"The Island" - Louise Erdrich
Tracking down this story and getting it into readable form took several hours. In the process of doing so, I didn't just make a reading for students, which I did, but I also discovered a scholarship project. One that has absolutely nothing to do with artificial intelligence, thank fucking god.
The classes are done. I said after that I could write fuckingstuff if I wanted to, but I really did not feel like it. I did this instead.
This author is known for shapeshifting (authorial witchcraft). Characters have multiple versions of themselves and multiple different permutations of family relationships over time. In the case of this story, in particular, there's an added layer of difficulty. It is a chapter included in her signature book, Love Medicine (*medicine* being the operative theoretical term). However, it was not included in the original publication of that book in the 80s. It didn't get included until the second edition, 1993. And subsequent editions have subtle changes, so that you would have to read them all to follow the shapeshifting. Add to that is the difficulty that even the most recent edition of Love Medicine (6 editions by my count), has no e-version of any kind. Not kindle, etc, NOWHERE can you find the book in any electronic form. Not even behind a google books firewall, nada. You must hold a physical book in your hands if you want to read Love Medicine. Add to that (!!), this particular story was also published separately as a standalone in Ms Magazine - so there is yet another version floating around out there that my reference librarian is now tracking down for me (shockingly, Ted still works here).
I have gone down this rabbit hole of dogs once before with this author. Dogs do a lot of work, including talk sometimes, which was the inspiration for my own dog's narration in one little "chapter" of Grit.
Now I'm on the trail of her cats...
To get this story into a version I could post, I had to scan each page of it (earliest novel version) to make it into one artifact. Then, I had to download an app that would make jpegs out of arifact pages. Blogger doesn't support pdf format. Nothing really does online because everybody's just posting pictures of their fucking dinner or their ass. Mass Sheepletude. Nothing supports anything except taking a picture of your ass (or cat). Then, I had to extract those pics using an obscure function inside this new expensive fucking phone. Then upload them here in order.
To the best of my knowledge (to the best of chatgpt's knowledge, to the best of gemini's knowledge et cetera), this is the only "electronic version" of this story anywhere.
(What are you making?)
 |
| how human consciousness accumulates a world, how everything touches everything else, how people fail one another without becoming disposable, how animals exceed the stories humans tell, how eras erase while individuals remember, how sex and knowing and kinship and rage and jokes and death occupy the same life—and how attention itself might be an act of making rather than repair |
