Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner

Abstract

2 1 0 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e S u m m e r 2 0 0 5 His book of criticism, Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel (1992), remains the most coherent and nuanced overall interpretation of the subject, developing in depth a perspective connecting postmodernist theory to Trickster word-play that creatively integrates Western and Native traditions of discourse. His five novels range through intricately interwoven natural and cul­ tural landscapes, each having its own symbolic resonance in Owens’s fiction. As Susan Bemardin’s essay suggests, many of these themes converge in his absurdist, postmodernist tour-de-force Dark River, his final novel, which in retrospect at least reads as his witty and eloquent swan song. And I’m glad to see acknowl­ edged throughout these writings Owens’s singular achievement in his final two collections of essays, with their fascinating interweaving of personal narrative, literary commentary, and cultural criticism. This broad-ranging anthology cap­ tures much of the multidimensional appeal of Owens’s major writings and serves as a worthy tribute to a literary and scholarly voice that is now an invaluable part of our heritage. Ordinary Wolves. By Seth Kantner. Minneapolis, Minn.: Milkweed Editions, 2004. 324 pages, $22.00. Reviewed by Eric Heyne University of Alaska, Fairbanks Alaska has produced some excellent nonfiction prose in the last twenty years but little homegrown fiction. There are plenty of “tourist novels” by such big names as Norman Mailer, John Hawkes, Ken Kesey, Robert Olen Butler, and T. Coraghessan Boyle, and there is a lot of genre fiction being published by Alaskans lately, like the detective novels by John Straley, Sue Henry, and Dana Stabenow. But the mainstream novel about Alaska by an Alaskan is still rare, making Seth Kantner something of a pioneer in a place that uses that term fondly. Ordinary Wolves has been widely and deservedly praised as vivid and authentic. Certainly this coming-of-age novel set in northwestern Alaska is accurate in its details of both nature and culture. Cutuk Hawcly is a white kid who grows up with his father and two siblings in a sod hut in the wilderness and notes that “Eskimos wouldn’t live that way anymore, but for some reason we did” (8). He finishes high school in the nearby Inupiat village, heads to the big cities of Anchorage and Fairbanks to check out mainstream American culture, and chooses, in the end, to return to his childhood home. The picture we are given of native Alaskans and village life is not politically correct. For example, at one point, Cutuk reflects that “dogs, in Takunak, had the rights and privi­ leges of damp firewood—and little use now that snowgos had come” (99). However, the portrayal is ultimately respectful, as Cutuk struggles to maintain relationships with his Inupiat mentor, his adopted mother, his boyhood love, and the village kids who beat on him simply because he is white (99). B o o k R e v ie w s Some reviewers have claimed that Kantner attacks “consumerism,” and certainly Cutuk learns from his father a healthy distrust of conspicuous consumption and American materialism. But this novel is no Sierra Club tract. Cutuk loves his dog team, but he also appreciates the advantages of a snowmachine , the necessity of subsistence hunting, and the joys of bush flying. In fact, the emotional high point of the book comes after he hijacks a small plane to go see his boyhood love. Flying is one kind of initiation through which he must pass in order to connect with his paternal grandfather, and it is just as emotionally important to him as the journey he makes by dogsled to track down his Native mentor. The novel’s early scenes are the most powerful, describing Cutuk growing up in a sod cabin with his father and two siblings, living a subsistence life in the harsh Arctic landscape, dealing with internalized antiwhite prejudice, and blaming himself for his mother’s leaving. The second and third parts of the book, although not quite as viscerally powerful, are still...