The Master Butcher (Louis Erdrich) – 255/365, BlackBerry 365, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2010, photo © 2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
To celebrate the World Premiere stage adaptation of The Master Butchers Singing Club at the Guthrie, Liz and I have started reading the novel aloud to each other. I savor each moment. This will be second time I have followed Fidelis from Germany with his pristine set of knives and suitcase full of sausages, walked the streets of Argus, North Dakota with Delphine and Cyprian, and sat at the clean and ordered table of Eva Waldvogel.
The first time was at least five years ago when my relationship with Liz was just getting started. We quickly discovered that we both loved art, music, writers, and books — lots of books. Liz grew up in North Dakota and Louise Erdrich was one of her favorite authors (she had gone to see her speak in the 80’s at Moorhead State). To help win me over, and in a courtship ritual I didn’t find the least bit bizarre, she checked out two library copies of The Master Butchers Singing Club on CD, handed one to me and said, “I thought we could listen to them separately in our cars and compare notes. What do you think?”
Seven years and some odd months later….we learned that Master Butchers was coming to the Guthrie and vowed to pick up tickets. A few weeks ago when we attended The Scottsboro Boys, we stopped by the ticket window and sealed the deal. Then Birchbark Books (the independent bookstore owned by Louise) announced on Facebook that it had a few signed, First Edition copies of The Masters Butchers Singing Club for sale. I returned home that evening to find the book gleaming off the coffee table. And there on the cover, in a photograph taken June 8th, 1912, in Pforzheim, Germany, was the Master Butcher himself, Louise’s grandfather, Louis Erdrich.
Can you imagine having your novel adapted for the stage in such a prestigious venue as the Guthrie Theater? If the Guthrie’s photograph of Louise and her daughter on set before the preview opening on September 11th is any indication, it is a feeling of elation and pure joy.
We’ll be attending the play in October (with several friends) and will come back and check in later this Fall. According to Minnesota Monthly, director Francesca Zambello didn’t know Louise when she frequented Kenwood Café and picked up a copy of Master Butchers at Birchbark next store. But over time, “With Erdrich’s blessing (and advice), Zambello and Pulitzer-winning playwright Marsha Norman began condensing the sprawling family saga, set in the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota, between the world wars. There’s more singing and less butchering now. And that’s fine with Erdrich…”
In my humble opinion, The Master Butchers Singing Club is one of her finest. I can only imagine that Louise’s grandfather would agree. It is a book about the importance of place and culture, a universal story. There is a way that Louise’s books honor those who came before her, generations of ancestry in perfect imperfection. As above, so below. So may it be.
The Erdrich Sisters, Heid, Lise, Louise, Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2008, photo © 2008-2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Additional Resources:
MPR Midmorning: From the page to the stage – The Master Butchers Singing Club. Kerri Miller’s interview this morning with Louise Erdrich and Francesca Zambello.
Minnesota Monthly Profiles Author Louise Erdrich, September 2010 – Staging Erdrich by Michael Tortorello including 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Louise.
Play Guide, Interviews, and Ticket Info on The Master Butchers Singing Club at the Guthrie Theater.
Louise’s bookstore, Birchbark Books where you can get your own First edition, first printing, hardcover of The Master Butchers Singing Club signed by Louise Erdrich, or the newly re-issued Fishing for Myth from Heid Erdrich.
Bill Moyers interview with Louise Erdrich on Bill Moyers Journal, April 9th, 2010
Louise Erdrich on Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr.
-related to posts: The Company Of Strangers (On Louise Erdrich & Flying), Book Talk — Do You Let Yourself Read?
redravine.wordpress.com 
Thanks for this post, another step of anticipation in seeing the play on stage. Until a week ago, I didn’t know Louise’s grandfather was a master butcher.
Delphine is the character I most anticipate seeing at the Guthrie. I suspect she will be the last to come out on stage to a standing ovation.
My niece and her new fiancee have started reading classics together. A lot like you and Liz. They are 21 and 25, and the last one I heard about was Orwell’s 1984.
I appreciate that Louise writes about being both German and Ojibwe. She’s taken heat for being real about that. But it gives me courage, too.
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Can’t wait to see this! My second favorite Erdrich book.
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Teri, I’m looking forward to the play. The character I most want to see is Eva. I don’t know why I relate to her, but I do. I like Delphine, too. She’s really been through it, stands up for what she believes in. I’m so happy to hear that your niece and her fiancee have started reading the classics aloud to each other. I wasn’t sure how many other people made a courtship ritual out of reading. I’m sure more than I could ever imagine!
I, too, appreciate that Louise Erdrich writes about all sides of her family. Each time I hear her or Heid speak about their work, I learn to appreciate even more their willingness to share family histories. It matters. And it’s a universal theme. It inspires other writers to speak their truths. All of it.
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Jude, what’s your first favorite Louise Erdrich book?
And speaking of Birchbark Books where we recently bought our Master Butchers Singing Club, we were at Birchbark last night for a reading by Linda LeGarde Grover, winner of the Flannery O’Conner Award for Short Fiction for her new book The Dance Boots (LINK). It was a packed house and a wonderful reading. I started the book this morning and can hardly put it down. It’s a collection of eight connected short stories that portray an Ojibwe community struggling around the time of the 1920’s when families were broken up by our federal government when it took young children from their homes and enrolled them into boarding schools. Moving and detailed. We stayed late and talked to Heid and Linda at the end of the booksigning. I love our Independent bookstores.
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How many days until October 3rd at 3 p.m?
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How may days til Oct 3? seven, precisely. Yay!
It is not characteristic of me to spontaneously book a flight and a hotel to travel to anywhere for a show and time with good friends. I am such a planner!! I am impressed with my apparent flexibility. Hope it’s a trend. I have been way too planned-out for way too many years. I like this new me.
Quoin – my top favorite of Erdrich’s novels is Last Report on the Events at Little Big Horse. But Master Butchers is a very close second.
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Jude, wait a minute, it’s a little more than 7 days, right? I’m so glad you are coming. And Liz is excited to meet you in person. It’s going to be a lot of fun. You talk about planning. I think about that a lot. As writers and artists, we have to plan ahead to get anything done. To have shows or go on writing retreats. I find I have to plan at least a year ahead. So to do something spontaneous like this is fun for me as well. It seems like there is a fine balance between planning and spontaneity. We have another opportunity for a show in the Casket Arts Building in November. And that means getting it in gear, late nights in the studio if we are going to get done what we want to get done. I don’t know where the time goes — 2010 is almost over. In many ways, it’s been a strange year.
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oops. you’re right, of course. It’s more like 14 days. I guess that’s just evidence of my excitement about coming.
Yeah, fine balance between planning and spontaneity. Too much planning makes for a task-driven, bound-up life but too much spontaneity is chaos. I’m hitting a better balance these days and it’s helping my writing – to loosen up a little with my goals but not to lose track of them, and also to set everything aside now and then and follow an impulse.
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Jude, I got Last Report on the Events at Little Big Horse from a friend for my birthday. I loved that book. I was amazed by the depth of Erdrich’s writing. These historical novels must be among the hardest to write because of the research involved. I think I read in the book club notes in the back that she had written much of that book as if in a trance. Am I remembering that correctly?
Anyway, I am now a solid fan of Erdrich. It takes me a while to get through a historical novel, but I’ve read several now (only one of Erdrich, but last year I think it was I read Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I might try something of Erdrich’s that is set in modern times. Any suggestions? It’s too hard on this constantly forward-looking brain to stay in the past, so I have to mix it up when I read.
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ybonesy, Liz and I were just talking about the amount of research that Louise Erdrich must have to do for her novels. Not only are we reading The Master Butchers Singing Club to each other, but we are listening to The Plague of Doves in our cars to and from work. In fact, I just finished The Plague of Doves right before I signed into red Ravine. Loved it. What Liz and I were referencing was something as simple as 4B’s restaurant which is woven throughout certain parts of Doves. We were thinking…now did she look up the history of the restaurant or make it up? Did she have to go and research what the inside of a 4B’s looked like in the 1960’s or 70’s. I guess with Fiction, you get to make everything up. But with historical novels, it seems like the point is to get the geography and place aspects, as well as history timelines, fairly accurate.
All that research on the 4B’s and it probably made it into a few lines or paragraphs in the whole novel. I often think about that when I research for blog posts. All that time and energy and it winds up being a couple of sentences or lines. But that’s what it takes to be accurate and truthful in Nonfiction.
Hey, as far Louise’s work set in modern times, what about reading her memoir, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country? I LOVE that book. And it has little illustrations by Louise sprinkled throughout the book. I think you would like it.
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