Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alexie, Sherman (Vol. 96) - Frederick Busch (review date 16 July 1995)

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Frederick Busch (review date 16 July 1995)

SOURCE: "Longing for Magic," in The New York Times Book Review, Vol. C, No. 29, July 16, 1995, pp. 9-10.

[In the following review of Reservation Blues, Busch comments on narrative structures in the work.]

To read about Native American reservation life is usually to read about illness and despair. Fiction originating from that life is also, of course, capable of wild happiness and celebration; but the darkness is a fact of life and art. James Welch, in his superb novel Winter in the Blood, observes his characters' suffering from the corner of his narrative eye; Reynolds Price, in his moving novella Walking Lessons, confronts the sorrow directly. Sherman Alexie, whose 1993 collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, was justly applauded, writes about characters who are squarely in the middle of reservation life but who report it to us from a point of view...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Alex Kuo (essay date 1992)
   2. Publishers Weekly (review date 1 February 1993)
   3. The New Yorker (essay date 10 May 1993)
   4. Sybil S. Steinberg (review date 19 July 1993)
   5. Andrea-Bess Baxter (review date August 1993)
   6. Brian Schneider (review date Fall 1993)
   7. Reynolds Price (review date 17 October 1993)
   8. Anne Goodwin Sides (review date 17 October 1993)
   9. Publishers Weekly (review date 8 November 1993)
   10. Frank Allen (review date 15 November 1993)
   11. Joseph Bruchac (review date Winter 1994)
   12. Alan R. Velie (review date Spring 1994)
   13. James Beschta (review date May 1994)
   14. Carl L. Bankston III (review date May-June 1994)
   15. Andrea-Bess Baxter (review date November 1994)
   16. Leslie Marmon Silko (review date 12 June 1995)
   17. Frederick Busch (review date 16 July 1995)
   18. Abigail Davis (review date July-August 1995)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Sherman Alexie