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EDITORS' CHOICE Treuer, David. Native American Fiction: A User's Manual., St. Paul: Graywolf, 2006. I have often heard the complaint that certain Native American writers were not writing "Indian" poems . . . To insist that Indians only write "Indian" poems or books is as myopic as wishing Joseph Conrad had written "Polish" novels. Just as non-Indian writers have found it profitable writing about Indians, so should Native American writers have that same freedom.Continuing the conversation in 1998, in his introduction to Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing, Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz pointed out that rigid expectations for the genre render critical honesty difficult: Since the 1960s, contemporary Native written expression has gained a wide and large audience. It has received serious critical attention— although some critics have been somewhat uncertain and perhaps con-descending and too-liberal at times . . .Two new books by Native American scholar David Treuer, Obijway from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota, continue the discussion of identity and literary tradition in the Native American con-text. Treuer boldly announces the next phase of the decades-long discussion with his seemingly simple assertion that Native American writing can delve into the human condition in exactly the same ways other well-established literary traditions can, that Native American writers should not be limited by that label. In his cerebral and touching new novel, The Translation of Dr. Apelles: A Love Story, Treuer questions the possibility of a Native American literature. At the same time, in his collection of essays, Native American Fiction: A User's Manual, Treuer interrogates the label more directly, discussing examples drawn from canonical Native American texts. Treuer's two books speak to each other even as they speak eloquently to readers of Native American literature. The Translation of Dr. Apelles: A Love Story is a novel that does not reward quick reading. Indeed, with its rich style and intricate structure, a slow study of the interconnected stories, as if emulating the title character's act of translation, seems more in order. Dr. Apelles is a middle-aged Native American scholar and translator who works in a library of sorts, a place where obscure books and documents (and people) find their final resting places. His story gains traction when Apelles makes a crucial discovery about the relationship between people and art. In the act of translating an "ancient" manuscript, he discovers that he is lonely: [H]e realized that if he were to die at that instant, that if a great piece of plaster fell from the painted ceiling of the archive, he would die without being known at all, even by those with whom he was acquainted. [. . .] [H]e would die as languages do: with no one left in this world to speak him.Like his deepest hopes and fears, the manuscript in question is written in a language that only he knows; likewise, Apelles realizes that no one loves him and that he cannot fully exist unless someone "translates" him. The novel's other narrative strain—the presumed translation of Dr. Apelles— tells the story of two children orphaned by a savage winter who grow up together and fall in love. It is not the story itself that reminds Dr. Apelles that he has not yet been loved, but rather the act of finding the story that does the trick. Treuer's novel practically begs to be researched. For starters, Dr. Apelles falls in love with his coworker, Campaspe. A bit of research reveals that the historical Apelles was a renowned fourth-century BC Greek painter. One of his favorite models was Alexander the Great's cousin, a woman by the name of Campaspe. Indeed, in one of Apelles most famous works, Aphrodite Anadyomene, Campaspe served as the model for Aphrodite. Make what you will of the idea of love in Treuer's novel if Dr. Apelles, like his historical namesake, summoned into existence by his own creative energy the object of his desire. What, then, is love? A kind of translation? And when the minor characters have names like Jesus Knoepfler, Ms. Manger, Fabian, Mrs. Millefeuille, Mr. Florscheim, and Mr. Bass, well, you get the picture. Treuer addresses questions of identity and categorization in his collection of essays, Native American Fiction: A User's Manual. In it, he reexamines not only some of the major books in Native American fiction— Silko's Ceremony, Erdrich's Love Medicine prominent among them—but also the social and cultural forces that cause these novels to be perceived the way they are, the forces that have so damaged the idea of Native American literature. Treuer asserts: "If Native American literature is worth thinking about at all, it is worth thinking about as literature." Indeed, how can Native American literature blossom fully if the expectations of the critical public are so squarely focused on the first two words of that phrase and not at all on the last one? Native American writing, Treuer asserts, "has never been taken seriously as literature." Destructively, it has been seen only as an expression of culture, as a relic, as an artifact: Only by not looking at the words, only by not interrogating language could anyone claim that myth and language and culture are constituent elements of Native American fiction. They are not. They are stage props. They are on the stage but they are not the play."How to Hate/Love an Indian," an essay that meditates on the source of hatred directed toward Native Americans by white Americans, implies the following question: Might mainstream attention to Native American texts for their "Indian-ness" constitute a "using" of them, rather than a healthy relationship between a reader and text? Those who seek to limit what Native Americans can and cannot do with literature (by deciding what is published, how it is marketed, what is canonized, e.g.) are the people Treuer says have: a tendency to read Indian artistic endeavors (whether visual or textual) as cultural products, as little dioramic pieces that describe a way of life. [ . . . ] Modern Indian art still struggles with a heavy cultural burden, so does the literature. The books are seen and treated as objects, even relics of our cultures—they are fetishized as objects that contain some essence of that culture. . . . Our paintings and our books are linked to the emotional power we have over non-Indians, which is inversely proportionate to how much actual power we have in life.Treuer goes on to say, quite incisively, that the "use" of Indian literature continues to be a story of the past, that Native American literature, because it is categorized, limited, and defined, is dead, or "non-existent," as the final essay in this collection asserts. Thinking too hard about the present, Treuer says, "would be asking too much." If widening the possibilities for Native American literature, or per-haps making the category itself obsolete, is what Treuer has on his mind, then The Translation of Dr. Apelles: A Love Story might do just that. With its complex narrative layers, self-conscious literary style, and classical allusions, Treuer may have attempted to rescue Native American fiction from those who seek to "use" it, to limit, categorize, and dismiss it. Whatever his intent, both books—different though they are—serve to help shatter conventional boundaries of what has been called "Native American" in literature. If the category survives into the future, it is not because Treuer has allowed his own writing to be placed onto that shelf, as it were. With these two books, Treuer has continued the conversation Hobson helped to begin and later writers such as Ortiz continued. With these two books, Treuer has offered a profound argument that Native American literature as we have so comfortably come to know and "use" it no longer exists. William Gillard Works Cited Hobson, Geary. Introduction. The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature. Albuquerque: UP of New Mexico, 1979. Ortiz, Simon. Introduction. Speaking for the Generations. Native Writers on Writing. Ed. Simon Ortiz. Tucson: UP of Arizona, 1998.
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