Description

Larry McCaffery and Tom Marshall meet with Gerald Vizenor in Vizenor’s office at the University of California. The discussion begins with the concept of Postmodernism and the place that Native American literature has in the field and how perhaps Native American literature as a whole helped inspire Postmodernism. Much of the discussion focuses around Vizenor’s most recent novel, The Heirs of Columbus, published late the previous year in order to be available before the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the "New World". The discussion of that novel leads to a discussion of the place of the trickster, not only in Native American literature, but in other places as well, including in the Monkey King in Chinese literature (and Vizenor’s own novel on the character). Much of the latter part of the interview focuses around Native American voices, in terms of songs, poetry and autobiographical fiction. An edited version of the interview appears on pages 293 to 309 of Some Other Frequency: Interview with Innovative American Authors, ed. Larry McCaffery, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.