Alexie, Sherman (Vol. 96) - Reynolds Price (review date 17 October 1993)
Reynolds Price (review date 17 October 1993)
SOURCE: "One Indian Doesn't Tell Another," in The New York Times Book Review, October 17, 1993, pp. 15-16.
[Below, Price commends Alexie's ability to portray the sufferings of Native Americans but suggests that the author's rapid publication of his work may be affecting its quality.]
Sherman Alexie was born in 1966. Victor, the central character and sometime narrator of at least half of these 22 short stories [in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven], is the same age. Like Mr. Alexie, Victor is a member of the Spokane Indian tribe and continues to live in the state of Washington. But where Victor has no diversions more effective than alcohol from the bleakness of his reservation life, Sherman Alexie has a striking lyric power to lament and praise that same crucial strain of modern American life—the oldest and most unendingly punished strain, the Native American, as it's been...
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