The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
While much has been made about configurations of gender in the novels of Louise Erdrich, Last Report of Miracles from Little No Horse (LRMLNH) transcends earlier accomplishments from The Beet Queen and The Antelope Wife. The unifying aspect of sex becomes the force early in this story that turns the plot back to Tracks, bringing an astonishing depth to a story we thought we already knew.For those not familiar with the novels of Erdrich, many of the characters in LRMLNH were introduced in earlier books. In this story, a priest on a remote reservation in Minnesota writes a missive to The Pope, telling the pontiff he’s got the wrong person in mind for sainthood: Sister Leopolda, a woman whose either-or-but-not-both attitude is potently destructive. Instead, the priest tells The Pope about the witness he received from the tribe of Mary Kashpaw, Lulu, Fleur Pillager and (my favorite) Grandpa Nanapush. In a sense, this novel is a satire of religious conversion memoirs from earlier centuries.Although there are many ways to connect this novel to others in Erdrich’s round of stories, I’m interested in her use of music, something that significantly helped the characters of Tracks survive the harsh winter of 1917-1918. Music seems related to the concept of flow, be it blood, water, wine or the transfiguration of one to another.In other novels, Erdrich has used water as a volatile symbol, so LRMLNH astonishes with its variation on the motif. The water of the natural world in Love Medicine is still imbued with significance in LRMLNH, but Erdich links characters to nature by the flow of that water. Sister Cecilia leaves the convent when Mother Superior hides all music (except Bach) because the midnight playing of Chopin’s “Prelude in E Minor” wakes Mother Superior in sweat & tears with memories of her own dead mother (15). In one deft scene, Erdrich dramatizes the spiritual link between family, spirit and the flow of water. This early leave-taking becomes more amazing when considered with the novel’s conclusion.The connection between music and family is subtle but startling once we realize that some music is sex. For example, Berndt Vogel--a farmer whom Sr. Cecilia goes to work for--uses the piano to keep her around; Cecilia, in turn, uses music to seduce him (a bit like the movie The Piano) While Sr. Cecilia practices piano, Berndt practices for loving her. The musical sex described on page 21 is more astounding than the traditional sex described on page 24. For an author as accomplished at writing eroticism (Tales of Burning Love is particularly memorable in exploring the diversity of physical love), Erdrich continues to astonish in LRMLNH.The musical sex Berndt and Agnes share is a kind of birth control, unless we consider music the offspring. This book is about the spirit transcending the physical. It is interesting that Fr. Damien looks at the piano as “sleeping child” (6-7). Few writers have written as much non-fiction on parenting as Erdrich (The Blue Jay’s Dance, Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country and whatever contributions she made to Michael Dorris’ Broken Cord). So it is with interest that I look at the spiritual rebirths in LRMLNH, in particular, Fr. Damien’s realization that being reborn once might not be enough. And the novel is not talking about reincarnation, but opening a new dimension of one person, and music seems to be present throughout the conversions.When Fr. Damien plays the piano in the new church, snakes come from the ground, giving him good standing with the Anishinaabeg (220). The snakes or ginebigoog come from the lower levels to hear the priest play piano, thus bringing the people to church because the snakes are known to be wise. All these things occur in Chapter 12, “The Audience,” one of the most philosophical passages in all Erdrich for it is here music elucidates the distinctions between European and American approaches to language, time and love. As for me, this chapter is sacred literature. So to quote from it I risk the heresy of paraphrase (don't we always?), but the poetry found within Erdrich’s prose is worth it: “Divine love may be so large it cannot see us."Or it may be so infinitely tiny that it works at a level where it directs us like an unknown substance buried in our blood."Or it may be transparent, an invisible screen, a filter through which we see and hear all that is created. "Oh my friends…”The snakes lifted their bullet-smooth heads, flicked their tongues to catch the vibrations of the sounds the being made somewhere before them.”I am like you,” said Father Damien to the snakes, “curious and small. Like you, I poise alertly and open my senses to try to read the air, the clouds, the sun’s slant, the little movements of the animals, all in the hope I will learn the secret of whether I am loved.”(227)The novel earns this philosophical indulgence with physical hardship of surviving the Era of Benign Neglect. It is the spiritual transcendence mistaken as a loss of faith that makes this novel so rich. If survival is to be more than a physical act, survivors need to evolve spiritually, which here seems to be not a loss of faith but a loss of misunderstanding.
one of my favorite authors- found this info on the author-novelist Louise Erdrich (books by this author), born in Little Falls, Minnesota (1954). She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her mother was French-Ojibwe, and her father was German; she and her six brothers and sisters were raised in a close, loving family. Instead of watching TV—they didn't own one—the children were encouraged to write and to memorize poems.She went off to Dartmouth in 1972, the same year the university started admitting women and the first year of its new Native American Studies program. The program's director was Michael Dorris. Years after she graduated, Erdrich was invited back to Dartmouth to read some of her poetry, and she became re-acquainted with Dorris, and they ended up getting married.She started off as a poet. Her first book was Jacklight (1984), a book of poems based on the thesis she wrote for her master's degree in 1979. She said, "I began to tell stories in the poems and then realized that there was not enough room." So she moved on to fiction. She published her first short story, "The Red Convertible," in 1981, and "Scales" in 1982. Later that year, Dorris convinced her to enter a new fiction writing contest, so in the space of two weeks she wrote "The World's Greatest Fisherman," and she won the $5,000 prize. Two years later, she published Love Medicine (1984),a novel made up of 14 interrelated stories.Love Medicine is populated with characters who live in the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota, or its nearby reservation. There is Marie Lazarre, who starts out life convinced she wants to be a nun—"I was that girl who thought the black hem of her garment would help me rise. Veils of love which was only hate petrified by longing—that was me." And her rival Lulu Lamartine—"Lulu Lamartine was usually controlled as a cat, and got her way through coaxing, cajoling, rubbing against your leg. An old woman who remained infuriatingly pretty, she bent others to her will before they knew what was happening." And Nector Kashpaw, the man who loved Lulu but married Marie anyway: "Here is what I do not understand: how instantly the course of your life can be changed. I only know that I went up the convent hill intending to sell geese and came down the hill with the geese still on my arm. Beside me walked a young girl with a mouth on her like a flophouse, although she was innocent. She grudged me to hold her hand. And yet I would not drop the hand and let her walk alone. Her taste was bitter. I craved the difference after all those years of easy sweetness." After Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich wrote many novels set in the same fictional universe, and Marie, Lulu, and Nector all reappeared, along with others connected to them. Her novels include Tracks (1988), The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001), The Master Butchers Singing Club (2003), The Plague of Doves (2008), and Shadow Tag (2010).She said, "We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif—books in piles on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are the boxes waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books. They are a sort of insulation, soundproofing some walls. They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables. The quantities and types of books are fluid, arriving like hysterical cousins in overnight shipping envelopes only to languish near the overflowing mail bench. Advance Reading Copies collect at beside, to be dutifully examined—to ignore them and read Henry James or Barbara Pym instead becomes a guilty pleasure. I can't imagine home without an overflow of books. The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough, or the right one at the right moment, but then sometimes to find you'd longed to fall asleep reading The Aspern Papers, and there it is."She said, "By having children, I've both sabotaged and saved myself as a writer. [...] With a child you certainly can't be a Bruce Chatwin or a Hemingway, living the adventurer-writer life. No running with the bulls at Pamplona. If you value your relationships with your children, you can't write about them. You have to make up other, less convincing children. There is also one's inclination to be charming instead of presenting a grittier truth about the world. But then, having children has also made me this particular writer. Without my children, I'd have written with less fervor; I wouldn't understand life in the same way. I'd write fewer comic scenes, which are the most challenging. I'd probably have become obsessively self-absorbed, or slacked off. Maybe I'd have become an alcoholic. Many of the writers I love most were alcoholics. I've made my choice, I sometimes think: Wonderful children instead of hard liquor."
What do You think about The Last Report On The Miracles At Little No Horse (2015)?
Another beautiful, moving book from Ms. Erdrich. Probably her most ambitious.There's some great, hilarious stuff with Nanapush in this book, scenes that I'm sure I'll always remember -- a moose chase gone awry, and a series of very funny resurrections. There are also many beautiful passages about faith, some of which caused me to close the book and think for a while before moving on. For me, that's a sign that a book is working on me at a deeper level than just story.I'd call this a must-read, though if you're a first-timer to her work, you might be better off starting with an earlier novel so you have some background on the characters. Having re-read "Love Medicine" late last year, I was in a better position to grasp her incredibly complex Ojibwe family tree.
—Sue Bridehead (A Pseudonym)
This is a difficult story to summarize. Fr. Jude is sent to investigate the life of a zealously, ascetical nun who has been submitted for the canonization process. Fr. Damien, the ancient pastor of the parish serving the Ojibwa people for the better part of the 20th century becomes the primary narrator of the story of this community and his life becomes the pole around which the larger story unfolds. Identity (people are often not what they seem), sanctity (zealous piety vs. sympathetic tolerance vs. life lived unpretentiously), love (brutal, passionate, unspoken, heroic) and much more is explored in this novel. I am not sure what I think of this book. I enjoyed the complex characters and the quality of the writing. I struggled with the magical elements, particularly those that were ambiguous. Often I was confused by the story, but always curious about where it was going. I found much of the Catholic elements implausible and therefore distracting.
—Irene
Picked this one up at a garage sale because I'd read "Tracks" years ago and liked it. Excellent story set on a reservation around the turn of the last century. Louise Erdrich is a Native American who writes with great humor and eloquence. It was interesting to read this after reading "A People's History of the United States"-- Andrew Jackson's war against the natives not only decimated tribes physically, but found a way, using competition for individual land ownership, to pit one native against another even within the tribal family. This was the ultimate undoing of native resistance.Erdrich's novel, set much later in history, reflects the long term affect of Jackson's scheme.
—Lynneharper
