The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects

by Renèe L. Bergland

A unique look at Native American ghosts and US literature.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism

199 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[JJ]

One of the most astonishing books of literary criticism that I have read in the last five years. Most good books I end up writing down one or two quotes in my little book; this one I had to switch over to adding tabs instead because I hit memorable quotes once or twice a page. I ended up purchasing a second copy for the express purpose of lending out to my friends.

[Katherine Addison]

So, fair warning, what Bergland is interested in is not so much GHOSTS as it is the rhetorical trope of, as she puts it, "spectralizing Indians." This is a trope that is EVERYWHERE in American discourse about Native Americans, first from white writers & speakers imagining that Indians are vanishing (or have vanished), and then from Native writers & speakers, turning the trope right back around at the whites. Bergland's evidence is lying around on the ground to be picked up, and she does a good, solid, persuasive job of making her argument about 18th and 19th century authors. (She talks only briefly about 20th century authors and then only about Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony and The Almanac of the Dead) and Stephen King (Pet Sematary).) But she's really not interested in stories, except insofar as they demonstrate the trope (she spends a lot of time, for example, with Fenimore Cooper). Which---it is not her problem that what I was hoping for was an analysis of ghost stories, or at least some interest in the ghost as a figure rather than just the specter as a trope.

[Sharon A.]

It was OK. Not quite what I was expecting. Instead of a more historical look, this was literary criticism. It focused on a few works in great detail outlining the plot and interpretation. I found this uninteresting and skimmed a lot. The conclusions for these would have been more useful to me in an article format instead of a full-length book.

I would have preferred a chronology of the way the subject has been handled from early American authors to the present. With the exception of Pet Sematary, there was nothing modern and I do not feel I have a good understanding of the modern trope of Native legends that appear as part of the narratives for many fiction and nonfictional paranormal stories.

[Katrinka]

Really intriguing.