Gone Indian

by Robert Kroetsch

Jeremy Sadness is a professional grad student of New York State University who heads out for the wilds of northwestern Canada to work out his inadequacies.

Genres: Canada

167 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Robert Kroetsch was a Canadian novelist, poet, and non-fiction writer. He taught for many years at the University of Manitoba. Kroetsch spent multiple years in Vancouver, British Columbia before returning to Winnipeg where he continued to write. In 2004 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Reviews

[Tom Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a satire based in the depiction of an escape fantasy. It is a story about someone who is strongly dissatisfied by his life but cannot muster the determination to change it. He avoids life by use of sex and fantasies of escape to an idealized past. He self-loathing inhibits his behavior so much that he cannot finish his dissertation and has become impotent. He floats though life passively accepting what happens to him and hates himself for his own weakness.

Finally his supervising professor insists that he travel to Edmonton to interview for a job at the university there. On his arrival there, he finds that he has the suitcase of another by mistake and with this goes on to his community to try to retrieve his own bag. He finds that the Mr. Dorck who his bag has had an accident and is now unconscious in hospital. Dorck was supposed to be a judge of the beauty contest in the local winter fair and the locals now want him to carry out Dorck's duties. The action in the winter fair and the contest judging further exemplify his passivity. he cannot determine any difference between teh three contestants. No matter what he does he cannot any action to further his own ends just as he cannot take any real action to finish his dissertation. even his final attempt at escape by snowmobile is passive since he cannot find his way and blindly follows the railroad tracks to his his death or possible escape by collision with an oncoming train on a railway bridge.

In my view, it is this passivity and inconsequence that is the theme of this novel and a more general theme of Kroetech's work. It appears to be a broad view that he held about people in society.

[Olivia Druxerman]

narrative is strange and I didn’t know what was happening most of the time

[Gord Higginson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dandy, funny novel

[Olivia Brisebois · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am so confused by this book, to the point where I wonder how anyone reads anything this man wrote. His essays are good, his novels not so much.