Michael Dorris' and Louise Erdrich's The Crown of Columbus
(Harper Collins Publisher, New York, 1991: $21.95, Hardbound)
by M. Annette Jaimes @ 1991
Will Vivian and Roger find competitive happiness together? Can
they reconcile their adversarial personalities in academe and life
in general? Will Roger be able to civilize Vivian's halfbreed son,
Nash? Will their daughter out of wedlock, Violet grow up to be
somebody special? Will Vivian's jaundiced and wizened grandmother
be able to accept Roger as a grandson-in-law providing he will
make his relationship with her granddaughter legitimate? Will
lotuseaters take over the world? As a beginning scenario , this
is the situational stuff that Dorris and Erdrich's recent novel, THE
CROWN OF COLUMBUS, is made of: divisive parenting, surrogate
Oedipus complex, cross-cultural and interracial
miscommunications, and the underlying current that "I'm OK, You're
OK, But...!" However, the tempo is picked up in the middle of the
story around the mystery theme of Christopher Columbus' missing
journal and a treasure he may have left behind OR gave to an
Indian chief as a good faith gift from his employers, Spanish
Sovereigns.
All in all, this is an entertaining book BOUT mixed-blood Indian
gal and the man SHE chooses to be the father of her second child.
She is wary, and with good reason, an assistant professor who has
found her ethic niche among Dartmouth faculty but yearns for
more: fame, notoriety, etc. So she proceeds to set up a triptych
for her determined aspirations that include family, her reluctant
soon-to-be spouse's inspirational mental block, and a once wealthy
but now financially desperate villain named Cobb. The latter is
out to commercialize the "Discovery" during the quincentennial
brouhaha centered upon the enigmatic Colon, who Roger keeps
asserting was a Jew. Vivian is part Navajo, but other than her
quoting a traditional Dine "Blessing Song," it is difficult to
decipher why other than as convenient ethic labeling. The novel
also hits on miscegenation in the context of race, class, and
gender conflict, academic jealousy and one-upmanship,
psychological S&M over parenting as signifier of maternal
superiority over patriarchy, identity issues that perpetuate
prevailing stereotypes and racial/cultural xenophobia, modern day
anomie and angst, and more.
The books finale, compared to its John Updike run-rabbit-run
beginning, reads like an Indiana Jones thriller set in the
Bahamas. It is replete with drama; there is Vivian's abduction
and attempted murder by the evil Cobb, Nash's brotherly neglect of
his little sister, and an almost drowned baby Violet,
unintentionally abandoned by her father in a floating raft
surrounded by hungry sharks, and excreting bats. Finally, there
is the continuing saga of Roger's arrogant but peevishly small
life, a matter which is not resolved until he finally concludes he
needs Vivian and her brood - instead of his habitual
fastidiousness and poetry-to achieve his ultimate salvation. This
enlightenment doesn't come, however, until he has mentally
composed his epic tribute (about sixteen pages worth) to the
ambitious navigator while he contemplates his shortcomings and
mortality on the edge of imperiled starvation while stuck in a bat
cave. Then there is Vivian's miraculous metamorphosis into a
warrior woman as she karate kicks her way out of Cobb's clutches
and emerges heroine of the day, finding Roger before he expires
and the exrement-buried treasure as well. One cannot avoid the
conclusion that these two distinguished authors together produced
a mere commercial potboiler under the guide of literary license.
Their performance ultimate leaves one stumped and disappointed.
It is difficult to read this book and not wonder if the two main
characters Vivian and Roger as antagonistic lovers, were not
crated from the actual lives of their creators, at least in part,
I am, of course, aware that Dorris and Erdrich are a celebrated
couple in the book world. In fact, I am an enthusiast of
Erdrich's previous award-winning works - LOVE MEDICINE, TRACKS -
and use her novels as texts in my Indian studies courses. I am,
on the other hand, not particularly familiar with Michael Dorris,
with the exception of his controversial book, THE BROKEN CORD, an
autobiography focusing on parenting and fetal alcohol syndrome
among Indian children. He has been accused by Indian women of
"victim blaming" with regard to the biological mothers of these
blighted off-spring. In this light. I accepted the invitation to
write this review since I have been somewhat intrigued with the
Dorris/Erdrich phenomena, especially after hearing they were paid
mega-bucks to weave this fictional web around the Columbus
enterprise, the fetish of our immediate times.
This talented duo has contrived an anecdote that has little to do
with the 20th century inquiry into "who was Columbus, really".
The authors have instead opted for the pop reading trends of the
general American public to satisfy the contemporary taste for
literary kitsch. This they do from their privileged and
liberalist vantage point to seemingly promote the message that
there is redemption for us all, including Columbus, who maybe
wasn't such a bad guy after all. This, even from the colonized
perspective of the Indian, represented by the ambassadorial
scholar, Vivian Twostar herself. And as her soon-to-be
domesticated husband would have it, the "lost man" was rather a
victim as well as a product of his ruthless times and a prototype
to modern man, like Roger himself; egocentric but desperate,
self-righteous but bewildered in his quest for recognition and
acceptance, ad nauseam. Yet, the story does have a happy albeit
imaginary ending for Indians in the Americas, since Professor
Twostar does outsmart her anglophilic and eurocentric spouse by
her discovery of the "discoverer's" diary that allows for more
legally righteous interpretations of the rights of indigenous
peoples, that this land was after all their land first! At any
rate, the bottom line of his paradoxical tales appears to be that
Columbus' greatness was happenstance and trivialization of a
conquest is acceptable, but nonetheless American Indians today
have the chance to be prideful if not vindicated for their
irredeemable loss. This book will not doubt be popular reading
for the majority, but it is this reviewer's final assessment that
the reputations of neither author will be enhanced by their team
effort, since in collaboration as literary artists they have
chosen to engage in the pandering of their art.