Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alexie, Sherman (Vol. 96) - Sybil S. Steinberg (review date 19 July 1993)

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Sybil S. Steinberg (review date 19 July 1993)

SOURCE: A review of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 240, No. 29, July 19, 1993, p. 235.

[In the following review of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the critic lauds Alexie's short stories as exemplary products of the author's potent imagination.]

Known primarily as a poet, [Sherman] Alexie (Old Shirts and New Skins), a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, offers [in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven] 22 extremely fine short stories, all set on or around the Spokane reservation in Washington state. Characters flow from one tale to the next; many involve Victor, who grows from a small child watching relatives fight during a New Year's Eve party ("Every Little Hurricane") to a dissolute man sitting on his broken-down porch with a friend, watching life pass him by ("The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation...

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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