Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Alexie, Sherman (Vol. 154) - Lee Lemon (review date Spring 1996)

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Lee Lemon (review date Spring 1996)

SOURCE: Lemon, Lee. Review of Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie. Prairie Schooner 70, no. 1 (spring 1996): 185–86.

[In the following excerpt, Lemon offers a positive assessment of Reservation Blues.]

This is in part a catch-up review because some books that are too good to ignore were, for one reason or another, missed when they came out.

With three '90s novels by Louis Owens (one previously reviewed), works by Sherman Alexie, and Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water (also reviewed earlier), we may be witnessing the birth of a subgenre—Native North American Magic Realism. Like its southerly counterpart, the genre is fascinating both conceptually and because of the large talents of its practitioners. …

Alexie's Reservation Blues tells the story of a Native American country blues and rock band, Coyote Springs, that is formed after one of the reservation...

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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