1. When, about half way through the novel, the narrator of Louie Erdrich's The Round House reveals the identity of the perpetrator who raped his mother, I anticipated that the story would take its readers into the morass of confusion and cross-purpose that is the law enforcement and justice system on Indian reservations.
This tangle of which agency has jurisdiction where and over whom lay in the background of the second half of The Round House, but, in the foreground, a different story emerged, directly related to the narrator and the assault of his mother.
I won't give it away, but I can say that the narrator must wrestle with moral codes. Because his thirteen year old life is divided between them, he ponders the instruction and wisdom of ancient tribal stories and wisdom, the instruction of the Roman Catholic Church, and the legal codes of the reservation and North Dakota and the USA.
It's a lot for a youngster.
You'll have to read the book to find out what he decides to do.
2. In Louise Erdrich's novels not the devil, not God, but beauty is in the details. For all of the ways Erdrich transports her readers into ancient spirit worlds and for all the ways she moves her readers to wrestle with contemporary philosophical questions, much of her writing is grounded in the five senses. The Round House's story occurs on an unnamed North Dakota Indian Reservation. Erdrich copiously details the physical reality of life on this reservation, the soft white bread used for baloney or peanut butter sandwiches, the frayed plastic lawn chairs used at ceremonies and powwows, the teenagers' bicycles and their levels of disrepair, the smells of smoke, mold, cigarettes, whiskey, and many more on the clothes and in the houses the narrator encounters, and on and on.
The storylines in The Round House gripped me. No doubt. At the same time, I enjoyed saturating myself in the generous sensory details of this novel, happy, as I read, that Erdrich did not just cut to the chase, but lingered over living rooms, bedrooms, gas stations, pickups, automobiles, woods, clothing, dentures, hair, ancient tales, a church basement and countless other things and places in order to bring the world of her story fully alive.
3. All I needed to buy at Yoke's today was milk, half and half, and dry cat food. I am probably more concerned than I need to be about having a setback as I progress in my life post-transplant --by setback, I basically mean getting sick -- catching a cold, having Covid return, getting the flu, that sort of thing. So, I continue to be cautious about going into public places. (At the same time, I have to believe my immune system is getting stronger. After all, on Saturday, August 31st, it will be sixteen weeks since the surgery. )
But, today, I figured I could grab the three items at Yoke's, check out, and avoid any close/sustained contact with anyone and be out of there quickly.
So I didn't wear a mask.
I succeeded in getting in and out fairly fast.
I've got my fingers crossed that the sense I put into action today was common sense.
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