On Storytelling in Tracks.

When I thought about Nanapush’s role as a storyteller in Tracks, it struck me how different the Native American vision of storytelling, as portrayed by Louise Erdrich seems to differ from conventional storytelling. Nanapush tells his stories to try to bring his granddaughter Lulu closer to the tribe, and to prevent her from marrying a Morissey. Nanapush’s role as a trickster means we don’t believe his story the same way we would in another novel; there is less verisimilitude.

It is unclear whether Nanapush himself believes his stories; he mentions several times about things “not being clear” until he sits and thinks it through later. This type of phrasing almost implies that the story itself can take on a form independent of Nanapush; something we see in his magic too, when he says, “I began to sing slowly, calling on my helpers, until the words came from my mouth but were not mine, until the rattle started, the song sang itself, and there, in the deep bright drifts, I saw the tracks of Eli's snowshoes clearly”. (101)

                If Nanapush’s stories weave themselves, they differ from fact but find truth. Perhaps it is the truth of the relationship between characters, or the slow disintegration of Chippewa beliefs. But the stories don’t exist in isolation. Lulu will walk away from her grandfather’s stories changed, and readers’ perceptions have probably shifted as well. The stories don’t only find truth; they create them. Or perhaps, they shape them.

                This parallels remarkably well with Grendel’s Shaper. Just as the Shaper carved a glorious past and a heroic future from a tale of mindless bloodlust, and Nanapush brings a story to weave the remnants of his tribe back together; Grendel once conceived of creating the world blink by blink; the stories he tells himself unrolling his future. The difference is that the Chippewas saw the story as independent of themselves; hearkening back to the Native American reservation against aversion to ownership. Interestingly, John Gardner expressed similar sentiments when he said that Grendel was to “catching [Grendel’s] shrieks in cups of gold.” John Gardner also seems to believe that the story was sort of waiting out there before he “captured” it.

                Pre-modern stories were apparently meant to bring the reader closer to G-d. Certainly, the historically Jewish ‘stories’ that I know of were parables, intended to teach and make the reader think. And even though the messages are not always intentional, I think stories can be used to connect to G-d much in the same way nature can; in giving insight into the nature of His world. Modernism acknowledged American society’s loss of divinity as a cultural force. But I think, looking at the nature of stories in stories by authors, one can find a different goal: to shape a truth out of falsehoods and change the readers’ perception of his existence. A secular goal, though with moral underpinnings that hearken back to the older types of stories. But a much more universal one, fit for the modern (postmodern?) age.