IF YOUR BOOKS ARE NEVER READ ...

... ARE YOU STILL A GREAT WRITER?


Raise your hand if you ever heard of James Welch.  No cheating now.  

Hey, I see you fibbing with that hand, Trump!  That's better.  

Like I thought: an ocean of unraised hands.  Sigh.


Yet, he was a great author.  In 2000, France even knighted him and awarded him an honorary medal.

Did someone mutter France did that to Jerry Lewis, too?  

Oh, it was you, Trump.  How unsurprising.


James Welch grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents.  

He was a Native American novelist and poet, 

considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance

In his writing, the landscape was featured as a character. 

Welch had a unique style of writing from 

"'an outside observer with an insider's understanding'  

of Native American experience." 

Although he was raised on the reservation as a young boy, he lived most of his life off of it. 

He said that he felt a lack of close connection with the tribal community.


It occurs to me that all authors feel outsiders in some way or another.

I believe there is a strange magnetism bonding those of us who seem always to search but never find.

What do you think?