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[MUSIC PLAYING] KERRI MILLER: Coming up on the second hour of Midmorning, the broadcast of My Book Club conversation with writer Louise Erdrich. It's been 25 years since Love Medicine was published. Erdrich says she returns again and again to the characters in that book. The KM Book Club, Louise Erdrich when Midmorning continues in a moment. Stay with us.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

First news.

NOAH RAHM: From NPR News in Washington, I'm Noah Rahm. The top commander in Afghanistan says he needs more troops or the mission there could end in failure. Army General Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the war was published by The Washington Post. He says his troops face a resilient and growing insurgency. McChrystal is also calling for a greater focus on winning the support of the population, on protecting civilians, rather than concentrating on killing insurgents. He said the Afghans must ultimately defeat the insurgency.

A Colorado man the FBI says hand-wrote bomb making instructions is scheduled to be in federal court in Denver today. His father and an acquaintance in New York are also to go before judges. All three are charged with lying to agents in a terrorism investigation. NPR's Jeff Brady reports.

JEFF BRADY: In an affidavit, the FBI says 24-year-old Najibullah Zazi admitted that he'd received weapons and explosives trainings from Al-Qaida in Pakistan. Investigators say he had detailed instructions for making a bomb that appeared to be in his own handwriting. But when authorities asked Zazi about the notes, they say he denied knowing anything about them.

Zazi's father and an Imam at a mosque in Queens, also, were arrested Saturday evening and accused of lying to agents. If convicted, they face eight years in prison. It's clear the FBI is most concerned about Najibullah Zazi. It appears they believe he was involved in a plot to set off explosive devices in the US, and they say they plan to ask the judge to keep him in jail after today's initial court appearance. Jeff Brady, NPR News, Denver.

NOAH RAHM: Iran's state news agency is reporting that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he's proud that the West is outraged over his denial of the Holocaust. Dale Gavlak reports.

DALE GAVLAK: Ahmadinejad said angering, what he called, the world's professional manslayers, taken as an apparent reference to Israel and some Western nations, was a source of pride. He did not elaborate further on the remarks which appeared on the Islamic Republic news agency. During an anti-Israel speech Friday, Ahmadinejad again expressed doubt about the Holocaust. He called it a lie and a pretext for Israel's creation.

The remarks drew swift condemnation in the West. Iran does not recognize Israel and considers its government as the main root of all problems in the Middle East. Iran also has been locked in a dispute with the West over its contested nuclear program, for NPR News. I'm Dale Gavlak in Amman.

NOAH RAHM: The Conference Board said today its index of leading indicators rose 6/10 of a percent last month. This is the fifth straight increase in that figure in a row. It's designed to project economic activity in the next three to six months. On Wall Street at this hour, the Dow is down 75 points at 9745, the NASDAQ is down 6 at 2127, and the S&P is down 8 points at 1060. This is NPR News from Washington.

SPEAKER 1: Support for news comes from Georgia Pacific Professional, maker of enMotion, touchless soap and towel products, tips on healthy hand washing and drying at gppro.com.

PHIL PICARDI: From Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Phil Picardi. Some Minnesota green energy companies say they're disappointed millions of stimulus dollars intended to promote sales of solar and wind systems are tied up in Washington. Mark Zdechlik reports.

MARK ZDECHLIK: State officials blame the Department of Energy for the holdup in approving their plan to offer $5 million in green energy rebates to homeowners and small businesses. They submitted their proposal in May, but have yet to get clearance to launch their program. The owner of Minneapolis-based innovative power systems, Ralph Jacobson, says it's a shame the stimulus money hasn't yet been available.

RALPH JACOBSON: We've got half a dozen customers who are on hold, or maybe more like a dozen because we can't spend the money, we can't get started until the money actually hits the rebate program.

MARK ZDECHLIK: Federal officials acknowledge there have been backups in approving programs, but they insist the energy piece of the stimulus is coming together just as they expected it would. They say any barriers facing Minnesota should be resolved in days, not months. Mark Zdechlik, Minnesota Public Radio News.

PHIL PICARDI: Dozens of people picketed outside of the Sheriff's Department in La Center yesterday. They want information on the fatal shooting of a 24-year-old man about two months ago. Tyler Heilman's family and friends say they haven't been told why Le Sueur Sheriff's deputy shot and killed Heilman. He was unarmed and wearing only a bathing suit when he was shot four times outside of an apartment building in Kasota.

A woman whose son was shot and killed outside a Minneapolis nightclub 11 years ago yesterday met with the recipients of her son's kidneys. The recipients of Reagan Durenberger's organs told Becky Durenberger they're grateful for the gift of life. Partly to mostly cloudy skies today. A chance of showers and thunderstorms. Highs from the mid-60s to the mid-70s. Right now, 67 in the Twin Cities. This is Minnesota Public Radio News.

SPEAKER 2: Today's programming is made possible, in part, by our generous philanthropic partners, including Deluxe Corporation Foundation.

KERRI MILLER: I'm Kerri Miller, and I want to welcome all of you to our first formal meeting of My Book Club. It's great to have all of you here. And I want you to know how much I appreciate your interest in reading and literature, and your commitment to Minnesota Public Radio. Thank you for that.

We've gathered tonight at the Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church. We're spread out in the sanctuary. The pews are in front of Louise Erdrich and myself. Stained glass windows on the wall. A bit later we're going to go into the church basement. We're going to open a few bottles of wine and mix and mingle.

So do we plan to hold all of our meetings in churches? No. We don't. But we've come here at the invitation of writer Louise Erdrich. Her bookstore is just a few blocks away. She agreed to celebrate with us a special anniversary in her life as a writer. It's been 25 years since Love Medicine, her first novel, was published. I wanted to remind you of what a different landscape we were living in back then.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Please do.

KERRI MILLER: Movie tickets cost just $2.50, the first Apple Macintosh was on sale in stores, and publishers didn't think Americans wanted to read about the lives of Native Americans. Indeed, some of the rejection letters that Louise Erdrich got when she sent Love Medicine out said just that. So it seems like book lovers had a different idea.

The New York Times praised the poetry and the lyricism of Louise Erdrich's writing, and Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post said, "Love Medicine is the work of a tough, loving mind. We're in the hands of an exceptionally-skilled, sensitive, observant, writer." The novel also won the National Book Critics Circle Award. When Louise went back to reflect on the book for the 25th anniversary edition, she wrote in the author's note, I held the first published copy of Love Medicine in my hands, and I wondered if anyone would read this book.

Well, we did. We still are. Tonight a discussion about the novel, the characters who have reappeared in many of Louise Erdrich's books since then, and about how her writing life and experiences have changed. She said once years ago, "You actually feel like you're hearing words form and voices form in your head. I used to think that was mystical, now I don't." We'll talk about that as well. Louise Erdrich, welcome. It's wonderful to have you here.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Thank you so very much. I'd like to thank all of the members of the book club as well for coming here and for your support of Birchbark Books, and I think you're a very special group of people. I also think that book clubs may be the beginning of a great new civilization as they grow, and I really think they may be the hope of civilization, so.

KERRI MILLER: Why do you say that?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I see the people who belong to book clubs, many people come into the bookstore, and this devotion to the word, to literature, to ideas, and this connection that people have is an extraordinary thing to me. It's very moving to see that people carry this much. There's book clubs that have been meeting for 30 years, and it's been a growing movement, and I think of it as a kind of movement. Happy to be here.

KERRI MILLER: Take me back to that first moment when you held the copy of Love Medicine in your hands and thought to yourself, is anybody really going to read this? What was it like? Where were you?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, I was in New Hampshire, and the book was not a fancy reader's copy that-- the sort that we're used to seeing now. The book was a very simple crane, that's what they called them, and no picture on the cover, and it had gone out in-- without any advanced notice to anyone. So I was pretty sure it would be the feather dropping into the Grand Canyon that everyone says your first novel will be.

KERRI MILLER: Why was there no advance notice of it? I mean, do you think your publisher didn't think they were going to be able to stir up much excitement about this or what?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I think our first printing was several thousand copies, but that was thrilling to me. When I see first edition first printings, I'm still excited because I must have signed every single one by now.

KERRI MILLER: All 2,000 copies that were ever initially printed. I would imagine that a lot of writers ask themselves, is anybody going to care what I really have to say? But did you ask yourself that, in part, because one part of you might have believed some of those editors that were saying, when you sent the book out, Americans just don't-- they don't care about this. They don't want to read about this.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I didn't know what to expect. And I was pregnant. So I was really excited about the baby, and I was terrified. So when I think back to those first months and the first year that followed its publication, I really become saturated with those memories of my first child. And the book is second fiddle, the publication itself.

The writing of it took all of my youth to write. I would say it went back into my childhood even, that I was preparing to write this first book. I was preparing for many years to write this first book. And when I say it came out, it didn't matter to me really if it was going to be read. What mattered was that I had written it and I had done it.

KERRI MILLER: Do you think it's easier because it was a book that you had been writing from your childhood on, it was easier to bring it all forth because of that, or harder?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Within that long surge of beginning to write, there were also these years of being an apprentice writer. I was very dogged about my writing. Something, and I believe it was my parents, caused me to think that there might be a point at which my words would become published, something could happen.

I couldn't stop anyway. That's the way it is for a writer. Whatever had happened, I would still be writing, even if it was into the Grand Canyon of literature and language.

KERRI MILLER: You would have been doing it anyway?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Oh yes.

KERRI MILLER: When did you start to realize that there was some buzz around Love Medicine?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I think it happened when I heard from my publisher who said, I can't believe it, but we have Philip Roth, and Toni Morrison, and Kay Boyle, and Peter Matheson, and Anne Tyler, and they all read your book. And no one had sent those people-- no one had visited them and put the book in their hands. They had actually bothered to look through the stacks of newly to-be-published books that were coming out.

And when I heard that, I was naive. I thought, well, these are extraordinary people. Coming from North Dakota, you think everyone is doing something out of kindness. They don't do things out-- they don't do that sort of thing out of kindness.

KERRI MILLER: You thought they were doing you a favor by reading?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, I didn't understand it really. And why? I still don't. I think it was an extraordinary act of generosity for each one of them.

KERRI MILLER: Jonathan Yardley said back then that you'd done something very difficult to do. And we know now you do this in a lot of your books. I want to read what he said. "Erdrich has pulled off the exceedingly difficult feat of merging colloquial and literary styles into an entirely convincing whole. We believe that we're listening to ordinary people speak." How do you create that sense of that the reader is eavesdropping on a culture we might not be entirely familiar with, but that we relate to.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I can only say that I heard these voices, and that they came out of my life, my experience. I would start writing things on the backs of napkins when I was at a truck stop. I did a lot of driving back and forth. I think that's where-- they all came from some germ of experience that was very powerful for me. They all referred back to that germ of an experience. But the voices themselves seemed to spring into my consciousness as though I was overhearing people think.

KERRI MILLER: So you felt like in some ways you were in the role of eavesdropper, too?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I did. I felt like I was the amanuensis. I felt like I was the collaborator with these unknown people, and that they were going to tell me my story. They were going to tell me their story, and I was going to have to be very quiet, and very respectful, and listen to them.

KERRI MILLER: That still happens?

LOUISE ERDRICH: It does.

KERRI MILLER: You said in that quote that I quoted in the introduction that you used to think it was mystical and you don't anymore.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, I said it does happen, but I never know whether it's going to happen the next day. It's a very precarious existence.

KERRI MILLER: You mean-- so the morning--

LOUISE ERDRICH: It could happen today, but would they come back tomorrow? Would they tell me more of the story? Would this person-- really, I'm in the-- a writer is-- this is the perfect place to say it-- a beseecher, a pleader with the unknown.

KERRI MILLER: That's an interesting word, beseecher. As if you're just saying, please give me something.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I don't think it's a real word.

KERRI MILLER: I think it's one of those words that-- have you found ways to try to bring that forth to inspire it?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I had a professor who said to me-- an artist. This professor said to me, you must leave the door open every day. You must leave the door open. So literally, I leave my door open, I keep my window open. I mean, I really try to stay open, whatever it takes, coffee. Whatever it takes, I try to stay open to these voices or to these storytellers that seem to, from time to time, inhabit my consciousness.

KERRI MILLER: Are there, I don't know, weeks that will go by when you feel like they're gone or they're just over the horizon and you can't reach it.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Yeah. It's dreadful. Yeah.

KERRI MILLER: What happens when that happens?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, happily, my children get more attention, and so do I, so does everyone around me. And unhappily, I probably pester people. But I have plenty to do. I'm always trying to keep up with the factors in my life that would prevent me from writing. So that's what I do. I get the dryer fixed, and--

KERRI MILLER: Live your life.

LOUISE ERDRICH: You don't want to know all the things I do to live my life.

KERRI MILLER: Well, waiting for them.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Yeah. Waiting for something to happen. But I also try to keep regular hours just as anyone would, like, any person who works for a living. I go into my little room and I sit in my chair, and I think, and I read, and I track down events, historical events that might have informed the lives of my character's ancestors, and might tell me a little bit about who they are now.

KERRI MILLER: I've wondered if you, in your writing space, when you feel like you're waiting for an idea to come to some kind of fruition, if you, I don't know, look up on your bookcase and pull out maybe somebody else's work, or go through letters that I know your father has written.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Yes.

KERRI MILLER: You do that?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I constantly do that. I go back through old newspapers, and I go back to old accounts, historical accounts of occurrences that seem astounding in this day and age to imagine.

KERRI MILLER: Like what?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, for instance, the town I'm from, Wahpeton, was supposed to be where the-- I think it was the Great Northern Pacific Railroad would cross into North Dakota.

So in about 1857, a group of people, men from Saint Anthony, which, then, it was-- I think before it became Minneapolis, they were right down Hennepin. They were living down there, and they decided they were going to go out to what is now Wahpeton, and try to establish themselves, claim that land so that they would have all the valuable property when the train went through.

And they set out in January, and they set out on ox carts. They had one huge quilt to sleep under. And they didn't have enough food, they ended up eating their oxen. They had two Meitei guides who were some of the most extraordinary people. I can't imagine how-- they wouldn't have survived without these two men who brought down a few buffalo and managed to scavenge food here and there.

But they were surrounded by wolves. They ended up eating the food for the oxen after they'd eaten the oxen. So they were eating a mixture of corn, cob, and dried beans and corn. And then there's this little sentence in the original account that said, we began to experience bowel trouble.

[LAUGHTER]

But, again, that's where-- I looked up, well, what would be the treatment for bowel trouble at the time, and the treatment was laudanum. So then the picture came to me of all of these men sleeping together under this huge quilt, high on laudanum every night, and it goes on from there. So I love finding these bits of historical occurrence that-- this was in Minnesota History Collections. It's Daniel Johnston's account of traveling across what is now really 94. And they shoveled 8 miles a day, they shoveled their way across 94.

KERRI MILLER: Unbelievable.

LOUISE ERDRICH: It's an incredible story.

KERRI MILLER: They were motivated. Did they actually make it and buy the land?

LOUISE ERDRICH: They did. They made it-- they managed not to starve which was pretty-- they almost starved. There's a stone commemorating them in Wahpeton, Breckenridge today, and their land after they claimed it was totally worthless to them. They didn't know it would become worth something in about a hundred years. So that's the sort of thing. But I didn't really do that for Love Medicine. I do that now, but I didn't really do that as much way back then.

KERRI MILLER: Because those stories and characters had been percolating for so long.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I think that was part of it, and, also, I didn't have the patience to read history. I had to actually tie myself into my chair in order to launch myself or actually still myself enough to write fiction. I was a poet, and I was used to writing my poem and getting up and doing something else. And I realized, once I began to write fiction, that you had to sit still for a longer period of time. So that's when I hit on this idea of actually tying myself into a chair.

KERRI MILLER: No, not actually.

LOUISE ERDRICH: And every time I would try to get up, then I had a scarf--

KERRI MILLER: Are you saying you really did that?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I did.

KERRI MILLER: I thought you meant figurativey.

LOUISE ERDRICH: No. It wasn't figurative. I really did it.

[LAUGHTER]

KERRI MILLER: But you knew how to untie the scarf?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Right so.

KERRI MILLER: You're listening to a special book club conversation with writer Louise Erdrich. I'm Kerri Miller. I wondered if you would read an excerpt from Love Medicine. And I'll say this is a bit of the story, The Island. And we meet Lulu Nanapush.

LOUISE ERDRICH: "I never grew from the curve of my mother's arms. I still wanted to anchor myself against her, but she had tore herself away from the run of my life like a riverbank, leaving me to spill out alone. Following my mother, I ran away from the government school. I ran away so often that my dress was always the hot, orange, shame dress, and my furious, scrubbing, thinned, sidewalks the matrons forced me to wash.

Punished and alone, I made and tore down and remade all the dormitory beds. I lived by bells, orders, flat voices, rough English. I missed the old language in my mother's mouth. Sometimes I heard her, [? Donnis, ?] [? Donnis, ?] my daughter, she consoled me, [? giizhawenimin ?] Her voice came from all directions keeping me from inner harm. Her voice was a struck match, her voice was the steady flame, but it was my old Uncle Nanapush who wrote the letters that brought me home.

When I came back to the reservation after my long years gone, I saw the leaves of the poplars applaud high in wind. I saw the ducks barrel down reaching to the glitter of the slough water. Wind chopped the clouds to rolls that rose and puffed whiter, whiter. Blue Juneberry, tough diamond willow. I washed my own face float over the grass, traveling alongside me in the dust of the bus window, and I grinned, showed my teeth. They could not cage me any more.

Nanapush was waiting for me at the crossroads. He stepped from the moving shadows of cottonwood. When the haze cleared, I also noticed his wife, Margaret Kashpaw. She stood reluctant by his side staring at me. Her lips hardened, mean, and her face became a wedge of steel. I wanted to yank that old woman's skinny braids. She had taken on the big name, Rushes Bear, and didn't like me, never had. She was done with raising children, and I was the last one in her way. The strict lines down her chin made me hungry for my mother's laughter.

I ran to Nanapush, buried my face in the cloth of his rough shirt, and breathed woodsmoke and dried ink, trapper's musk and sun-heated dryness. I held him close around his hard waist. I held him near as I might a father, the pattern for all other men. Climbing into the wagon behind him, I put my hand into the pocket of his shirt where I knew he kept a string of tough black licorice.

"She can sleep in the shed," said Rushes Bear as we drove home. "We have no shed," Nanapush leaned over to his wife, teased her, "We'll have to put Lulu between us." The look of rage Rushes Bear shot at him needed no words. She was a passionate, power-hungry woman.

And although I have more feeling for the type now that I have become one myself, I never forgot how hard it was to live beneath the stones of her will. From that moment, I hated her with a dedication, plotted her downfall with a young girl's vigor. Still, it took years."

KERRI MILLER: Louise Erdrich reading from the 25th anniversary edition of the publication of Love Medicine. Why don't you feel like you're done with those characters? Why have you come back to them so many times in your writing career?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Again, it is not me. It is the writing itself, and it is the characters. I don't think any writer has control over the timing, the characters, the ideas, the sense of story. We have to wait and see who comes and hauls us into their world so that they have come to me to be written, and I'm so grateful.

KERRI MILLER: Do you feel like, look, I've completed a book, I wrote everything I thought I could say about the Nanapushes and here they are back again with more.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I never close the door like I said. I really thought that I had finished the most recent book, and then I found myself writing something that referred to it. So I never know whether I've finished or not.

KERRI MILLER: With certain characters, if anything.

LOUISE ERDRICH: With any of them. Even if I kill them off, they come back.

KERRI MILLER: Wow, that is some juju. There's a mention in that excerpt that you read of letters. And you and I have talked before about your father's letters to you, how poetic they are, how reflective they are. How meaningful have they been to you as a writer?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I would say that his letters are part of this character of his that includes many literary expressions. He has also written a limerick for every town in North Dakota.

KERRI MILLER: Clean or a little naughty as limericks can be?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Say they're mostly clean, but I could recite one here that slightly-- well, I don't think anybody could be offended, all right, by Ralph Erdrich. There once was a girl from maxbass who had the most beautiful ass. It was not what you think. It was not round and pink, but was gray, and braid, and ate grass.

[LAUGHTER]

KERRI MILLER: I didn't know where we were going there.

LOUISE ERDRICH: That was my dad, yeah.

[APPLAUSE]

KERRI MILLER: Every town in North Dakota has one?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Yes, everyone. And a few of his limericks have more than one town in them. And there's more than one limerick for many of the towns.

KERRI MILLER: So does he include the limericks in the letters that he's writing to you?

LOUISE ERDRICH: No. Those were written separately. We began this correspondence that started including limericks back in the '70s, actually, when I was just starting to write. And he started writing the limericks then, and I started replying, and we just kept writing back and forth. But he's also written all sorts of poetry, and children's books.

Well, he's writing family history, he's telling me family history, now I want to write an accurate history because The Master Butchers Singing Club is inaccurate. It was only fictionized, I said, it's not supposed to be accurate. But he wants to get it down correctly, and I think he's right to do that. So I'm always amazed by my father. He's an extraordinary man.

KERRI MILLER: I'm interested in how you mix true family history, true history from the place that you're from, and myth. You did that with The Plague of Doves. How do you think of that?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, I gave you this example of the town site story and the town site adventure. I wrote it into the story by-- I wrote it into a story by going farther into my own sense of story than the actual-- like, what was the cure for bowel trouble? What did that mean that they were all, in my mind, taking laudanum?

I put in a dog. I often put in a dog. I put in a homage dog. I have homage dogs to real dogs-- they're homages to real dogs-- running all through my books. And I thought through some of the bold statements to the end. For instance, that statement about-- we had a quilt made for us all, and there was no real explanation or no real account of what it was like to sleep under a quilt with half a dozen men through an entire winter.

KERRI MILLER: I think it'd be pretty smelly, but I'm sure you did more with that.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I agree with you. I agree with you. Especially when they all had bowel trouble,

KERRI MILLER: Yeah.

[LAUGHTER]

LOUISE ERDRICH: Oh yes, it had to go there. I'm sorry, Kerri.

KERRI MILLER: When you say, though, you go deeper into the story, that sounds like you're still looking for historical facts, but then what?

LOUISE ERDRICH: But then what? I added another character. I had someone actually starve to death out of love, really. I add the unheard that I think I hear in the tone of a person's writing from way back, or I just don't read the history. I take one sentence, and I make up the rest of the story. I mean, sometimes the stories are just--

The whole book The Plague of Doves was really based on one sentence, and that was priest summons his congregation to drive back a plague of doves, which were actually passenger pigeons, but they called them doves in those days, by assembling his congregation and holding their missiles forward against the tide of birds, and praying their way through the fields. It was an incredible picture in my mind, yeah.

KERRI MILLER: And from that came that wonderful novel.

LOUISE ERDRICH: It was just a sentence in something I'd read some old newspaper account, yeah.

KERRI MILLER: You reminded me before we came in that you are still writing by hand. You are still doing that?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Oh, yes.

KERRI MILLER: How you began it's how you're--

LOUISE ERDRICH: I finally started using paper that didn't disintegrate because I look back at all my old-- who knew. I had all these-- oh, I wrote on my kids tablets and whatever I could find. I liked old paper anyway, so some of the paper that's really old rag paper.

People used to send me old paper. I loved writing on old paper. So it's really old now, and a lot of it is disintegrated because it's got acid in it. But I started writing on archival notebooks at some point. So I think this gives you the information that I began to feel slightly self-important about my writing.

KERRI MILLER: Oh yes, yeah, that's what I was thinking.

LOUISE ERDRICH: But I wanted to have them in notebooks. At one point I thought, I would love to have all my books in handwritten-- I would like a handwritten copy of all my books. So that's what I have now. I've got them.

KERRI MILLER: Did you do that?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Yes. That's what I do.

KERRI MILLER: Does that mean you had to go back and transcribe some of the ones where the paper was disintegrating?

LOUISE ERDRICH: No, no. But that's a great idea.

KERRI MILLER: You'll never write another novel if you do that.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, what's funny about handwriting, if you can't stand to rewrite what you've written, the reader is not going to be interested in it, I decided. So often if I am in question about a couple of pages, I'll start rewriting them and see if I can-- how long I can stand it. If my interest-- if I get bored with, then it's a sure sign to me that this is not a very good page.

KERRI MILLER: So when you're rewriting you're saying that a section of the book isn't working, and so you will sit down and come back, and--

LOUISE ERDRICH: I'll copy it out again.

KERRI MILLER: Wow.

LOUISE ERDRICH: But I do put it in the computer eventually, and then I rewrite on the paper. I make it all hand-- it's got to have something on it that's mine for it to feel as though I'm really involved in this book.

KERRI MILLER: It's just so surprising to me how many authors still do this.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I wonder. Yeah.

KERRI MILLER: Yeah. Even authors you wouldn't think do this. You said I have to feel like something of mine is on the page. Computers, you feel, like take that away?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I know it. I'm sure that there are going to be many, many more writers who feel very comfortable with the computer and feel as though it's not just waiting for them to type something in, it's not sitting and looking at you. I've always had-- you mentioned the first Macintosh. I had one of those and the first Apple. And I really had this sense, of course, that remember those they went [VOCALIZING], they were waiting for you.

KERRI MILLER: Oh, no. Yeah, that's the last thing you need, right?

LOUISE ERDRICH: But I still have that sense. I love my computer. It's a word processor for me, though.

KERRI MILLER: I find it interesting that-- I was reading an interview that you did long time ago, and you were talking about loving solitude, and loving being alone, and that's what you needed when you wrote. And yet, you have created a chaotic life for somebody that loves solitude. You have a business, your writing demands, you have children, it just-- it seems like you have--

LOUISE ERDRICH: I mentioned the dogs, yeah, I know.

KERRI MILLER: It's like you've short circuited yourself.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I didn't even mention the Guinea pig.

KERRI MILLER: No, I didn't know about the Guinea pig. What's going on there, do you think?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I've asked myself the same question. Why didn't I become a hermitess or something of that sort? Why did I become this person? I really can't give you an answer. I wish I could.

Sometimes I rail against the number of small invisible menial tasks that I have to take on every day in order to even start writing. And I think-- perhaps these are part of the process itself. But no, is it really-- could it really be? I don't think so. It seems as though I've set up blockades for myself. Maybe I-- I don't know what the explanation for it is, but.

KERRI MILLER: What were you just going to say? You said maybe I--

LOUISE ERDRICH: You're a good interviewer.

[LAUGHTER]

I was going to say because we're sitting in a church that some of these voices are so raw at times and sometimes a little frightening for me. And it takes a sense of surrender to them and a fearlessness. I mean, I can't be afraid of what-- pardon me, but what anybody's going to think of them, readers, book clubs, anyone. So all right, what does this have to do with setting up my blockades? It's because I'm wary of approaching this sometimes.

KERRI MILLER: So you're finding, maybe on some days, reasons to delay?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Yes. Reasons to delay that inevitable time when I'm with the page, and I have to really listen to whatever story is going to be told.

KERRI MILLER: Do you think those voices will-- when you talk about them as being powerful, do you think the power of them might dim?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Yes. I think that everyone who finds that they are getting older, amazing, you realize that your mind has maybe developed more fervent connections, but that you start blocking certain things out. So I do fear that. I fear that I'll inadvertently block out what I was so open to as a young person.

It makes me-- maybe it makes me grateful that I have young people in my life, my children, and I'm so connected with them. But it also makes me think I should-- then I start thinking about, oh, Louise, you should run. You should exercise. You should take care of yourself. You shouldn't drink so much wine. Who knows? Who knows really?

KERRI MILLER: Let's open it up to some questions from our book club members, how about that?

LOUISE ERDRICH: All right. I'm going to--

KERRI MILLER: Great.

AUDIENCE: Your characters are so vivid when I read them. I can see them, I can smell them, and you said you can hear them. I was wondering, if you can see them in front of you and hear the water from the hair of the woman who was being drowned hit the floor like I could, do you see your characters as well? Can you picture them in that kitchen?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Oh, yes, I do. Right out of a sense of very visceral reality when I'm really in a book, when I'm really immersed in what's happening. And there's really nothing like that. I think that's why writers get hooked on writing. You get involved in a scene and it just takes you away.

AUDIENCE: Often we expect to pick up a novel and have it all in one voice, and all in one text, one point of view the whole way through. When you started writing and it started coming to you that there were different people talking to you at different times, what was your reaction at first? I'm not supposed to be writing this way, or did you just let it happen?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, I'm a let it happen person, so I did. But I also had this feeling that I should be, if I was a grown up writer, writing all in one voice. So in a couple of instances, I think I wrote long extended narratives in one voice, and then all of a sudden, another voice would come at me with more power and I would have to give in.

You said something about the-- some of the characters, of course, you can't really write without conflict. I mean, you can't write a conflict-free novel. That's how everything happens in a novel. There's a conflict, and for a conflict, there has to be people who are-- they can be evil, they can be bad people, they can be wrong about something but be very good people. Or they can do things--

I think one of the most challenging things to write is about a person who believes strongly that they're doing the right thing, but they're causing destruction. And you're absolutely right when you say you have to stay open. That's what I feel my job is. I have to stay open and without judgment. I have to write these people into the books with every bit of devotion that I use on other characters.

AUDIENCE: It's not a question, but a comment. First to thank you for your work. And the last three years I've been teaching school in Tunisia, and the first thing I did was to order your Love Medicine for these students who are from all over the world, and mostly sub-Saharan Africans. I taught your book here in the States beforehand, and I loved it, so.

And the students there received it so well. And particularly the African students, many of whom have parents who came from villages in Uganda, or Nigeria, they understood your book, they loved it. I remember a girl from Nigeria coming up to me. She's fully veiled, and she says, Miss, this book, Love Medicine. I love it. It's crazy.

[LAUGHTER]

LOUISE ERDRICH: Aaw, thank you so much. Thank you.

KERRI MILLER: Thank you. I mean, Louise, there is something so universal about it, right? That it would translate, not in the literal sense, but translate to young people who come from such a different background and have had such different experiences. That's amazing, isn't it?

LOUISE ERDRICH: It's very moving to me. Thank you. Thank you.

KERRI MILLER: All right. Right over there. Hi.

AUDIENCE: I wondered what types of books you like to read, what types of novels. And as you've become an author and written so many different types of books yourself, do you think you read other people's works differently than a person who doesn't write for a living? Do you think you examine the words or the structure or wonder if you would have done it differently, or can you ever just read and enjoy a book?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I always look for a book that allows me to forget how it's written, or just to be amazed at the structure. I'm, again, reading W. G. Sebald, and I think he was one of the greatest of writers. It's very-- Austerlitz, The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants. And I also just finished a P. D. James novel.

KERRI MILLER: Oh, yeah?

LOUISE ERDRICH: And then I'm also reading Uneven Ground written by David Wilkins, and it's one of the-- there's a co-author, and I can't remember the name of her-- her name. It's a wonderful book. But I've read his work, and he is a law professor at the University of Minnesota.

So I've been reading historical pieces in Wisconsin archeologist. I've got just a stack of things that you don't suppose I really can characterize as critical reading. I read the P. D. James, and I was just captured by that as well. But I can't read things that are truly badly written. I just stop after a few pages, it's true.

KERRI MILLER: Do you think being a writer steals some of the love of reading away, just to follow up on what our book club member said there. Because you cannot-- the mind ticks, doesn't it? Whether you're saying to yourself, oh my gosh, that sentence, how fantastic, or, why wasn't the editor tougher here?

LOUISE ERDRICH: Well, I think that's part of the wonderful thing about reading as a writer. When you find someone who is able to tell a story in a tremendously engaging way, it's a superlative experience. So that when I find those books, I'm just thrilled with them. I'm thrilled with them for months, really, and then I go back to them.

Some of them are old books. I read new books and old books if I read for the bookstore. And then as I said, I read a lot that is just stuff, newspaper stuff. I can read a lot of newspaper accounts that are badly written. I like that. In fact, I like the homey writing that small newspapers include.

KERRI MILLER: A last question.

AUDIENCE: So on the 25th anniversary you come back to this book, and I read it originally 25 years ago.

LOUISE ERDRICH: Oh, really?

AUDIENCE: You were so young, and I didn't get it, and I got it this time when I read it. I can't say that with much surety, though. So you write from what you know, and it has a lot to do with Native American culture, and these characters, they've continued with you. But things have changed or haven't they, is what I'm trying to ask you. Have things changed on the reservation, or not, or what's your-- do you find yourself to be a political person? And what does that mean to you when you're looking at your characters over a period of 25 years?

LOUISE ERDRICH: I think in the first instance here, I think I'm going to address the part of your question where you asked, have things changed on the reservation? There's over 562 different recognized peoples, native peoples in our country. And so for me to say anything or be representative of even of the tribe where I'm enrolled would be wrong. I couldn't do it. I couldn't represent the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, and I can't. So I can't say.

We are sovereign nations, and we exist because the United States, in its early beginnings, made treaties with our nations when we were very powerful and when we were very numerous. Nine out of every 10 Native Americans died during the onslaught of European diseases and warfare so that even existing in some way as a Native American is extraordinary.

I feel as though my ancestors made it through so that their-- they made it through these enormously difficult times, and they put into these treaties these very important words, as long as the grass shall grow and as long as the rivers shall flow. And these words are vital and important to Native people. We have our reservations, not because we were given this land, but because this is the remnant of our homeland.

And so I just feel this enormous kinship or spiritual connection. I don't want to say that. What do I feel with my ancestors? I feel a kind of obligation that is more a joy because they went through such hard times, and they made sure that they would guarantee and reserve certain rights and something for the future of their children. They really thought ahead.

And so there I am sitting here before you, and I feel all of these things so very strongly that I wanted to just share them with you. And, again, I'm not a spokesperson for any reservation at all, but I am an American Indian person because of my ancestors. And my ancestors wouldn't care if I was married into another group or my parents did. They saw anyone who participated in their lives and cultures and loved them back as close to them.

KERRI MILLER: Louise, this is the very first meeting of our book club of which I hope there will be many more, but it is just right that you came to be with us for this. I thank you very, very much for that. I really do.

LOUISE ERDRICH: I'm honored that you all came. Thank you.

KERRI MILLER: Thank you all for coming.

[APPLAUSE]

You've been listening to a broadcast of our book club conversation with writer Louise Erdrich. We were at the Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. If you'd like to join the book club, details about how to do that on the Midmorning book page. Lots of information on the Midmorning book page. How do you find it?

Look on the Midmorning page, check out the right-hand side, you'll see a link there that says What Carries Reading. Click it, it will take you to the book page. You will see details about how to join My Book Club. Remember, membership is coming up in, I don't know, three or four weeks or so, so that might be an opportunity for you. Also, details about all of the authors that we have coming to Midmorning, and to our Talking Volumes stage, dates and details about Talking Volumes.

Tomorrow, by the way, you'll see on the book page that I have a conversation planned with author Jim Shepard. He is one of those writers' writers. I mean, just greatly admired by authors like Stephen King, and Michael Chabon, and other writers. But not all that well known. He is very funny, very witty.

I met him at a Concordia book festival conversation a couple of years ago. So he's going to be in the studio tomorrow. We're going to talk about writing. We're going to talk about interesting approach that he brings to writing. He's a huge movie fan, and so when he's laying out scenes of his books, he thinks about how they might unfold in film. All that tomorrow at 10:00. This is Midmorning.

SPEAKER 3: Support for this program comes from Sue McLean & Associates, presenting the live at the Guthrie Concert Series featuring Marc Cohn, October 5, Marianne Faithfull, October 12, and Joe Bonamassa on October 19. Tickets available at the Guthrie Box Office, suemclean.com.

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