of Marie as she copes with her self-destructive son Gordie. Within this story is the second story that is a flashback to the honeymoon of Gordie and June, where the readers see a much more sympathetic and human Gordie than the monstrous substance abuser who would hurt his own mother. In the 1984 Love Medicine, Gordie is a major character only in “Crown of Thorns,” where he appears as a one-dimensional character, a deranged alcoholic who at the end of the story is “crying like a drowned person, howling in the open fields” (LM 188). In the 1984 Love Medicine, the alcoholism of Gordie is not associated with the historic exploitation of Indians; in fact, Gordie's behavior in “Crown of Thorns” might well have reinforced for some readers the stereotype of the drunken Indian. This new story powerfully conveys the horrors of substance abuse on the reservation while viewing it primarily as a social problem that has its origin in the unfortunate consequences of the colonization of Indians. Similarly, June in the original Love Medicine appears in only a few brief scenes in the novel where she is usually seen as self-destructive—for example, as a child encouraging her peers to hang her, or as an adult, walking out into a snowstorm to her death. In this story, though, June, like Gordie, appears more complicated and sympathetic than the troubled child in “The Beads” or the promiscuous woman in “The World's Greatest Fishermen.” The most sympathetic character of the novel, however, is Marie, and this story reveals aspects of her character not seen in the 1984 Love Medicine.

The first part of “Resurrection” presents the grieving widow coping with a son whose substance abuse has become suicidal. The omniscient narrator reveals that since residing with other old people at the Senior Citizens home, Marie has begun speaking the native language of her childhood and “holding to the old strengths Rushes Bear had taught her, having seen the new, the Catholic, the Bureau, fail her children, having known how comfortless words of English sounded in her ears” (LMN 263). Gordie is a perfect example of this failure, and confronted with the alien dominant culture that Marie considers largely responsible for the grim situation of Gordie and other Indians who have lost their connection to their heritage by trying to assimilate, she becomes even more committed to traditional Chippewa values. This commitment to Chippewa heritage is suggested subtly in the story when Marie discovers Nector's pipe as she is going through her husband's belongings in order to “shut her mind on loss by keeping busy” (LMN 259). The unassembled pipe and the bag in which the pieces are stored are described in some detail. The pipe is a symbol of Chippewa heritage and its values, and Marie reverently returns the pieces of the pipe to their bag, not fitting the pieces together for “Nector once said,” to fit them together “was to connect earth and heaven” (LMN 260). Marie will save the pipe for Lipsha; and in The Bingo Palace the story of Lipsha and this pipe assumes great importance. “Resurrection” follows “Love Medicine,” the story that reveals the resilience of Lipsha, and the juxtaposition of these two stories implicitly contrasts Gordie and Lipsha, both of whom have suffered because of June's neglect of them. While “[Lipsha's] personality seems to transform personal pain into wonder,” Gordie can not cope with life's disappointments and disasters (Chavkin and Chavkin 223). It is appropriate that Marie intends to pass down the pipe to Lipsha, who as the son of June and Gerry Nanapush is connected to the Pillagers, the old-time Indians who remain loyal to their heritage.

While “Resurrection” does present the union between June and Gordie as doomed, it also humanizes them, making it less likely they will be interpreted as the sluttish squaw and the violent drunk. The chapter implies that Gordie's self-destructive substance abuse is caused partially by his desperate attempt to cope with June's death. For example, he refuses Marie's offer to wear a particular shirt since “it was June's,” and thus would serve as a painful reminder of her (LMN 263). June is also humanized in this new chapter and presented more positively than in the 1984 Love Medicine. For example, unlike the young Marie she is not ashamed of her Indian blood. When she approaches the white resort owner, she does so as an equal—“she didn't act much like she knew she was an Indian” (LMN 268).

The tragic consequences of assimilation are implied in the flashback, which portrays the time when Gordie and June elope. They rent a dismal cabin in a rundown resort. Their honeymoon is strangely joyless and enervated, and the grim setting suggests that this relationship is doomed. When the two go skinny-dipping in the lake and try to make love in the water, the attempt is unsuccessful and they sink, linking this image with the pattern of imagery of actual and symbolic drowning in the novel. Later, in their cabin, they try to make love again, but “making love felt like work. It wasn't any fun, but they couldn't stop. … They went on and on until they gave up and fell asleep right in the middle of it, mouths open, hot, unhappy, bitten by insects, on a mattress with little buttons that left round sore marks all over them” (LMN 271). Later neither one of them desires to have sex again. The flashback concludes with a grim image that aptly symbolizes their union; they lie side by side, “like two people carved on stone caskets, staring up at the starless ceiling” (LMN 272). The isolation of the two young lovers is reminiscent of Moses Pillager and Lulu in “The Island,” and the sexual descriptions of the two couples become representative of their spiritual and psychological states. Cut off from their heritage, June and Gordie are doomed, and their listless, passionless sex symbolizes the emptiness of their lives. Lacking a strong identification with their culture, out of contact with their souls, they self-destruct. In contrast, when Lulu reconnects with her heritage on the island, her identity and vitality are restored, as symbolized by the joyous lovemaking with Moses Pillager. The celebration of sexuality in “The Island” culminates in pregnancy and the continuation of the vital Pillager blood line.

The title of this new chapter refers to Marie's resurrection in which she transforms her grief over her husband's death and her sorrow over Gordie's self-destruction into life-affirming healing of the spirit. The preceding chapter, “Love Medicine,” culminated in Marie's poignant bonding with Lipsha, forgiving him for his disastrous attempt to concoct a fraudulent love medicine and presenting him with her beads, whereupon Lipsha goes outside to dig dandelions. “The spiked leaves full of bitter mother's milk. A buried root. A nuisance people dig up and throw in the sun to wither. A globe of frail seeds that's indestructible” (LMN 258). It is Marie who can weather the dark forces and who embodies the maternal spirit that can bring new life into a land of decay and death. While “Resurrection” graphically portrays the devastating problems of substance abuse that put so many Indians at risk, it also suggests hope for the future in the figure of Marie. She can serve as the mother to the best of the new generation and teach them about their heritage. Unlike Gordie and so many others who are prisoners of the past, Marie has the capacity to subordinate painful memories to the immediacy of the present.

“THE TOMAHAWK FACTORY” AND “LYMAN'S LUCK”

“The Tomahawk Factory” explores the ambivalent relationship between Lulu and Marie, clan rivalries and reservation politics, the theme of assimilationism vs. allegiance to one's heritage, and the economic realities on the reservation that contribute to familial conflict and cultural estrangement.⁷ In “Lyman's Luck,” which functions as a kind of epilogue for “The Tomahawk Factory,” Lyman envisions a possible economic solution to some of the problems presented in the preceding story; Erdrich, in contrast to this businessman-hustler, is ambivalent about gambling as a solution, as the reader discovers in the next novel in the series, The Bingo Palace, which explores this solution, so full of contradictions, in much more depth. The placement of these two chapters immediately before the final chapter of the novel gives them special importance and heightens both the impact of the problems Erdrich explores here and Lyman's envisioned solution. These two chapters are substantially different from the other chapters in the book, for their focus is more on the social and economic problems of the community than was seen in the previous chapters. Moreover, the tragicomic tone of the preceding chapters created by the cumulative impact of stories of abused children, suicide, alienation, violent behavior, loveless sex, random deaths, and broken families, is alleviated here by the farcical satire and the lighthearted humor that are different from the dark comedy and survival humor in the other parts of the novel.

In the 1984 Love Medicine Lulu's threat of paternity suits blocked Nector's plan for a factory, but in the 1993 Love Medicine Lyman, son of Nector and Lulu, builds the factory. In the 1993 Love Medicine Lyman, the narrator of this chapter, becomes an important character. In the 1984 Love Medicine he is a minor character whose function is to tell the story in “The Red Convertible” of the psychological deterioration of his brother Henry Junior, a Vietnam vet who commits suicide by drowning; Lyman narrates the story, but he is primarily an observer—the real focus is on Henry Junior. In the 1993 Love Medicine Lyman embodies the problematical situation of the contemporary Native American, who is torn between his need to maintain his allegiance to the beliefs and values of his heritage and the desire to assimilate and become a “successful” modern American. Lyman's conflicting emotions are exacerbated by his grief and guilt over the death of his brother, his uneasiness about the opposition to his factory, and his ambivalent feelings over his illegitimate birth and his disappointment that his father never acknowledged him but became a substitute father of Lipsha. Somewhat cynical, he is not particularly concerned that he is exploiting Chippewa culture for money, even if the traditionalists, such as his mother Lulu, “now heavy into politics,” are. The chapter not only explores the problem of assimilationism but also reveals aspects of the characters of Lulu, Marie, Lyman, and Lipsha not evident in the original version of the novel.

The reaction of Lyman to his brother's death and his subsequent career are substantially different in the two versions of Love Medicine. In the 1984 Love Medicine the carefree Lyman becomes morose after his brother's death. Lulu explains: “He could not snap out of it but slowly improved his outlook by working. He became a contractor, hired on his brothers, and in that way supported us all” (LM 228). In contrast, the Lulu in the 1993 version of the novel explains: “He could not snap out of it but went down lower, lower, to where nobody could drag him up. He stayed alone in the oldest shack, where he could party all he liked. The rest of us stuck together on that strip of land that was once sun beat and bare of trees” (LMN 289). In the 1993 Love Medicine Lyman expands upon Lulu's succinct account of his life after Henry's drowning. “The Tomahawk Factory” begins where the “Red Convertible” ends, and Lyman presents a detailed account of his reaction to his brother's suicide.

In fact, the death of Henry Junior transforms Lyman from the carefree person with a talent for making money into a cynical man distraught over his brother's terrible death, which according to Chippewa belief results in Henry Junior becoming a ghost forced to wander forever without peace. Lyman has a difficult time coping with the reality that while some Native Americans succeeded, others suffered and were destroyed: “If I bobbed to the surface, others went down” (LMN 298).

After almost a year of depression and substance abuse, Lyman, as he comically relates it, resurrects himself when he realizes that he needs to contact the IRS; later he learns “the whole thing was a mistake.” “Out of a typo, I was formed,” he sardonically observes, appreciating the irony of the situation (LMN 301). Before too long, Lyman becomes part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and ignoring his mother's accusations that he has “sold out,” he moves up the ranks of the bureaucracy. The “traditionals” are his opponents, and he disparagingly refers to them as “back-to-the-buffalo types” (LMN 303). In this new chapter the largely apolitical Lulu and Marie of the 1984 Love Medicine have become radicals allied to the American Indian Movement. Apparently, with Nector dead, the two women are “now free to concentrate their powers,” and they become leaders of the “local agitating group of hard-eyes, a determined bunch who grew out their hair in braids or ponytails and dressed in ribbon shirts and calico to make their point” (LMN 303).

In this chapter Erdrich satirizes both the bureaucrats, such as Lyman, and the kind of radical activists who oppose for the sake of opposing, such as Lulu. In contrast to Marie, Lulu “led her gang of radicals in black spike heels and tight, low-cut dresses blooming with pink flowers” (LMN 303). But if Erdrich satirizes the pettiness and hypocrisy of reservation politics, she saves her harshest satire for Lyman because of his exploitation of Chippewa culture. This chapter subtly contrasts the cynicism of the assimilationist Lyman with the inveterate idealism of Lipsha. Both Lipsha and Lyman are descendants of the Pillagers, but Lipsha has remained true to his heritage while Lyman has not. “The Pillagers had been the holdouts, the ones who wouldn't sign the treaties, the keepers of the birch bark scroll and practitioners of medicines so dark and helpful that the more devout Catholic Indians crossed their breasts when a Pillager happened to look straight at them” (LMN 312). Unlike the situation in the original novel, in the 1993 Love Medicine Lipsha's stature in the community is enormous as a consequence of his allegiance to his Pillager ancestry.

Although Lipsha, Marie, Lulu, and other Chippewas work at Lyman's factory out of economic desperation, they are hostile to the idea of the mass production of the fraudulent Indian artifacts, which makes a mockery of Chippewa heritage. Tension at the factory reaches the explosion point as a consequence of the workers' instinctive dissatisfaction with their participation in the manufacture of these imitation artifacts. Lulu warns Lyman that the workers are unhappy and calls the fake artifacts “ka-ka” (LMN 314). This Chippewa word is said to children “to express that something is bad or dirty” (Baraga 179). Lyman refuses to admit that the manufacture of these fake artifacts exploits Chippewa culture but claims that he is proud of the products.

Some months later Lyman learns that he should have heeded Lulu's warning about the unhappy workers. Marie and Lulu become involved in a bitter argument, which culminates in Marie's outrage. Her response here is that of a self-assured leader so different from the apolitical Marie of the original Love Medicine. “From deep in her body she began to gather breath until she'd swelled, powerfully, all eyes on her, into the sound of her own private war cry, a windigo yell that at once paralyzed and mobilized every worker on the line” (LMN 318). This cry brings all work in the factory to a halt, as the rival clans ready themselves to take sides if fighting should occur. Everyone in the room, including Lyman, looks at Lipsha, as if to see what he will say to do about this situation. And Lipsha, after glancing at Lulu, smiles his “Pillager grin,” “a grin that foresaw the end of Anishinabe Enterprises,” and then with magisterial solemnity he brings down his toy tomahawk “with the crack of a sentencing gavel” (LMN 319). In the next moment, chaos erupts as the workers riot in an orgy of mayhem. In “a kind of organized joy,” the workers completely destroy the factory, and Lyman is devastated (LMN 320).

The story concludes with an epiphany that reveals that Lyman achieves some kind of spiritual breakthrough when he is reconciled to Marie. When he apologizes to her for his past rudeness, he realizes in that moment that while he was always desperate for the love of his absent father, perhaps what he really needed was a mother. He asks Marie if Nector ever talked about him. Marie does not actually speak but communicates through look and touch, or at least Lyman imagines that she does. “She was going to tell me that the drowned could stop wandering, go home. … [that] I could come back, make my way down the narrow roads” (LMN 323). Marie alleviates Lyman's anxiety over his brother's drowning and his frustration over Nector's failure to acknowledge him. The narrow roads Lyman can return on are those of the Pillagers, his ancestors, who will show him the way to his true identity. When Lyman takes Marie's hand, he notices a “raised white scar,” her stigmata from her confrontation with Sister Leopolda, and it prompts him to apologize and “feel forgiven” (LMN 324). In a heightened moment signifying the spiritual breakthrough Lyman has achieved, the two “danced to the center of the floor” (LMN 324).

In the next story Lyman appears to have decided to return down “the narrow roads” he had envisioned in “The Tomahawk Factory.” Narrated by an omniscient narrator, the new penultimate chapter of the novel entitled “Lyman's Luck” is brief and focuses on the practical implications of Lyman's resurrection which was suggested at the end of “The Tomahawk Factory.” Lyman's entrepreneurial spirit has not been destroyed with his factory; it is still alive, but this time instead of exploiting Indian culture he will develop an enterprise that is in accord with his heritage. Lyman anticipates the Indian gaming regulatory act and decides that he will make money for himself and other Indians by setting up Chippewa gambling casinos. “It was going to be an Indian thing, too” (LMN 326).

Lyman has a political conscience now and sees his gambling business as a way for Indians not only to find steady employment but to revenge themselves on the white culture that has oppressed them. Lyman's new political conscience is a remarkable change from his earlier contempt for the “back-to-the-buffalo types.” In a passage that might aptly serve as the premise of the political ideology of the new version of Love Medicine, Lyman bitterly reflects on the injustice Native Americans have suffered over the years: “They gave you worthless land to start with and then they chopped it out from under your feet. They took your kids away and stuffed the English language in their mouth. They sent your brother to hell, they shipped him back fried. They sold you booze for furs and then told you not to drink” (LMN 326).

Lyman concludes that the answer to this injustice is for Indians to get smart and use federal law to their own advantage—that is, to use legal gambling to bring wealth to the reservation. “He'd … teach Chippewas the right ways, the proper ways, the polite ways, to take money from retired white people who had farmed Indian hunting grounds, worked Indian jobs, lived high while their neighbors lived low, looked down or never noticed who was starving, who was lost” (LMN 327). He envisions a future for the Chippewa in which they will be successful and control their destiny while remaining loyal to their culture. The waters that previously have drowned Indians will now allow them to bob to the surface. Lyman “saw the revenue trickling and then rolling and flooding into the tribal bank accounts. He saw the future, and it was based on greed and luck” (LMN 328).

CONCLUSION

It would be a mistake to conclude that the 1984 Love Medicine is completely apolitical. In the first version of the novel one does recognize Indian issues, including sovereignty, assimilationism, Indian activism, substance abuse, problems of the Indian Vietnam War veteran, clan rivalries, ambivalence over Indian identity, reservation politics, and cultural alienation. These issues are developed and presented more directly in the expanded 1993 version as a result of Erdrich's greater immersion in Chippewa and Turtle Mountain culture and history. While one of her motivations in republishing Love Medicine is to connect it better to the other novels comprising her vast Chippewa epic, she also revised and expanded the book in order to express her new political commitment.

It is likely that Erdrich concluded after the publication of the 1984 Love Medicine that the novel was too pessimistic. It vividly presented the dire problems of the contemporary Indian—poverty, dysfunctional families, sexual promiscuity, abused and abandoned children, alcoholism, and cultural estrangement—but it did not present practical solutions to these problems, or indicate even in a more general way that solutions were possible. Nor did it clearly indicate the origin of these problems. The 1984 Love Medicine is largely ahistorical compared to the 1993 Love Medicine. History and current events do not much impinge upon the 1984 Love Medicine characters, who seemed isolated from mainstream America, and by and large, with the exception of Gerry Nanapush, they have little knowledge of or interest in politics. All of this changes in the more affirmative 1993 edition of the novel, where the “Indianness” of the book and especially of the need to return to one's heritage are underscored.⁸ A number of the characters reconnect with their heritage, and even at times speak in “the old language,” some of which Erdrich includes in the expanded edition. A number of the major characters now are politicized, including some women who become activists, and the characters who might have been seen as negative stereotypes of Indians in the 1984 Love Medicine are presented more sympathetically. Perhaps an apt symbol of how much the book is changed is the figure of Lyman. In the 1984 Love Medicine he is an insouciant, apolitical minor character, but in the 1993 version even this typical entrepreneur-hustler preoccupied with making money speaks like a radical Indian activist.

In short, then, it should be clear that the two versions of the novel present different visions because of different authorial intentions. Neither version can be considered “definitive,” for each is unique, embodying Erdrich's “real intentions” at the time she composed that version of the novel. As for the question of which edition is the better work of art, the answer will not please those who desire to work according to “general” or “objective” principles; the fact of the matter is that the answer to the question of which is “better” will depend upon the individual's specific aesthetic and political values. Jack Stillinger sardonically observes, “In theory, everybody can be right in such matters, and the one who is rightest will be the one who musters the best rhetoric” (140). In any case, if future critics of Love Medicine are to understand this complex work properly, they must see the value of employing the theory of “textual pluralism” and recognize the need to focus upon the whole textual process and read the different versions of the novel in relation to one another and the author's developing intentions.

Notes

1. Rainwater suggests that Erdrich includes structural features that “frustrate narrativity” to create in her reader an “experience of marginality,” a view of her work that Erdrich approves (Chavkin and Chavkin 230).

2. Ruoff observes: “Indian oral literatures are a vibrant force … that strongly influence the written works of Indian authors” (5). For an excellent overview of these oral literatures see Ruoff 5-52.

3. Notable exceptions to the failure to review the expanded Love Medicine are Rubinstein, Streitfeld, Bomberry, and Bennett. Bennett is the only reviewer to discuss insightfully some of the differences between the two versions. Only two critics analyze in detail some aspects of the expanded Love Medicine. Focusing upon “The Island,” Mermann-Jozwiak explains Lulu's powers by arguing that her encounter with Moses Pillager transforms her into a kind of windigo, the cannibalistic demon of Chippewa myth. Smith focuses upon how some of the additions in the expanded version enhance the trickster aspects of the novel (100-103).

4. While Gish in this book states that he uses the 1984 Love Medicine because he considers it to be superior to the expanded edition, Purdy uses the 1993 book despite his belief that it is “a less engaging read” than the original version. Usually, though, scholars and critics do not provide any explanation for their choices of editions.

5. Louis Owens defends Erdrich, observing that Silko herself does not assume the role she would have Erdrich embrace.

6. In a 25 January 1998 letter to me Ruoff remarked that Lulu is an earth mother and trickster who repopulates the reservation with children from a variety of fathers from various backgrounds. “This is particularly relevant to a reservation such as Turtle Mountain or the one in Love Medicine because of its mixture of peoples. Like the ‘Yellow woman’ figures in Southwest mythology, Lulu goes outside traditional boundaries to bring fresh bloodlines into the tribe. She is similar to the girl(s) in the ‘Star Husband’ tales so prevalent in the Plains and in the Algonquian mythology, who go outside the tribe, follow a strange Star Man or Bird Man to another world and eventually give birth to a baby (or twins). Thus her love adventure results in a child (or children) who becomes a culture hero important to the tribe.”

7. Ruoff remarks in the Afterword to this book that “The Tomahawk Factory” originally was a section of the unpublished “Tracks,” but Erdrich rewrote the story and included it in the 1993 Love Medicine.

8. But at least one critic found the new and expanded Love Medicine still politically wanting. Bomberry concludes that the novel portrays “Indians, especially the Indian woman, in a negative light,” and “What Love Medicine gives us is a snapshot of hopelessness and despair” (77-78).

Works Cited

Baraga, Frederic. A Dictionary of the Ojibway Language. St. Paul, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1992. Rpt. of A Dictionary of the Otchipwe Language (1878).

Bennett, Sarah. Rev. of Love Medicine: New and Expanded Version, by Louise Erdrich. Studies in American Indian Literatures 7.1 (Spring 1995): 112-18.

Bomberry, Victoria. Rev. of Love Medicine: New and Expanded Version, by Louise Erdrich. Wicazo Sa Review 101 (1994): 76-78.

Chavkin, Nancy Feyl, and Allan Chavkin. “An Interview with Louise Erdrich.” Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris. Ed. Allan Chavkin and Nancy Feyl Chavkin. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1994. 220-53.

Coltelli, Laura. “Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris.” Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris. Ed. Allan Chavkin and Nancy Feyl Chavkin. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1994. 19-29.

Devereaux, Elizabeth. “Love Medicine Redux: New and Improved, but Why?” Publishers Weekly 23 November 1992: 30.

Erdrich, Louise. “The Island.” Ms. January-February 1991: 39-42.

———. “Where I Ought to Be: A Writer's Sense of Place.” New York Times Book Review 28 July 1985: 1, 23-24.

Jaskoski, Helen. “From the Time Immemorial: Native American Traditions in Contemporary Short Fiction.” Since Flannery O'Connor: Essays on the Contemporary American Short Story. Ed. Loren Logsdon and Charles W. Mayer. Macomb: Western Illinois UP, 1987. 54-71.

Jones, Malcolm. “Life, Art Are One for Prize Novelist.” Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris. Ed. Allan Chavkin and Nancy Feyl Chavkin. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1994. 3-9.

Lyons, Gene. “In Indian Territory.” Rev. of Love Medicine: A Novel, by Louise Erdrich. Newsweek 11 February 1985: 70-71.

McKenzie, James. “Lipsha's Good Road Home: The Revival of Chippewa Culture in Love Medicine.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 10.3 (1986): 53-63.

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