“Sherman Alexie is not a finicky writer. He is often messy and in-your-face in a way that can make you laugh (or shudder) when you least expect to. . . . War Dances is Alexie’s fiercely freewheeling collection of stories and poems about the tragicomedies of ordinary lives.” —O, the Oprah Magazine War Dances ] is sophisticated yet playful, a subtle way to bring lightness to heavy topics such as senility, bigotry, cancer, and loneliness. . . . A mix tape of a book, with many voices, pieces of different length, shifting rhythms, an evolving story.”—Los Angeles Times San Francisco Chronicle War Dances , is another case in point.”—Seattle Times Miami Herald War Dances taps every vein and nerve, every tissue, every issue that quickens the current blood-pulse: parenthood, divorce, broken links, sex, gender and racial conflict, substance abuse, medical neglect, 9/11, Official Narrative vs. What Really Happened, settler religion vs. native spirituality, marketing, shopping, and war, war, war. All the heartbreaking ways we don’t live now—this is the caring, eye-opening beauty of this rollicking, bittersweet gem of a book.” —PEN/Faulkner judge Al YoungWar Dances is maybe the most personal book Alexie has ever published, and it’s certainly one of his most readable. The closest thing to a historical precedent for this book is Palm Sunday , Kurt Vonnegut’s wildly entertaining self-described ‘autobiographical collage’ of anecdotes, fiction, reminiscences, and other work. . . . Each piece firmly builds on some part of the other, like the songs on a good mix tape. . . . The asymmetrical collection on display in War Dances works as a supremely gratifying reading experience.”—The Stranger Publishers Weekly Library Journal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel War Dances ], Sherman Alexie enhances his stature as a multitalented writer and an astute observer of life among Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. . . . [An] edgy and frequently surprising collection.”—Bookpage The Globe and Mail War Dances is vintage Alexie . . . [and] should be savored. . . . Fans will not be disappointed.”—The Grand Rapids Press
Alexie's appealing collection of short stories, poems and self-interrogations opens with an attempted murder and closes with an epitaph. Mortality is much on the mind of this puckish writer, who continues to sift common truths through the sieve of his Indian identity, albeit with the alacrity of a man barreling away from his youth.
From National Book Award–winner Alexie comes a new collection of stories, poems, question and answer sequences, and hybrids of all three and beyond. In a penetrating voice that mixes humor with anger, Alexie pointedly asks, “If it is true that children pay for the sins of their fathers, then is it also true that fathers pay for the sins of their children?” Many of the stories revolve around the complexities of fatherhood; in the title story, the Native American narrator recalls his alcoholic father's death as he confronts his own mortality, and “The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless” is the tale of an eccentric vintage clothing salesman whose sexual attraction to his wife fades following the birth of their children. The collection also contains stirring defenses of artistic integrity; “Fearful Symmetry” is an incisive account of working as a young screenwriter for a Hollywood studio, and the poem “Ode to Mix Tapes” endorses hard work as the key ingredient behind any creation. Alexie unfurls highly expressive language, and while at times his jokes bomb and the characters' anger can feel forced, overall this is a spiritedly provocative array of tragic comedies. (Oct.)
From prolific Alexie (Face, 2009, etc.), a collection of stories, poems and short works that defy categorization. It's wildly uneven: A few pieces drawn from his experiences as a member of the Spokane tribe rank with the author's best, but much of what surrounds them feels like filler. Of the 23 selections, the longest and best is the 36-page title story. Sixteen chapters, some as short as two paragraphs, connect the dots between a hospitalized father's fatal alcoholism and the nonmalignant brain tumor of his son, a 41-year-old writer accused in one hilarious incident of subjecting another Indian to racist stereotyping. Alexie frequently uses plainspoken language in first-person narratives to deal with ethical ambiguities-"to find a moral center," as he writes in "Breaking and Entering." That tale shows the narrator, a film editor, editing the facts to fit his story, only to feel victimized by the media's editing of an incident that changes his life. Other pieces don't work as well. "The Senator's Son" is a cliche-riddled, credulity-straining parable of forgiveness concerning Republican hypocrisy and violent homophobia. "Fearful Symmetry" teases the reader with a protagonist whose name (Sherwin Polatkin) and description ("a hot young short-story writer and poet and first-time screenwriter") both suggest an authorial stand-in, yet it has nothing more interesting to say about blurring the distinction between memoir and fiction than to ask, "What is lying but a form of storytelling?" "The Ballad of Paul Nothingness" ambitiously attempts to encompass the mysteries of desire, a critique of capitalism and the power of popular music. The latter also provides inspiration for "Ode to MixTapes," the collection's best poem; most of the other verses are slapdash and singsong. The author's considerable talent is only intermittently in evidence here. Author tour to New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Ore., Seattle. Agent: Nancy Stauffer/Nancy Stauffer Associates
National Book Award winner/New York Times best-selling author Alexie's (www.fallsapart.com) collection of stories, poems, and essays portrays a variety of characters dealing with difficult, often bittersweet situations. Alexie himself reads, with passion and sardonic humor. The strongest essays are those influenced by the author's own Native American heritage, especially the parts in which he channels his Spokane Indian father. Includes explicit language (notably, of the f**k variety); recommended for anyone who appreciates quality short fiction and nonfiction. [The Grove Pr. hc, which was published in 2009, won the 2010 PEN Faulkner Award for Fiction; the Grove pb is scheduled to be published in August.—Ed.]—J. Sara Paulk, Fitzgerald-Ben Hill Cty. Lib., GA
In this collection of poetry, short stories, and autobiographical vignettes, Alexie continues to explore his sense of self in relation to the complex history of Native Americans. His intonation evokes the Native American oral tradition, while his prose represents a much deeper mixing of his two polarized cultures. Alexie proves an enjoyable, if limited, narrator. All the character voices are rendered through both his literary point of view and his vocal presentation, making some a bit narrow in substance. Yet his delivery also works well for many pieces since Alexie, or his doppelganger, often serves as the center of a given work. He particularly shines at projecting the extensive emotional range of his works, especially humor. L.E. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2010 - AudioFile
