For our fourth entry on Arts and Humanity, it falls to accomplished Native American Sherman Alexie to showcase his recently published collection, War Dances. A multitalented Spokane and Seattle man, occasionally selling his services as both screenwriter and comedian, Sherman Alexie has produced some of the most humorous and poignant American fiction of the last two decades. Indeed, several of his works have proved so poetic as to indicate that this may be the Native American Century in terms of great literature, so to speak; particularly stories from the gorgeously titled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), and the much acclaimed novel, Reservation Blues (1995).
War Dances is an assortment of twenty-three different short stories and poems, exploring a miscellany of different aspects to modern human life and relationships. Death and sexuality are frequent themes, along with ethnicity and war, Dances coloured as it is by a post-9/11 viewpoint and a profoundly Indian perspective. Like much of Alexie’s previous books, Dances is a constantly shifting and fluctuating work. One section of the title story takes the form of an exit interview conducted upon the death of the protagonist’s father. Furthermore, the poems are free and experimental in form, sometimes eschewing rhyme or verse and often proving visually striking.
For the most part Alexie seems to be in his usual blistering form. His standout moments clearly come in The Senator’s Son, The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless, and Fearful Symmetry,where Alexie manages to compound witty pop culture references with high literature, combining Thunderball (1965) with Hamlet. By doing so, he seems to find great meaning in both.
However, while the short stories are undoubtedly impressive, the poems are decidedly of a lesser standard. Failing to deal effectively with the controversial American/Indian issues covered in his other collections or to craft meaningful relationships like those detailed in the accompanying stories, Alexie also tries to make the everyday seem poetic, but just ends up being pedestrian. Linguistically uninventive and unchallenging pieces means that the poetry feels like dead weight among the higher quality stories.
War Dances is possibly the most successful work Sherman Alexie has published so far. With it, he won the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2010. But perhaps the problem of Alexie having garnered such a reputation as an author lately has meant our expectations for his future books are higher. Or perhaps it has meant that hype and great promise has blinded critics to the true quality of his latest works. In truth then: none of the poems in Dances can compete with his earlier pieces. On the other hand, the short stories are diverse, accessible and funny-an excellent primary source for any budding writer to learn the craft from and make Dances a worthwhile read.
3/5
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