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Art & Books

Sherman Alexie

WAR DANCES by Sherman Alexie (Grove), 256 pages, $28.95 cloth. Rating: NNN


Sherman Alexie’s War Dances is an odd assortment of poems and short stories stitched together by the theme of failed fatherhood and manhood, peopled with men who aren’t as good as they want to be.

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This is good news, because Alexie excels at tenderly cynical portraits of native men adrift in a world where absurd and comic collisions of identity, culture and desire are the norm, and tragedies are generally answered with a gentle shrug.

The title story follows a native writer recently diagnosed with a brain tumour who must tend to his dying alcoholic and diabetic father in a hospital hallway. His search for a truly warm blanket turns into a hilarious parable about contemporary indifference versus native posturing on sacred matters.

Alexie can be rigid and not entirely credible when he steers away from native territory, as in his treatment of the homophobic violence wrought by an upright Republican senator’s son against his own best friend. His opening story, however, bridges both worlds convincingly, following the trial by media of a native filmmaker who accidentally kills a black teenager burglarizing his home.

Though a lot of War Dances feels like thinly veiled autobiography – most of the men are native professionals and academics suffering from varying degrees of loneliness and displacement – Alexie seems to be saying that the native condition is more universal than we realize.

Alexie joins the Shape Of Literature panel with Randy Boyagoda, Mark Sinnett and Colson Whitehead Friday (October 23) and reads alongside Jacob McArthur Mooney, Adam Thorpe and Colson Whitehead on Saturday (October 24).

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