Read or listen to Louise Erdrich

I'm slow to adopt new technologies. For instance, I think it's wrong to watch movies or listen to music on a phone. It seems disrespectful to the experience of film and music somehow. Cheapening. I feel the same way about audio books. 

But I have a long commute featuring miles of broken-up car radio reception, so I thought I'd give them a try. I listened to two works of non-fiction first and almost cancelled my subscription. The human voice is both glorious and tedious. I discovered that tedium is bottomless. The readers were more than I could bear. And the writing didn't hold my attention. I found myself in a state of unfocused annoyance. Not exactly the therapeutic experience I was looking for.

That is until I listened to The Night Watchman written and read by Louise Erdrich. Her voice is nuanced and can embody multiple characters. I could listen to that voice almost any time. She's a storyteller, in the Native way, through and through. The detailed heart-wrenching accuracy of her writing grabbed me immediately.

I'm not a literary critic. I don't have the vocabulary, the skillset, or the audacity. But she writes so you can smell, see, hear and - most importantly - feel it all. I hope to read more of her in book form soon with my hands and my eyes. But in the meantime, I will listen to everything she's created. 

Tom Waits is credited with having said, "I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." There is so much of that in these.