War Dances

War Dances
by Sherman Alexie

War Dances
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Book Summary Information

Author: Sherman Alexie
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-10-06
ISBN: 0802119190
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Grove Press

Book Reviews of War Dances

Book Review: A Fascinating Read
Summary: 5 Stars

If there is something that Sherman Alexie can't write, would you please let me know? Following his completely remarkable THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN, Alexie brings us WAR DANCES, a collection of poems and short stories that will place him even further amongst the most compelling and talented American writers.

I think it is Alexie's ability to unmask the most ridiculous tendencies of the politically correct that makes him a fascinating read. As a member of the Spokane tribe, in the midst of years of pursuing higher education and the upper echelons of American literary culture, he has not fallen prey to thinking that those who have the most to say about the white man's treatment of Native Americans are not as well-meaning as they might seem.

In fact, there is nothing you can take for granted in Alexie's work. The first story in this collection concerns a film editor who is working at home one day only to discover a young black man from the neighborhood breaking into his DVD collection from a broken window. Using a symbol of the great American pastime, a baseball bat, Alexie's protagonist, George, takes a step into another world --- the world of a killer. Exonerated by the determination that his actions were taken in self-defense, he is still haunted by the bad luck of his choice and his ability to step, ever so quickly, from one world into another.

It is this knife-sharp precipice over which Alexie's characters are constantly dangling. It is, really, the same one we are all dangling over every day of our lives, but most of us take great precautions not to go there. Alexie instead substitutes his well-meaning protagonists in our place, so we get that visceral experience ourselves without messing our collective hair. It's a pointed and provocative stance that makes his literature do what all good literature should do: transport us to another place that we would not necessarily go except in our darkest depths.

Another story, in which a drunken man beats up his unrecognized former best friend, does the same thing --- feature plausible and contemporary situations with characters who very honestly and forthrightly tell you exactly what they are experiencing as they parcel those memories themselves in their own personal history. Alexie is not frightened of where he is going --- the anger and horror his characters feel at their repulsive actions bring them down to our level. He brings them to the place where a simple mistake can unalterably change a life in a split second...or over a period of hundreds of years, which is the amount of time in which the relations between the Native Americans and the white explorers who took this nation's property as their own are examined and exploited.

Alexie doesn't shy away from hard-nosed concern for his people and equal concern for the way in which others appropriate his people's horrors in order for them to show how far the white man has come --- but it's never enough. And he never pretends that it's even close to being reconciled. So his work goes on, changing by the season, staying true to one thing: the honest depiction of the ability of human beings to deceive and, ultimately, redeem both themselves and the world that creates a context around their actions.

--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

Summary of War Dances

Fresh off his National Book Award win, Alexie delivers a heartbreaking, hilarious collection of stories that explores the precarious balance between self-preservation and external responsibility in art, family, and the world at large. With unparalleled insight into the minds of artists, laborers, fathers, husbands, and sons, Alexie populates his stories with ordinary men on the brink of exceptional change. In a bicoastal journey through the consequences of both simple and monumental life choices, Alexie introduces us to personal worlds as they transform beyond return. In the title story, a famous writer must decide how to care for his distant father who is slowly dying a ?natural Indian death? from alcohol and diabetes, just as he learns that he himself may have a brain tumor. Alexie dissects a vintage-clothing store owner?s failing marriage and his courtship of a married photographer in various airports across the country; what happens when a politician?s son commits a hate crime; and how a young boy discovers his self-worth while writing obituaries for his local newspaper. Brazen and wise, War Dances takes us to the heart of what it means to be human. This provocative new work is Alexie at the height of his powers.

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