SOURCE: An interview in World Literature Written in English, Vol. 30, No. 2, Autumn, 1990, pp. 62-76.

An American-born critic and educator, Rooke has served as a member of the Canada Council's Advisory Panel on Writing and Publication. In the excerpted interview below, King discusses stylistic and thematic aspects of Medicine River, his identity and origins, and the recent focus on Native Americans in contemporary literature.

[Rooke]: Let's start with some questions on Medicine River. Will, the narrator of Medicine River, is a Native photographer. And in the novel, a white woman suggests that's funny, given how Indians feel about photography: the fear, presumably, of one's soul being gobbled up by the camera. I wonder how charged that very glib remark was for you, and what you're saying about it. Is it important in some way to your conception of Will as photographer? Or was the woman's remark just a throwaway...