Winter in the Blood (Contemporary American Fiction Series) by James Welch

Winter in the Blood (Contemporary American Fiction Series) Reviews

• 
  Orsodimondo

  WOUNDED KNEE
  
  
  Nell’omonimo film del 2013, l’anonimo protagonista del romanzo assume invece il nome di Virgil First Raise.
  
  Nei suoi occhi neri vedevo la ragione per cui quella volta l’avevo portata a csa: promettevano calore, una ricchezza interiore che andava ben oltre la sua vita miserabile passata a bere e a scopare, piena di uomini come me.
  
  Per passare da una situazione (scena?) all’altra, mai agevolare il passaggio con uno scivolo, James Welch preferisce farlo con un salto, a volte piccolo a volte più pirotecnico: capita di chiedersi da un paragrafo o capitolo all’altro, chi sia chi, dove, chi stia esattamente dicendo cosa e perché.
  La consolidata tradizione – forse la stessa che individua nel maggiordomo l’eterno colpevole – punterebbe il dito sulla traduzione – che in effetti, come l’edizione, ha i suoi anni, al punto che i nativi americani sono ancora chiamati indiani come nei film di John Wayne (che gli “indiani” avrebbe preferito servirli grigliati, e comunque nei suoi film di veri nativi non ce n’erano, solo comparse truccate malino), e al punto che una nota introduttiva del traduttore spiega la scelta di avere lasciato i nomi dei personaggi “indiani” in originale, invece di tradurli (un po’ come se qualcuno chiedesse scusa per aver lasciato William Shakespeare invece di Guglielmo LanciaScrollata).
  
  
  La parte centrale del romanzo conduce il protagonista per bar e stanze di motel nei piccoli centri della zona alla ricerca di alcol e sesso.
  
  Ad attenuare questa forma di asprezza, per me hanno aiutato le descrizioni della natura e degli animali del Montana: la sua parte rurale a ridosso di piccoli centri urbani, i campi, i fossi, gli alberi, cervi e alci, i cieli addolciscono.
  Così come l’avere a protagonisti dei nativi americani creati da uno di loro (James Welch era un Blackfeet, nella quarta di copertina debitamente tradotto in Piedi Neri – e d’altronde, anche la versione inglese è comunque una forzatura): un po’ come ritrovare amici d’infanzia che il tempo e la vita hanno disperso e allontanato. Quegli esseri umani che, come tanti altri nativi, si sono trovati a nascere nel tempo e nel lato del confine sbagliato. Ma suvvia, vorremo mica ancora sostenere la muffita teoria delle colpe degli occidentali che mentre colonizzavano portavano civiltà e progresso?
  
  
  Ecco cosa si rimedia lasciando la riserva e andando a caccia di bevute e gonne.
  
  In cima alla tomba c’era una lapide rettangolare di granito su cui era scolpito il nome, John First Raise, e le due date entro le quali era riuscito a rimanere in vita. Non diceva niente di quanto gli piacesse aggiustare i macchinari e ridere con i bianchi di Dodson, o di come fosse morto assiderato, rigido come una tavola, nella buca sterrata degli Earthboy.
  Ma anche se nel loro cimitero privato la lapide è in granito, sulla tomba che un solo giorno non fu sufficiente a scavare, la croce è di polistirolo, alla quale sono legati due fiori di plastica sporchi.
  
  
  
  È bella la progressione di questo breve romanzo che dopo la presentazione dei personaggi, porta il protagonista in un lungo giro urbano tra bevute, strani incontri, donne, avventure, e che si chiude con il ritorno alla fattoria, dove il cerchio è partito e sembra chiudersi. Il giovane ricuce il passato, le due morti che si porta nel cuore, quella del fratello quattordicenne in un incidente sul lavoro – messo sotto da un’auto sull’autostrada mentre stava facendo attraversare la mandria – e quella del padre morto assiderato in un fosso, attraverso la vecchia mucca, un po’ isterica, che sta finendo sommersa nel fango e viene tratta in salvo con l’aiuto del vecchio cavallo, altro animale un po’ matto.
  Il mio riferimento a Wounded Knee, luogo celebre per un massacro di nativi a opera delle giacche blu, luogo simbolo del genocidio che i nativi hanno subito, è un riferimento al ginocchio ferito, malandato, più volte operato del protagonista, rimasto schiacciato sotto il cavallo imbizzarrito proprio in occasione della morte del fratello maggiore.
  
  
  
  Ma l’elemento per così dire folkloristico incide solo in misura contenuta: Welch racconta la storia di tanti attraverso quella di un uomo di trentadue anni, che rimane sempre senza nome, che il patrigno insiste a chiamare ragazzo, che vive coltivando e allevando nella proprietà di famiglia con la durezza che la vita dei campi sempre comporta, un giovane uomo che cerca un suo posto nel mondo, che cerca il senso della sua e della vita in genere.
  Il libro è il primo scritto da un nativo americano a essere tradotto in italiano (1978).
  
  
  Il film è diretto dai fratelli Alex e Andrew Smith.
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Andrea

  This was my fourth James Welch novel and I still can't pin down what it is about his writing that I find so affecting. There is no visible effort to command your attention - no showy passages, no plot-bending events - just a slow-rolling flow of pages that sometimes don't even seem to have been written. The stories just kind of happen, pulling you in (matter-of-fact, whatever) so you don't so much as plunge in but float along and finally end up thinking about them long after you've turned the last page.
  
  At any rate, that's the way they work on me.
  
  Welch's title for this novel, his first, sets the tone. The young (well, 32, as he often points out) main character's life is pretty much on ice. He's alternately unguided and misguided as he sluggishly tries to go forward. His brain is stuck to frozen memories like a tongue on an icicle; it's too painful to just rip it off and nobody is around with the warm water. The guy needs to thaw out, and the novel covers a few days or a week during which that process starts to take place. Of course, that's just the surface of the narrative, and there is a rich subtext teeming underneath with plenty of reflections and analogies around themes relating earth, man, nature, sex, direction, animals, etc., not necessarily in that order. And in spite of all the grave themes, Welch has a subdued sense of humour that is not always obvious to "get" but that drifts back to you later.
  
  See what I mean? I initially gave this 4 stars because I thought it was a bit too brief and truncated and I was left wanting more. But here I am, still thinking about it. So maybe less is more in this case: 5 full stars for staying power
  
  
  
• 
  Jonathan

  Beautifully written - sad and angry and full of wonderful evocations of landscape and nature. A key novel in the voicing of the Native American experience and well worth your time.
• 
  Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)

  3.5 stars
  
  Winter in the Blood is a modern classic that feels kind of like a noir Western. The prose is simple but often striking or even beautiful. Written by a Blackfeet author in the 1970's, it explores indigenous identity through a narrative that is sometimes quite unsettling and at moments feels like a fever dream.
  
  In some ways it is very much a product of its time- including some racial slurs, frequent objectification of women, and a couple of disturbing scenes that feel "rapey" even if they don't entirely cross into sexual assault. All of which is also pretty in-line with the noir genre of the time. Despite all of that, I found myself very drawn into the world of the main character. The book is sometimes funny, quirky, and strange. There are some wtf moments, like that scene where an old man drops dead while eating oatmeal in a diner.
  
  I don't think this book will be for everyone, but it's definitely interesting and offers a different window into indigenous life in 70's. One that neutrally describes both the good and the bad. It's a melancholy book, but there is a dark humor woven throughout as well.
• 
  Kasa Cotugno

  A short while ago I received a newsletter from Louise Erdrich, a favorite of mine, in which she proposed that a long overdue Pulitzer Prize be awarded to one of her favorite writers, James Welch. This introduced me to Welch, this being the first of his books I've read, and this edition has the benefit of an introduction by Ms. Erdrich and beautifully lays out the reasons he deserves recognition for this, his debut novel. It is always important to follow a favorite writer's inspiration and have further insight into why their work resonates so strongly for you.
• 
  Ben

  The dialogue is great; the descriptive writing a little more uneven, sometimes slipping into that dreaded vein known as "Bad Hemingway." (Something along these lines: The mountains were green. It was cold. I was fourteen then. The mountains were green and cold and we felt good.)
  
  The story is slack, largely without tension or stakes, though a sense of hurt and emotional damage pervades it, lending some weight to the proceedings. I didn't mind the meandering plot, because individual scenes were handled so well. It didn't really feel like a novel, though, more like a 177 page short story. It has an impact at the end, but I'm not sure if it is as much as the author wanted.
• 
  Ron

  James Welch is probably Montana's foremost Native American writer, and this wonderful novella is evidence of considerable talent. Published 30 years ago (1974), it takes place in the shadow that was cast by the nation's approaching bicentennial. While neither bitter nor angry, it manages anyway to portray a country that has little to show for itself but "greed and stupidity." The values it embraces are finally those available to every American, native or otherwise - compassion and respect for life and the living.
  
  The story concerns a few days in the life of a 32-year-old man, descendant of Indians and living in two worlds, his mother's home on the reservation and the dreary bars and hotels of nearby Havre and Malta, Montana. His days and nights blending together in an alcoholic haze, he meets a deranged white man, picks up women and gets punched in the nose. Meanwhile, he is haunted by a past that includes the death of an older brother and an injury to his knee that multiple operations have not remedied. Out of these unpromising circumstances, Welch finds the beginnings of a kind of personal salvation. By reaching back through the memory of a blind old man's act of charity, he restores the younger man's vision of himself.
  
  Among the ranks of modern Native American writers, such as Louise Erdrich, Welch opens up a world for non-Indian readers that goes well beyond the usual stereotypes. His Indians are strikingly individual, absorbed in the everyday, motivated as much by self-interest and cock-eyed notions as their white counterparts. In Welch's hands, a conversation among five of them can be as comic and absurd as Ionesco. Meanwhile, the Native American past is there to ground a person with a sense of purpose and identity. For all its sorrows, Welch's story is finally a joy to read.
• 
  Minna

  This short 1970s book is part bar-fly story (think Buckowski’s dirty realism) part family saga.
  
  Home life on the Montana reservation is stifling, so Raymond escapes to the surrounding towns, where everyone and everything seems dysfunctional. Raymond can be hard to stomach. He is so numb, he barely has feelings for anyone and stumbles from one drunken misadventure to the next. When he returns home to the ranch, the story opens up and breathes again. The best parts of the book are boyhood memories, working on the ranch, and family stories. But you have to absorb a lot of hangovers and bitterness to get there. Luckily Welch included some silly humor to help us through those times.
  
  Winter in the Blood is difficult, parts are unpleasant, so many mixed and confusing emotions. But the characters are so well depicted. I can lock eyes with each one, even those quickly passing through. Welch’s writing is striking.
  
  If you’re a sensitive reader, this may not be for you. The list of triggers would be long. My biggest challenge was the misogyny and suffering of children and animals.
• 
  Jim

  It was pure serendipity. I had never heard of James Welch, the Blackfoot/Gros Ventre who was one of the figures of the 1970s Montana literary renaissance (which I had also never heard of). I had read several books by Sherman Alexie, another Native American writer. I would have to say that Welch's Winter in the Blood hit me at such a keen angle that I felt my bones ache as I read it.
  
  Welch gives us chains of simple declarative sentences that never pall, because suddenly he is off somewhere else; and you have to backtrack to get your bearings. Here he describes his deceased father, First Raise:
  
  "The toolbox had held my father's tools and it was said in those days that he could fix anything made of iron. He overhauled machinery in the fall. It was said that when the leaves turned, First Raise's yard was full of iron; when they fell, the yard was full of leaves. He drank with the white men of Dodson. Not a quiet man, he told them stories and made them laugh. He charged them plenty for fixing their machines. Twenty dollars to kick a baler awake -- one dollar for the kick and nineteen for knowing where to kick. He made them laugh until the thirty below morning ten years ago we found him sleeping in the borrow pit across from Earthboy's place."
  
  Later in the book, he describes a blind Blackfoot named Yellow Calf, whom he remembers his father First Raise taking to visit many years ago:
  
  "But now, something else, his distance, made it all right to study his face, to see for the first time the black dots on his temples and the bridge of his nose, the ear lobes which sagged on either side of his head, and the bristles which grew on the edges of his jaw.... But it was his eyes, narrow beneath the loose skin of his lids, deep behind his cheekbones, which made one realize the old man's distance was permanent. It was behind those misty white eyes that gave off no light that he lives, a world as clean as the rustling willows, the bark of a fox or the odor of musk during mating season." [Italics mine:]
  
  This is big sky country, and the sky here is immense. Behind its proscenium, vast movements of clouds and an occasional eldritch greyness play their parts. The Indians interact with one another with an emotional nakedness that seems odd to us. They also interact with whites, occasionally sleeping with their women, but there is no real connection made. It is like the Catholic priest who is the friend of the narrator's mother. He is friendly, but won't step onto the Reservation to attend the hero's grandmother's funeral.
  
  I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see the world through different eyes.
• 
  Avathoir

  This is an essential book for anyone with even the slightest curiosity about what exactly it means to be Native American in America. Which essentially is me saying that everyone should read this book.
  
  I can't really tell you much of what happens in this book. Not because the events aren't worth recounting or because I cannot remember them, but more like the fact that this isn't a book much interested in plot. The best way to call the tone of this book is "chilled" in many senses of the term. On the one hand, it's essentially a hangout book, where you spend time with an assorted group of interesting characters, all of whom are worth learning about. However, it's also a work that is heartbreakingly sad. Not depressing, or miserable, but sad. Welch's prose is incredibly immersive, the kind that you can slip through, and at the same time very subtle. Nothing is overwrought here. Everything is what it is, but described in such a way the only thing you can really feel is a crushing sadness, just like our nameless protagonist.
  
  I haven't even scratched the surface here, but suffice to say every single one of you who reads this review should read this book. It'll fly by. It's profound in a way I can't express, at least without the worry that its spell will be broken. I will be haunted by this novel for quite some time.
• 
  Diane

  Not my usual genre, I thought as I began reading, wondering if I would continue. It seemed like a noir western, big lonesome dangerous country and smoky dive bars in very small towns - presented in language and dialogue so spare it almost read like a script. But then . . . it began to get hold of me, its grip growing tighter as the characters took on substance and shape and the mysteries began to grow. The occasional patches of description were gripping and gorgeous and perfect in the context of this place (both setting and book) where words weren't wasted on what could just as well be understood - if not immediately, then eventually. By the time I finished, I realized I'd just read a classic - one I had somehow missed up until now. The writer of this small, under-200-pages book had made a whole, poignant, profound and very honest world without inserting his own cleverness or taking unnecessary side trips. I never re-read novels. But this one I very well might, just to be there again and pick up anything I might have missed.
• 
  Nella ☾ of Bookland

  National American Indian Heritage Month 2020 Read #2 🍂
  
  I wish I liked this book more. Between the lusterless narration and the confusing plot (I was never really sure what exactly the story was supposed to be about), I found it really hard to enjoy reading this.
  
  There were a few scenes here and there that held my interest, but for the most part, it was quite a drag. I feel like I would have appreciated the symbols and motifs more had I been in an English class. On my own, they went over my head.
  
  It's a shame I can't rate this higher because this novel is supposed to be a literary masterpiece.
• 
  Michael

  This book taught me to stop looking for the meaning in the book--it is only possible to comprehend this book when you stop reading into it and let it begin talking to you.
• 
  Paltia

  Read this many, many years ago but hung on to my copy. It is a brilliant novel. Moving, often desperate and real.
• 
  Paul Lawton

  Winter in the Blood had a profound personal effect on me, which may be unrelated to the actual work itself. Last year, I decided, somewhat impulsively, to abandon my life as a professor in Lethbridge, Alberta, which is relatively close to the landscape Welch describes at the Fort Belknap Indian Reserve. I grew up moving between the great Canadian cities and towns, and my presonal sense of isolation and introspection that this landscape almost requires of its citizens is deeply embedded.
  
  Like my own recent journey, the narrator is in his early thirties and is aimlessly wandering through life. He follows all of his impulses without really moving towards any specific goals, but on a quest nonetheless. Even if he isn't aware of his intentions, the emergent properties of his behaviors puts him on a quest for meaning. After finishing the book, I'm not sure if he really finds it.
  
  At 140 pages, this Novella is at once accessable and quite entertaining. Yet, once you let the coldness of the book seep into your bones, it is hard to warm up. Highly reccomended.
• 
  Christy

  The nameless narrator of James Welch's Winter in the Blood suffers from a feeling of distance and separation from the people and experiences by which he is surrounded. He says at the start of the book, "I felt no hatred, no love, no guilt, no conscience, nothing but a distance that had grown through the years" (2). He continues, saying that this distance could be a result of the Montana landscape in which he lives: "The country had created a distance as deep as it was empty, and the people accepted and treated each other with distance. But the distance I felt came not from country or people; it came from within me. I was as distant from myself as a hawk from the moon" (2).
  
  Over the course of the book, the narrator attempts to diminish this distance through sex and work, but the distance remains. In the end, after a few trips to nearby towns and cities in search of a woman that include bizarre and paranoid subplots, he returns home to find his grandmother dead, to make a new connection with an old, blind relative, and to begin to come to terms with the long ago deaths of his father and his brother. Even in this coming to terms with things, he feels the distance. But the distance is no longer so deadening: "Some people, I thought, will never know how pleasant it is to be distant in a clean rain, the driving rain of a summer storm. It's not like you'd expect, nothing like you'd expect" (172).
  
  The style of this novel is itself distanced, dreamy, separate from the action--but also realistic and anchored solidly in concrete details. The landscape and people's appearances are recorded in minute detail, but those details have little larger meaning. The details are there because they are there. In these details, Welch shows us a series of portraits, still lifes, landscapes; he captures the look and feel of the narrator's surroundings; he gives the illusion of meaning and presence in the moment while simultaneously registering the narrator's detachment.
  
  The novel is at times confusing because of this stylistic approach, however. Who is the man with the airplane tickets who enlists the narrator in his paranoid scheme? Who is the woman at the bar? How do these mysterious people figure into the narrator's life? Well, they don't, really. They come and go quickly precisely because they don't matter. The people who matter to the narrator are dead. Their presences are more real than the real people he meets in town. The one exception to this is the woman, Agnes, whom he goes to town to find. She's left him, but he still sees in her a possibility and he still finds himself thinking about how he will do things differently next time, how he will propose. She is more real to the narrator than the other still living people he interacts with, but she is absent from most of the narrative, and his attitude toward her is fundamentally ambivalent.
  
  Winter in the Blood is a significant contribution to the canon of Native American literature. It is set on a Native American reservation and concerns a Native American protagonist and his family and community on the reservation, but it is not a political novel. It is a literary novel that is completely at home among broader traditions of American literature and is a good representative of the Native American literary renaissance of the 1970s because of its ease in escaping the category "Indian novel" while still dealing with realities of Native American life on the reservation and Native American history.
• 
  alli

  gonna be honest i don’t remember anything after reading this
• 
  Wendy

  Winter in the Blood appealed to me in the first few paragraphs, because the setting is one with which I'm very familiar. The bleak panorama that is north central Montana is almost a supplementary character in Welch's novel. But this sense of place almost instantly gave way to a disconnect that nonetheless was not without charm. While reading Welch's novel, I couldn't decide if it would change how I read the novel if the central character and I had not shared a common locality. The removal of almost four decades hasn't changed the landscape much, but the detachment from the past, and the distance between people and the land has grown with the passing of a generation. That connection seems to be what the central character strives for, and it's something that proves ever more elusive to the reader. A bittersweet read, and highly recommended.
• 
  Jenny

  A beautifully written book that gives us a look into the Indigenous experience of stolen history in the United States.
• 
  Alyn Turner

  “I should go home, I thought, turn the key and drive home. It wasn’t the ideal place, that was sure, but it was the best choice.”
• 
  Paula Margulies

  This is a lovely, haunting book, written with taut, elegant prose. There are themes of dispossession and distance (both literal and figurative) and the main character, Virgil First Raise, provides an unsentimental yet sensitive glimpse of life as a Native American in the bare, arid plains of North Dakota. I wish I had read this book sooner -- it's one that will stay with me for a long time (I'd also like to see the movie version of this story, which is currently making the rounds at indie film festivals this fall).
• 
  Shawn Mooney (Shawn The Book Maniac)

  I read half of this: some stunning standalone scenes aside, I have failed utterly to connect with this story and its characters. This one’s just not for me.
• 
  librari

  the nature, the sadness — it was going so well for me until the main character started being a misogynistic arsehole and a rapist :(
• 
  Rylee

  The best book about Montana racism and the deep impact on society. Alcohol use does not happen unless there is long lasting pain. This book is lovely in the saddest and most profound ways.
• 
  Vishy

  I discovered James Welch recently and decided to read his book 'Winter in the Blood'.
  
  'Winter in the Blood' describes the life of a Native American man in a reservation, his work, his family, his joys and his sorrows, his kindness and cruelty, his family, his community and their history. It sometimes goes back and we discover his family secrets from the past, a past filled with some tragic events, and with a surprising revelation in the end. There is a beautiful horse character called Bird too. One of my favourite parts in the story is when the narrator's grandmother tells the story of her past when she lived in a totally different era, when Native Americans lived in the traditional way like their ancestors lived across the centuries. Another of my favourite parts of the book is when the narrator goes to meet an old man and they have a fascinating conversation. I loved the parts in which the horse called Bird makes an appearance too.
  
  This book has a beautiful introduction by Louise Erdrich. In her introduction Louise Erdrich says this –
  
  "What astounded me after a while was that something so familiar could be made into literature. Welch had done something nobody else had – written about Indians without once getting pious, uplifting, or making you feel sorry for The Plight. That is why, finally, I love this book so much. Welch took all the chances in the world with it. He told it right out."
  
  I loved that.
  
  James Welch was one of the first Native American novelists, I think. 'Winter in the Blood' is his first novel. I enjoyed reading it. I am ashamed to say that I've never read a Native American writer before. And so I'm glad I've finally got started now by reading this classic. Hoping to read more.
  
  I'll leave you with some of my favourite passages from the book.
  
  Quote 1
  
  Young Man : "You're a good housekeeper, old man."
  
  Old Man : "I have many years' practice. It's easier to keep it sparse than to feel the sorrows of possessions."
  
  Young Man : "Possessions can be sorrowful."
  
  Old Man : "Only when they are not needed."
  
  Young Man : "Or when they are needed – when they are needed and a man doesn't have them."
  
  Quote 2
  
  "I don't know how they figure it, old horse, but one year to me is worth four or five to you. That makes you over a hundred years, older than that old lady, and you're not only living, but carrying out your duties just like they trained you...Now, old machine, I absolve you of your burden. You think I haven't noticed it. You don't show it. But that is the fault of your face: Your face was molded when you were born and hasn't changed in a hundred years. Your ears seem smaller now, but that is because your face has grown. You figure you have hidden this burden well. You have. But don't think I haven't seen it in your eyes those days when the clouds hide the sun and the cattle turn their asses to the wind. Those days your eyes tell me what you feel. It is the fault of the men who trained you to be a machine, to react to the pressure of a rein on your neck, spurs in your ribs, the sound of a voice. A cow horse. You weren't born that way; you were born to eat grass and drink slough water, to nip other horses in the flanks the way you do lagging bulls, to mount the mares. So they cut your balls off to make you less temperamental, though I think they failed at that..."
  
  Quote 3
  
  "You must understand how people think in desperate times. When their bellies are full, they can afford to be happy and generous with each other – the meat is shared, the women work and gossip, men gamble – it's a good time and you do not see things clearly. There is no need. But when the pot is empty and your guts are tight in your belly, you begin to look around. The hunger sharpens your eye."
  
  Have you read 'Winter in the Blood' or other books by James Welch?
• 
  Matthew

  A beautifully written tale full of poetic descriptions of everything ranging from the landscape to the wall of a house. The narrator is a melancholy fellow and you feel for him as he is essentially drifting through life and seeking some sort of sense of belonging to someone or some place. This is one of those novels that can’t really be summed up in a paragraph or so. It needs to be experienced in order to appreciate the simplicity and seemingly mundane plot. The novel comes full circle with its tone and the narrator’s feelings about his life. The Native American themes, while not overly abundant, were a nice addition to the tone and mood that Welch had created. This is a simple novel that is well done and packs a lot of emotion into ordinary experiences.
• 
  Moonpome Nancy

  Brilliant, unflinching, without pity.
• 
  Husna

  "The rain was coming hard now, the big drops stinging the back of my neck and splattering into the dusty earth. A magpie, light and silent, flew overhead, then lit on a fence post beside the loading chute. He ruffled his sleek feathers, then squatted to watch."
• 
  Stacey

  I would totally go to that bar. Can I get a Bushmill's with my creme de menthe?