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Overview
kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/daniel-paul-hansen/this-life-as-told-by-an-old-ndnc/
A beautifully written frame story in the vein of One Thousand and One Nights, The Decameron, and Canterbury Tales, Hansen (Raven's Spear, 2017, etc.) proves short fiction is a genre in which he shines.
Uncle is a chain-smoking, coffee swilling, cussing old coot who can weave stories out of smoke rising from an unconscious man. This venerable Native American fashions a series of such tales for a group of children, stitching together the life of Tomtom, the man who lies before him. The Uncle sections are simultaneously humorous, instructive, and world-weary, while the Tomtom stories dance in time, referencing, foreshadowing, and illuminating one another as they construct a biographical and psychological portrait of a mixed-race (Native American and white) young man. The stories range from the Twilight Zone-like "Goat Man," which mixes teenage ennui with a supernatural hitchhiker, to the laugh-out-loud "The Day I Heard the Bell Ring," which involves a wild ride on a cooler of beer while slyly alluding to Hansen's own Tricksters' War Trilogy. Both the frame ("His words were flecks of gold and smoke that leapt out at the fire before weaving back towards the children's ears") and the tales ("they cut away those parts of themselves they do not want. But those parts never go away, hanging from them like dead limbs never to be fully amputated") are elegantly written and image-filled. Whether Tomtom is wrecking his father's car and running off to live in a tent or forever swallowing unsaid words of love, each tale abounds with running themes, symbols, and allusions. The ability to see outward from darkness versus the inability to see into darkness, along with the idea of being loved but not wanted, permeate, while the appearance of wasps and butterflies continually portend and color events. The stories Uncle draws out of Tomtom highlight the life of a man in turmoil and just might bring him peace.
Smart, funny, heady, thoughtful, literary; this collection can be enjoyed on many levels by many different kinds of people.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940164091453 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Daniel Hansen |
| Publication date: | 05/18/2020 |
| Sold by: | Smashwords |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 251 KB |
About the Author
Daniel (known as Dandan) is a philosopher and an artist. He works to become not only an artist but the art that he creates. He is a social philosopher and has supported his life by helping the casino industry. He is an Indigenous Futurism/SpecuNative author while working as a business consultant and a sensitivity reader. He has spent his life helping casinos and other businesses achieve higher revenue by providing experience-based insight and informed direction through improved analytics and more efficient operations. Dandan started working in gaming in September of 1997 at a tribal casino. In that work, he found that true success does not come just with a bigger bottom line but through Servant Leadership. Only by empowering others will one find success in this life. He is nobody and nothing.
Dandan is an enrolled member of the Village of Kotzebue and a voting shareholder of the NANA Corporation. He grew up in rural North Idaho on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation. He has lived in many places, though Honolulu Hawai’i was a favorite. He loves to travel the world and find new places and foods. He loves food and considers himself a foodie if a drunken version of one. He is highly eclectic and loves to try new experiences. He lives very much by the doctrine of experience. With recent changes in his life, he has decided to create a blog, “Our Orchard.”
Our Orchard will be filled with short stories, book ideas, book promotions, food thoughts, travel enjoyments, and just basic things that come about that Dandan wants to talk about (maybe go over the many ways to make the best cup of coffee, and yes there are many). His goal is not in creating a marketing commercial for his books, but instead, create a journal of his adventures.
Dandan has begun a life of traveling and writing. He has become a leaf upon the wind. He spent time at Standing Rock in protest, visited places in the world that sounded illuminating (only continents left to visit (Australia and Antarctica)), and spent a lot of time deciding on what to do next. He has recently decided to live in the enviable (or unenviable as the case may be) position of being his own master, beholden to none.
In his books and blogs, Dandan writes in eclectic and vastly different genres that spiral around each other in disjointed happiness. He has failed in life, and through those failures is finding his way to success. He works as a consultant and may work at another Casino someday. But, he lives his life as a libertine and an artist of experience.
He is the wind and the wind passes through him. As a hobby and a food source, Dandan loves to garden. He even attempted to create a gardening app a while back on Kickstarter. He loves the warm sun on his face and the dirt in his hands. Spring in Idaho is the perfect time to live in the now. Dandan has learned through his years of gardening that to expect flowers one must plant seeds.
Personal Note
It is my goal to learn how to best sow the future I wish to have. I seek to learn the best way to live in this world, and I plan on sharing that journey. I invite you to join me on my adventure. The time has come to embrace the next step in life. To find a better way to enjoy my world. Follow me as together we plant seeds and grow our orchard.