Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher:
1. Egan chooses to use the word "epic" in his subtitle. What does epic mean—and in what way does it apply to the life of Edward Curtis?
2. What do you think of Curtis? What kind of man was he—as a husband, father, artist, advocate, and public figure? Do you think of him as delusional...driven...or visionary?
3. Why did Curtis consider George Custer of the Little Big Horn battle a coward?
4. How does Egan present the West of Curtis's time and before? Is the author's portrait of the past realistic...or idealistic? In what way has the historical West vanished?
5. Do Curtis's photographs, sometimes doctored, reflect an authentic Native American culture? What about the alarm clock he removed from one of his photos, for instance? Or was Curtis striving for something mythic rather than authentic?
6. What made Curtis a controversial figure in his day?
7. How would you describe the Anglo/European Americans attitude toward the Native Americans during Curtis's era? How have those attitudes changed...and what changed them?
8. Egan writes of Curtis:
And just what made a dropout from a one-room schoolhouse think he could get the nation’s top ethnologists to back his project? Balls. Those who didn’t try for the highest peak were doomed to the foothills.
Some critics contend that Egan is too close to his subject and that his book "reads less like a thoughtful biography than a sentimental adventure story for boys." Do you agree or disagree with that statement by New York Times reviewer, Deborah Soloman (see above)?
9. What have you learned about Edward Curtis and/or Native American history after reading Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher? What did you find most surprising—or struck you as particularly interesting—in this book?
10. A fine book to pair this with is Marianne Wiggin's 2007 The Shadow Catcher, a fictionalized biography of Curtis written from the perspective of his wife, Clara. The book was a National Book Award finalist.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)