Other than his parents, nobody should have been happier than Adam Dorris to learn that ”The Broken Cord” had won a Heartland Prize. Adam is not only the central figure in the book, written by his father, Michael Dorris, but he contributed the final chapter, recounting the most memorable impressions of his life.
But the news didn`t really register with 22-year-old Adam, reported his adoptive father, for reasons that should be evident to all those who have read (or read about) his book. ”The Broken Cord” tells how Adam, whose natural mother was an American Indian, was physically and mentally disabled by fetal alcohol syndrome.
Beginning in 1971, when the author adopted Adam (a pseudonym), then 3, Dorris` book describes the boy`s epileptic seizures, his painful struggle to learn such elementary tasks as using the toilet and tying his shoelaces, as well as other handicaps that have become more pronounced with adolescence and adulthood. When the book was mentioned during a recent session with his social workers, Dorris said, ”Adam smiled pleasantly and asked, `Which book would that be?` He`d completely forgotten about it.”
Despite the personal anguish that came from living and writing the book, Dorris and his wife, Louise Erdrich-herself an award-winning novelist (”Love Medicine”) and poet who wrote the introduction-were ”stunned and absolutely thrilled” to learn ”The Broken Cord” had won a $5,000 Heartland Prize. Erdrich won the first Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction in 1982, before the Tribune adopted the competition and added the Heartland Prize.
Established in 1988, the Heartland award is given annually by the Tribune to books that feature distinguished writing about the places and people of Middle America. This year`s prize in fiction went to Tim O`Brien for ”The Things They Carried,” a novel that episodically follows its youthful narrator`s turbulent passage from a small town in Minnesota to Vietnam.
Though Michael Dorris considers himself principally a novelist (”Yellow Raft in Blue Water”), he said he was impelled to write ”The Broken Cord” as a way of documenting the permanently debilitating effects of fetal alcohol syndrome, not only on Adam but on an estimated 7,500 others every year, many of them children of American Indians. ”This had to be done in order to make sense out of something that seemed so terribly unfair,” said Dorris, who researched the book at reservations throughout the Midwest.
Half Modoc Indian himself, Dorris was a single parent when he adopted Adam, who had been irreparably damaged in the womb by his mother, a Sioux who later died after drinking antifreeze. While writing ”The Broken Cord,”
Dorris said he and Erdrich, who live in New Hampshire, expected it would find only a small readership ”because it was such a particular book.” Instead, the book got front-page reviews, sold 80,000 copies in hardcover, and also won a Christopher Award and a National Book Critics Circle Award for distinguished nonfiction.
Though the prizes and the reviews have been gratifying, the reaction to
”The Broken Cord” has also had its discouraging side, Dorris said. ”I`ve gotten almost 2,000 letters from people who have their own stories to tell, which are disconcertingly similar to the book. Not all from alcohol but sometimes from drugs. It simply means that there is a lot of trouble out there.”
”I`m no expert,” said Dorris, an anthropologist who formerly taught at Dartmouth. ”I`m simply a parent, like most of those who have written to us about the book, who are desperately looking for something to explain this unreasonable situation to them.”
In an effort to reduce the intensity of Adam`s seizures, Dorris said his son recently had a six-hour operation, in which the right and left sides of his brain were partly severed. ”It`s a fairly new operation, but when it works, it`s dramatically effective. So far it looks pretty good. It only took about three hours for his brain to automatically relearn everything: walking, talking, the whole works.”
But Dorris doesn`t have any hope that Adam will show any dramatic reversals in his everyday impairments, that he`ll ever be able to perform such elementary functions as telling time or handling money. ”Unlike some other books that end with a triumph,” Dorris said, ”this is a situation that will continue as long as he lives.
”Even if the book won`t solve Adam`s problem,” he added, ”it has raised some public consciousness, which we hoped it would do. By telling his story, we might keep somebody else from having the seizures, the learning problems. . . .”
Priceless exposure
For O`Brien, the news that he`d won a Heartland Prize in fiction for
”The Things They Carried” was an unmixed blessing. ”Dynamite,” said the 43-year-old author, who is teaching at the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Ripton, Vt. His and Dorris` books were chosen for the Heartland awards by a panel of Tribune editors.
By now, O`Brien should be accustomed to having his work honored. His novel ”Going After Cacciato” received a National Book Award in 1979. But the author was obviously ecstatic about the prize, not so much because of the cash but because it will bring ”The Things They Carried” to the attention of more readers.
”It means a lot to me, as it would to any writer,” said O`Brien, whose novel was written in the form of a memoir, narrated by an imaginary Tim O`Brien. ”We all wonder whether we`re being read and appreciated. Unless you`re a TV star, there`s not a lot of response. So this is a real boost.
”Also, I like the idea of winning a Midwestern award,” said O`Brien, a native of Worthington, Minn., and a graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul. Though much of the book is set in Vietnam, the author noted that it`s also heavily rooted in rural Minnesota, where both he and his fictional
”Timmy” grew up.
Last spring, O`Brien embarked on a cross-country promotional tour to help overcome reader resistance to Vietnam War stories. ”For a while, Vietnam was in fashion,” he explained. ”Now it`s become a real eyeglazer. But ultimately the book has to succeed because it`s a work of art, not because it`s transient or faddish.”
A notoriously unfaddish dresser, O`Brien said he was celebrating the award by temporarily discarding his Boston Red Sox cap for a bright green model with the warning, ”No More Mister Nice Guy.” He said he`ll be properly dressed when he shows up in Chicago to collect his prize. ”But I`m not going out to buy a pinstriped suit.”
Dorris and O`Brien will be honored by the Tribune at a Sept. 13 dinner at Cafe Brauer, along with the four recipients of the Nelson Algren Awards for Short Fiction, sponsored by the newspaper and Brena and Lee Freeman. The $5,000 first prize went to Kim Edwards, with $1,000 runnerup awards to Sharon Solwitz, Donald Dewey and Harvey L. Grossinger.
