Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alexie, Sherman (Vol. 154) - Jonathan Levi (review date 18 June 2000)

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Jonathan Levi (review date 18 June 2000)

SOURCE: Levi, Jonathan. “Nothing But Net.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (18 June 2000): 4.

[In the following review, Levi explores the diversity of Alexie's American-Indian characters in The Toughest Indian in the World.]

“What is an Indian?” Sherman Alexie asks in his latest collection of stories, The Toughest Indian in the World. Is it the college student of the story “One Good Man,” who boasts of long black hair and skin dark as a pecan? “I'd grown up on my reservation with my tribe. I understood most of the Spokane language, though I'd always spoken it like a Jesuit priest. Hell, I'd been in three car wrecks! And most importantly, every member of the Spokane Tribe of Indians could tell you the exact place and time where I'd lost my virginity.”

What is an Indian? Is it the hitchhiker picked up by the Camry-driving narrator of “The Toughest Indian in the...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Leslie Ullman (review date summer 1993)
   2. Verlyn Klinkenborg (review date 18 June 1995)
   3. Denise Low (review date winter 1996)
   4. Jennifer Gillan (essay date March 1996)
   5. Lee Lemon (review date Spring 1996)
   6. Howard Meredith (review date Spring 1996)
   7. Sherman Alexie and Doug Marx (interview date 16 September 1996)
   8. Madison Smart Bell (review date 17 November 1996)
   9. Sherman Alexie and Erik Himmelsbach (interview date 17 December 1996)
   10. Judith Bolton-Fasman (review date 6 January 1997)
   11. Robert L. Berner (review date spring 1997)
   12. Peter Donahue (essay date Spring 1997)
   13. Ron McFarland (essay date Spring 1997)
   14. Sherman Alexie and John Purdy (interview date 4 October 1997)
   15. Michael Gorra (review date 5 March 1998)
   16. Sherman Alexie and Dennis West and Joan M. West (interview date fall 1998)
   17. Dan Georgakas (review date fall 1998)
   18. Jonathan Levi (review date 18 June 2000)
   19. Jonathan Penner (review date 9 July 2000)
   20. Joyce Carol Oates (review date 20 July 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Sherman Alexie