Love Medicine (For Further Study)

For Further Study

• Miriam Berkley, in an interview in Publishers Weekly, August 15, 1986, pp. 58-9.

  Erdrich describes to Berkley how her many jobs have provided rich experiences from which to draw to create believable characters and their lives.

• Robert Bly, in a review in New York Times Book Review, August 31, 1982, p. 2.

  Poet Bly describes Erdrich's unique approach to telling a story through characters who speak at any time and in any place.

• Victoria Brehm, "The Metamorphoses of an Ojibwa Manido," American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, Vol. 68, No. 4, December, 1996, pp. 677-706.

  Brehm discusses Erdrich's use of Native American mythology, specifically the figure of the water god, Micipijiu.

• D. J. R. Bruckner, in a review in The New York Times, December 20, 1984, p. C21.

  Bruckner applauds the lyrical quality of Love Medicine and Erdrich's rich characters.

• Allan and Nancy Feyl Chavkin, eds., in Conversations with Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris, University Press of Mississippi, 1993.

  A collection of 25 interviews with Erdrich and Dorris, this book includes a description of the unusual collaborative relationship the two share.

• Mary B. Davis, ed., in Native America in the Twentieth Century: An Encyclopedia, Garland Publishing, 1994.

  An alphabetized reference that includes works by Native Americans and other experts dealing with Native American life in the twentieth century.

• Margaret J. Downes, "Narrativity, Myth, and Metaphor: Louise Erdrich and Raymond Carver Talk about Love," in MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer, 1996, pp. 49-61.

  A comparison of two novels about love, Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine and Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Downes says that she finds Erdrich's novel more satisfying because of the characters' belief in and use of myth and storytelling.

• Louise Erdrich, in The Blue Jay's Dance, HarperCollins, 1995.

  In this book, Erdrich chronicles her child's birth and first year of life. It examines the balancing act that working parents experience on a daily basis.

• Paul Pasquaretta, "Sacred Chance: Gambling and the Contemporary Native American Indian Novel," in MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer, 1996, pp. 21-33.

  An analysis of the gambling stories in novels by three Native American authors. Pasquaretta says that these gambling stories serve as a ritual site on which to contest the forces of corruption and assimilation.

• Barbara L. Pittman, "Cross-Cultural Reading and Generic Transformations: The Chronotope of the Road in Erdrich's Love Medicine," in American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, Vol. 67, No. 4, December, 1995, pp. 777-92.

  An analysis of the road motif in Love Medicine. Pittman sees the motif as mediating between the Euro-American and Native-American traditions in which the novel participates.

• Catherine Rainwater, "Reading Between Worlds: Narrativity in the Fiction of Louise Erdrich," in American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, Vol. 62, No. 3, September, 1990, pp. 405-22.

  Rainwater discusses the many sets of conflicting codes in Love Medicine. Rainwater claims that these codes frustrate the reader's expectations, but in so doing they also make the narrative more powerful.

• Michael Schumacher, in an interview in Writer's Digest, June, 1991, pp. 28-31.

  In this interview, Erdrich tells how her childhood experiences and heritage have influenced her writing.

• Alan Velie, "The Trickster Novel," in Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures, edited by Gerald Vizenor, University of New Mexico Press, 1989, pp. 55-6.

  An analysis of the novel in terms of the picaresque, or trickster genre.