The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich was our book club pick for this month.

Thomas Wazhashk works as the night watchman at a jewel-bearing plant where a lot of people who live on the Turtle Mountain Reservation work. There's a lot of stuff happening at the reservation - Patrice's sister has gone missing in the Twin Cities, Congress is threatening to terminate the federal government's relationship with the tribe, and there are boxing matches to be won.

Outside of a brief foray into the Twin Cities (I love when Hennepin Avenue gets a shoutout), there was a whole lotta nothing happening in this book. My book club peeps were slightly more divided. One agreed with me, one liked it a lot, and one didn't finish it, which says something, too. This book is 464 pages and it felt interminable to me. There was occasional brilliant writing and some of the observational writing was super smart, but overall I wasn't excited to read this one.  3/5 stars

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What I do want to talk about more is that I hosted this book club and Dr. BB and I were really worried because Hannah has been quite territorial about people coming into our house. After the Great Biting Incident of 2024, I have been nervous about Hannah being around people outside of her immediate circle. One of the people coming to book club was our veterinarian, though, so we decided to do what she told us to do and hope for the best.

Here's what we did. I warned everyone ahead of time that they would probably get barked at when they walked in the house, but to come in armed with treats. I had chicken and sweet potatoes on our porch for them to grab on their way in. Dr. Lauren, the vet, got there first, and Hannah recognized her, so we did a meet and greet on the porch and Hannah let Lauren in the house with minimal fuss. Then the second person arrived and she just kept shoving chicken at Hannah until Hannah thought she was the Lady of the Chicken. Then we moved into the dining room and Hannah relaxed. When the last person arrived, Hannah barked briefly, but started nudging her hand for treats because now Hannah expects people who come in the door to have treats!

This is a great milestone. If we know people are coming, we can just have treats ready for them to give to Hannah. Yay! It didn't hurt that this was a small gathering of all women, but small steps are the best steps for our girl. 

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Lines of note:

She gathered the dough from the bucket and laid it out in her frying pan, using one smooth motion. Sometimes the things her mother did from lifelong repetition looked like magic tricks. (page 12)

Have you ever watched someone really skilled in the kitchen? They make it look like ballet. 

He often devised sentences that began with his favorite capitals. Rs and Qs were his art. (page 16)

Don't we all do this?

Thomas was of the after-the-buffalo-who-are-we-now generation. He was born on the reservation, grew up on the reservation, assumed he would die there also. Thomas owned a watch. He had no memory of time according only to the sun and moon. He spoke the old language first, and also spoke English with a soft grain and almost imperceptible accent. This accent would only belong to those of his generation. This indefinably soft but firm way of speaking would be lost. His generation would have to define themselves. Who was an Indian? What? Who, who, who? And how? How should being an Indian relate to this country that had conquered and was trying in every way possible to absorb them? Sometimes the country still aggressively hated Indians, true. But more often now, a powerfully glorious sensation poured forth. Wars. Citizenship. Flags. This termination bill. Arthur V. Watkins believed it was for the best. To uplift them. Even open the gates of heaven. How could Indians hold themselves apart, when the vanquishers sometimes held their arms out, to crush them to their hearts, with something like love? (page 98)

I just love everything about this passage. The passage of time, the questioning of identity, the importance of systematic violence and racism, but the endless hope. 

Time is nothing but everything, not the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Yet this substanceless substance, this bending and shaping, this warping, this is the way we understand our world. (page 193)

Time is nothing and finite all at the same time. 

...time was all at at once, back and forth, upside down. As animals subject to the laws of the earth, we think time is experience. But time is more of a substance, like air, only of course not air. It is in fact a holy element. (page 267)

I truly enjoyed the theme of time throughout the passages of this book.

Things I looked up:

boules (page 10) - I'm struggling to actually find a definition. The dictionary says "a synthetically formed mass (such as a sapphire) with the atomic structure of a single crystal" and that's about as far as I could figure out what it would have to do with jewelry making.

Split Boules of Flame Fusion Corundum. Photo by Morion Company.

Arthur V. Watkins (page 92 and lots of other places) - Republican U.S. Senator from Utah who served a couple of terms in the late 1940s through the 1950s. Racist Mormon who tried to destroy Indian culture through assimilation, but he later helped to unseat Joseph McCarthy after the Red Scare.

Palmer Method (page 14) - Penmanship instruction developed and promoted by Austin Palmer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was the most popular handwriting system in the United States. I think it's what I learned!

By A. N. Palmer - The Palmer Method of Business Writing https://archive.org/stream/palmermethodofbu00palmrich#page/n3/mode/2up, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38006706

prairie couteau (page 267) - a plateau approximately 200 miles in length and 100 miles in width (320 by 160 km), rising from the prairie flatlands in eastern South Dakota, southwestern Minnesota, and northwestern Iowa in the United States. The southeast portion of the Coteau comprises one of the distinct regions of Minnesota, known as Buffalo Ridge. The tip of the feature starts in extreme south North Dakota.

The flatiron-shaped plateau was named by early French explorers from New France (Quebec), coteau meaning "hill" in French; the general term coteau has since been used in English to describe any upland dividing ridge.

Hat mentions (why hats?): Sixteen hat mentions! Here are a couple of highlights.

When he took off his padded tractor hat, a crab apple fell from the earflap. (page 3) - Honestly, it's not a fun game when hat appears in the third sentence.

...smiled at him from under the brim of a midnight-blue cloche hat, daring him to love her. (page 27) - It's actually pretty rare for authors to give colors of hats and this blue hat reminded me a bit of Katie always wearing green hats in ATGIB.