On getting ones brilliant theory debunked

My Native American lit class hosted one Dr. David Truer today. Truer, a Univ. of Minnesota professor of Jewish/Ojibwa heritage,is the author of the novels "Little". "The Hiawatha" and "Dr. Appeles." He's somewhat famous, at least to those of us who don't have lives.

We read "The Hiawatha" in my Native American Lit class. While writing a paper on the book, I did some quick internet "research" and found some connections between the books title and one "Nanobozho", (Nanobush, Manobush, etc.) a trickster figure among northern native tribes.

A Trickster is some sort of character who willfully defies the order established by a culture's Gods/God/meaningless void etc. Tricksters are rather archtypical, Western icons such as Satan, Bugs Bunny, and Bill Clinton could all be reasonably considered to be Trickster figures.

But Tricksters are most closely associated with Native American cultures. This is because Native Americans (not that I'm one to stereotype :) don't usually view the world in a black vs. white, good vs. evil sort of way. So a Trickster who defies the order of the Gods is not necessarily a bad thing and is even occasionally a good thing.

So anyway, I'm not going to give the plot of "The Hiawatha" away, but the Simon character is a rather fucked up cat who does a lot of things that seemingly have no earthly explanations, and while doing my "research" in between rounds of Myspace and Fark I found a lot of parallels between Simon and Nanobozho, especially regarding how they treated their family members.

My professor was quite excited by my theory. I got an A+ on the paper and she had me explain the theory to the rest of the class, without telling me ahead of time, while I was ill with a cold and high on Nyquil, good times.

But than Truer came to town, and he flatly rejected my idea. He said that he didn't want to use the cliche of a real-life Indian mirroring a spiritual Trickster figure. (It doesn't take much reading of Native American Lit to know that this is indeed a cliche.) So it goes.

I should have considered the possibility that I was over thinking. Truer recently wrote a nonfiction book called "Native American Fiction: A User's Manual" in which he argues that there is actually no such thing as Native American fiction, since nearly all of Native American fiction plays off white stereotypes in some way. That is, a troubled young native lost in the modern white man's world goes through some sort of "spiritual journey" to find his "inner warrior".

Truer's "User's manual" caused a minor spat between him and some of the big names in Native American Lit: Sherman Alexie, Leslie Silko, N. Scott Momaday, etc. It raised a lot of philosophical debate among five or six pretentious, lonely people.

When he spoke here at UNL, Truer talked of moving "out of the ruts" and presenting his native characters as distinct individuals who's flaws were born out of themselves instead of society, as regular fucked up people instead of "children of the forest" separated from their homelands.

Again, I should have known I was over thinking. Truer does a lot of demystifying and cliche-busting in "The Hiawatha". Simon is a city-dwelling Indian. More than that, he is anything but lost in the city. Minneapolis is clearly his home, a place that he knows like his own skin and that he even helps to build. When Simon gets lost in the woods (Returns to nature) he nearly kills himself with his total lack of bush-skills.

Oh well, Truer is a cool guy. He refuted my theory very politely and respectfully and is a witty and engaging speaker. And I still have the A+.