I first met the work of Sherman Alexie when reviewing his short-story collection Ten Little Indians. It was love at first read. Years later, I saw a film called The Business of Fancydancing, featuring a deeply moving performance by Canadian actor Michelle St. John. Alexie acted in and directed the film, from his own script.
A predisposition to embrace all created by an author never rules out the possibility of a dud appearing. Happily, War Dances, Alexie's new collection of short stories and poetry, is a leap forward. The author is also a stand-up comedian and performance artist. In earlier work, he sometimes charged into performance-style rants that, as words on a page, needed tightening. War Dances, for all his trademark energy and bravery, shows a more mature voice that does not see economy as a betrayal of passion.
War Dances, by Sherman Alexie, Grove Press, 256 pages, $30.95
Alexie is a Seattle-based, native of the Spokane/Coeur D'Alene bands, and his work reveals both the light and dark within native American life.
A paradox in his writing is that you can be in the middle of delighted laughter when he will hit you with a sentence so true to the core of a character's pain that you suck in your breath or are startled to realize you are crying.
The poetry selections are less “poem” than “riff.” Not jazz riffs. Alexie's riffing, some of which is kindred to the serious and comic universe of Tom King, is, for me, “First Nations Dub” – not based on African-Caribbean rhythms, but rather connected to drum groups, powwow dancing and funny, lyrical conversations in “Indian bars.”
From The Theology of Reptiles:
We found a snake, dead in midmolt.
“It's almost like two snakes,” I said.
My brother grabbed it by the head
And said, “It just needs lightning bolts.”
Laughing, he jumped the creek and draped
The snake over an electric fence.
Was my brother being cruel? Yes,
But we were shocked when that damn snake
Spiraled off the wire and splayed,
Alive, on the grass, made a fist
Of itself, then, gorgeous and pissed,
Uncurled, stood on end, and swayed
For my brother, who, bemused and odd,
Had somehow become one snake's god.
The short stories are the greater gift of this book, and Breaking and Entering is one of the best. The narrator is George Wilson, a professional film editor who is incapable of editing in telling his own story. Cluttered word clusters, weasel words and phrases are everywhere. It is a tribute to Alexie's verbal dexterity that the irony is clear on the first page.
“Skip the door” is a good piece of advice – a maxim, if you will – that I've applied to my entire editorial career, if not my entire life. To state it in less poetic terms, one would say, “An editor must omit all unnecessary information.” So, in telling you this story … in constructing the scenes, I will attempt to omit all unnecessary information.”
When he opens a door, the reader, while laughing at the goofbabble, is dropped, hard, into the story. A window shatters, our editor goes to the basement, surprises a teenaged burglar, whacks him in the head and kills him. This précis is encased in self-centred filigree. And, as always with Alexie, the pain and bewilderment still bleed through.
