The Crown of Columbus

Although many commentators have declared the novel to be dead as an art-form, there will always be a need for it as long as the human imagination remains unvanquished in an increasingly cash-driven and commodified world. For the novel, unlike newer media such as television and film, has the capacity to summon up images and feelings from deep within that the poor, thread-bare movie screen can never compete with.

I was reminded of this after having read the late Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich's masterpiece "The Crown of Columbus." Not only does this novel succeed on artistic terms, it is also a serious contribution to the vast literature surrounding the significance of 1492, America's original sin. Since Dorris and Erdrich are of American Indian descent, it would be expected that they would have much to say on the figure of Columbus. What is surprising, however, is the degree to which they rise above conventional thinking on the subject. Drawing upon a vast reservoir of literary, historical and indigenous associations, they examine the "discovery" of America from a variety of conflicting perspectives. Those varying perspectives are embodied in the points of view of the main characters who function both as key elements in a philosophical novel, and as engaging, quirky and lovable characters in a darkly comic saga.

The major character is Vivian Twostar, an untenured professor at Dartmouth College who as head of the Native American studies department has an uneasy relationship to academia. Not only is she always conscious of the huge gap between her own indigenous sensibilities and those of the white, patrician officials who run the school, she also is an unlikely professor on almost any terms. What characterizes her is a winning refusal to conform to anybody's expectations, including those of other American Indians.

This is partly explained by her mixed Navajo and Irish heritage. When asked by Dartmouth to contribute something on 1492 from a "Native American point of view," she remarks sardonically to a Indian colleague at another school, "I told them to advertise on reservations for a series of 'Discover Spain' tours. Twenty-eight days, flamenco included. I said the government should erect a huge neon sign near Samana Cay that flashed morning, noon and night: 'Wrong Way to Calcutta.'"

She reluctantly decides to take the assignment in the hope that it might help to put her in better graces with the administration. Because of her minimal appetite for publishing in small-circulation journals read exclusively by other academics, she has already been considered a dark horse on the tenure track. True to form, she falls asleep in the Dartmouth library after hours during one of her research excursions on the article and finds herself locked in.

Resolving to make the best of her predicament, she turns on the lights and begins poring through various books and journal articles. In the course of her investigation, she uncovers an item in the rare books section that somehow has escaped attention over the decades. It is what appears to be several pages from a lost diary of Columbus himself, that had been donated to the school by a 19th century alumnus. Ultimately those pages lead her to look up a distant relative of the alumnus who owns the other portion of the diary. He lives in the Bahamas and seeks to use the pages as some kind of treasure map to locate what the diary refers to mysteriously as the crown of Columbus.

Vivian Twostar's sole motivation is to reunite the missing pages with the rest of the diary, so as to uncover Columbus's hidden ambitions and larger truths about indigenous suffering. Henry Cobb, the man who awaits her, has no such lofty purposes. He simply wants to get his hands on some buried treasure and will use any means--including murder--to accomplish his goal. In this sense, he is Columbus's true heir, just as Vivian Twostar is the descendant of the gentle Taino who welcomed Columbus over 5 centuries ago.

Accompanying Twostar down to the Bahamas is the other major character in the novel, Roger Williams, an English professor at Dartmouth and her total opposite. Where she is unpredictable and impulsive, he is a tightly wound creature of habit. As is the case with many bachelors, his life revolves around a series of rituals, beginning each morning by listening to "All Things Considered" on NPR. He is descended from a long line of New England bluebloods, as his name would indicate, and has a much more comfortable relationship to the school than her.

He has his own interest in Columbus, whom he perceives in literary terms as some kind of precursor to a universal modern man, a subject of an epic poem in progress titled "Diary of a Lost Man." Reflecting on Columbus's ambition to discover wealth and fame, Roger Williams defines himself in contrast as a modest man. But this modesty does not rule out conventional academic yearnings: "I had some difficulty in projecting the Admiral's psyche in this instance, for, truly, I personally craved nothing. Oh, to be sure, I was not without my wish list. I sought a good publisher, the respect of my peers, a degree of material comfort."

Twostar and Williams had become lovers earlier in the year and she accidentally becomes pregnant. She explains to him why they can not get married or even live together. His buttoned-down, bachelor existence was incompatible with what children brought: "Sesame Street on the parquet floors. Crayon marks on the walls. Unmatched socks." Furthermore, he had failed miserably in bonding with Nash, her teen-aged son from a previous marriage. When Nash discovered that the professor had made his mother pregnant, he retaliates by stealing his journal and scotch-taping the most intimate pages across the walls of the Dartmouth campus, including those in dormitories.

Shortly after their daughter Violet is born, all four depart for the Bahamas to meet with Henry Cobb, the villain of the novel. And what a splendid villain he is. Living alone in a spooky, run-down mansion on the beachfront, he does little to make them feel at home. He is a mocking, sinister figure who offers a vision of Columbus totally at odds with their own. Neither a symbol of indigenous loss nor a prototype of modern man, his Columbus is a clever entrepreneur, who he describes as a forerunner of the men who appear on the cover of Fortune Magazine: "Everything has to do with the kind of man Columbus was: an ingenious opportunist. He wasn't even the first one his ship to sight land, you know--but there was a bonus, an annuity, attached to being first, so as captain he claimed it for himself."

The "Crown of Columbus" climaxes with what can only be described as a series of cliff-hanging action scenes that will remind you of a number of recent movies, including "Romancing the Stone" or the Indiana Jones series. What the novel can deliver that no film can is the ability to ignite one's imagination. So an ocean filled with sharks, for example, that is summoned from these printed pages has much more power to frighten than the movie "Jaws". We are in the presence of something akin to Marianne Moore's definition of poetry: "imaginary gardens with real toads in them."

The novel is an ancient art-form, dating back to Miguel De Cervantes' "Don Quixote." In some respects, the theme of that novel is related to the task of modern-day activists on the left. It was no accident that one of the mainstays of Nicaragua solidarity in the 1980s was a church-based organization called the Quixote Center. While Don Quixote would reject the cash-driven and commodified world of his contemporary Spain in favor of a backwards-looking medieval chivalry, those of us in the late 20th century look forward to a world in which capitalism has been superseded by a more rational and just system.

All great novelists tend to be at odds with the prevailing culture. The decision to become a radical activist or a novelist is fuelled by the same impulse--the need to create an alternative reality. Artists use their pen or personal computer, while activists make leaflets. Michael Dorris straddled both worlds. While capable of writing masterpieces of imaginative literature, he was also capable of delivering straightforward indictments of racism toward the Indian.

In "The Broken Cord," he describes his own odyssey for explanations why Fetal Alcohol Syndrome was so widespread in Indian communities, both on and off the reservation. It was sparked by the discovery that Adam, the son of Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, suffered from it as well. Nearly a decade after this award-winning book was published, Michael Dorris killed himself on April 10, 1997.

The mainstream media was at loss to explain this tragedy, except as a sign that beneath the surface appearance of successful families, dysfunctions lurk. The Michael Dorris suicide becomes grist for an upscale version of afternoon TV talk shows. The Washington Post wrote:

"Novelists are no strangers to the despair that breeds suicide, but there are hundreds who would seem more likely prospects than Michael Dorris.

"He was 52 and at the top of his profession on April 10 when he checked into a cheap New Hampshire motel under an assumed name, placed a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door and washed some over-the-counter sleeping pills down with vodka. He lay down, placed a plastic bag over his head, and died of asphyxiation.

"His second novel, published only three months before, was getting laudatory reviews and had made some regional bestseller lists. He had started a successful second career writing children's books. His account of the brain damage suffered by his adopted son Abel, the result of the mother's drinking during pregnancy, was one of those rare bestsellers that also make a difference. (Jimmy Smits played Dorris in the TV movie.) He was a prominent American Indian, and boosted the careers of dozens of younger writers. His marriage, to the American Indian novelist Louise Erdrich, was a famously ideal union: They were each other's editor and close collaborator and best friend. He was handsome; she was lovely. It was a romance to admire, to envy.

"Those who were puzzled by Dorris's suicide didn't have to wait long. The day after newspapers announced his death, they explained it: This champion of children had been under investigation for sexually abusing at least one of his three biological daughters."

I was as shocked as most people when news of Dorris's suicide was announced. After having studied American Indian history in depth for the past two years, it is much less of a mystery to me now than then. As my friend Jim Craven explained to me, part of the legacy of the genocide against the American Indian was the complete destruction of the indigenous family structure. Instrumental to this were the residential schools which were designed to destroy all traces of indigenous values and culture. The result, as J.R. Miller points out in "Shingwauk's Vision," is that "Stories of long bouts of serious alcoholism, involvement with the criminal justice system, and bare survival on the margins of Euro-Canadian society are common." Furthermore, since sexual abuse was widespread at these schools, it would not be surprising if the pattern was reproduced within Indian families themselves.

Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich are two of America's greatest writers. I plan to read and--time permitting--review their work over the next year or so. I urge those who share a passion for social justice and great art to sample their writings. You will not be disappointed.

Louis Proyect