Sherman Alexie is a fantastically gifted writer, and Reservation Blues and his short stories are recognized as masterpieces. This book, however, is so different in its focus and execution that one wonders what Alexie's motivation was in publishing it. The main character is despicable--and obviously mentally ill. He brutalizes the most innocent of victims, shocking the reader with murders which could not be more loathsome in their graphic detail. This violence is gratuitous. We are given no understanding of the man or his motivation.

Some might argue that because he was stolen from his Indian mother and given to whites to raise that he never felt part of either the white or Indian worlds, and that this is his justification, if not his motivation. But he was an infant when this happened, however disgraceful it was, and his adoptive parents were loving ones. It's the old Nature vs. Nurture theme, and Alexie seems to be saying here that Nurture counts for less than nothing if it takes place in a white environment. Perhaps Alexie is trying to turn the tables by having an Indian exact the kind of gratuitous violence against the white world that has been exacted against Native Americans. If that is the case, he has confused the issue by having his killer be part of neither culture, with no social values from either culture infusing his actions. And if Alexie's point is that other Indians are justified in feeling like his killer, one wonders why his depiction of Indian life in Reservation Blues, for example, is so bleak and why his main characters there escape to the white world, "[singing] together...with the shadow horses....a song of mourning that would become a song of celebration."

Let me start out by getting the spoiler-free portion of my review out of the way. This is a dark take on modern city Indian life that I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the subject. And it is a huge departure from Alexie's earlier work. He has always dealt with the harsh realities of Indian life, but he used humour that Indians use to survive to great affect... and it was comforting for readers as well. That is largely absent here, and readers should expect an unsettling work. The least successful part of the book were the murder scenes, as they basically resorted to thriller cliches... however the rest of this book is not a cliched thriller by any means. Nor is it a whodunnit, as many people, who have apparently read the book, seem to think...

DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK...

I am surprised that so many people think that John Smith is the killer. Sure Alexie seems to be drawing paralells between the two, but that is a common literary device and it doesn't mean that he is the killer. It serves the thematic material as well as providing a whodunnit red-herring. I think by the end of the book it perfectly obvious that in fact, he's NOT the killer. Alexie is not trying to make a mystery here, and he's perfectly happy leaving it up to the audience to decide, but the killer appears again at the end of the book, after John Smiths death. You could argue, I suppose, that it's John Smith's ghost, except that the killer bared the traits of a spirit during several of the murders (how do you think John Smith would have the ability to make himself invisible?). Alexie is hinting, I believe, that the killer is a vengeful spirit warrior, which is a very real part of Indian mythology... it's not all dream catchers and friendly spiritual stuff. But he doesn't draw any clear lines. If anyone really thinks that John Smith is the killer I suggest they reread the book.

I finished "Indian Killer" last night. I read various reviews of this book while I was reading it. I have to disagree with reviewers who claim all the white people portrayed in Alexie's book are stereotypes. I didn't find the white people to act and react any more stereotypically than the Indian characters. I felt that Alexie did an excellent job of laying out the attitudes and prejudices of both "sides" of the coin, Indian and white. Everyone makes assumptions about everyone else based on incomplete information, pride, or ignorance. It's a human thing, not an Indian thing or white thing, and Alexie weaves it into the very fabric of this mystery story. This book was grittier than I expected, based on reading previous works by this author. Alexie's scripting of John Smith's descent into unchecked schziophrenia was painfully accurate and left me reeling. Seattle's madness fluttering around Smith over the series of "Indian Killer" murders, despite the violence and pain and number of people involved, did not seem as important as one man's agony. And I'm left wondering who--or what--the killer really was. The mystical components dropped into the mix added the perfect grace note to the book. Not a happy read, but a fast and engaging one, and a fine effort by a fine writer.

The characters Victor Joesph and Thomas Builds the Fire who first appeared in Alexie's "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" are prominent in this novel, which serves as a sequel to the short story in which they first appeared. While the novel's beginning, with the arrival of black blues player Robert Johnson's arrival at the Spokane reservation, initially suggests a possible variation the novel quickly returns to the theme present in other Alexie works, albeit with different essential messages about the condition of American Indians today.

The story is written in the author's typical sardonic fashion, portraying ongoing hapless episodes confronting the protagonists, with the Indians reflecting on their experiences and fate in a self deprecating and defeatest fashion. However, Alexie offers a number of distinctive observations in this tale. Among them he notes how the suppression of American Indians is in part a function of how the predominant society has kept them divided. This is illustrated by descriptions of the petty tyranny of the tribal police and tribal council corrupted by their power on the reservation, narrow attitudes of territoriality taking predominance over group identity in distinctions between tribes, and how jealousy over the prospect of success helps thwart the advancement of tribal members and actually promotes alienation, failure, and self destruction.

Alexie's mordant humor comes to play in depicting the ongoing theft by the predominant culture of what little remains to American Indians, with Caucasians exploiting Native American culture and those who are "part" native American or those masquerading presuming to be representative. In a particularly ironic episode Indians visiting Manhattan are dismissed as surely being Puerto Rican, not Native American.

Touching, thought provoking and well written. It is woven with important messages about a people who are treated as if they are invisible.

Blues musician Robert Johnson, who (supposedly) died in 1938, wanders onto an Indian reservation in 1992 seeking relief from his burdens. His presence inspires Thomas Builds-the-fire and two local troublemakers (Victor Joseph and Junior Polatkin) to form a rock band called Coyote Springs. Joined by two Flathead Indian women, Chess and Checkers Warm Water, Coyote Springs finds fame and fortune on the reservation, and is soon hired to play at bars in the surrounding area. An impressive performance at a "battle of the bands" contest in Spokane brings them to the attention of a national record label. Internal conflicts begin to tear the band apart; can they resolve their differences or will they go their separate ways? Alexie weaves an interesting story that is often a little too heavy with metaphors and allegories, and the plot and actions sometimes suffers from it. One may need a degree in Native American culture to make sense of it all. Despite that, the story does keep your attention, with very few lags or lulls in the narrative. The characters are fairly interesting, though Thomas and Checkers keep your affections easier than the others. Junior gains the most sympathy, being the orphaned son of two chronic alcoholics, plus he struggles constantly with alcoholism himself. Thomas and Chess develop a romantic relationship, while Checkers focuses her affections on the reservation's priest. Religion is a central theme. Alexie deftly weaves Christianity with tribal beliefs, noting the effect that both have on the Native culture, and sums it up with the eventual partnership between the priest and the tribe's mysterious holy woman. Alcoholism (used frequently as a plot point; it has touched the lives of all of the main characters) dominates the reservation, as effective as smallpox and relocations in destroying the Native American people. The abuses suffered by the Indians at the hands of whites and other Indians are also frequently brought into play-welfare, joblessness, and broken promises. One allegorical plot point, a past basketball game between the corrupt tribal cops and two young Native men, is actually left unresolved and hanging; one never learns who wins the game. A past massacre of Indians by a cavalry group is clumsily linked to the record company that tries to sign the band; it actually serves to disrupt and weaken the plot. The story moves best when the characters are interacting, slowing down when Alexie employs metaphors to make points or explain a situation. One of the more interesting aspects of Thomas' personality-his ability to tell stories-is touched on early in the novel, only to disappear without explanation. With a little tightening, this could be a great story.

Alexie's book about Coyote Springs all Indian band is contemporary and he does not lose any of the flavor of being "Indian" with his storytelling (so much like Thomas'). The humor, sadness, love, fame, groupies, experiences he depicts in this tale of the band members and Robert Johnson and how their lives become intertwined with the Spokane Indian Reservation is a masterpiece! I can't wait for the film and to find out who will play the characters! Keep writing, Sherman, because you have been making people like me laugh, cry and continue to be connected with other Indian people who have grown up on reservations to leave for a "better life" in the urban cities (S.F. Bay Area) but who always return "home" (Wind River Reservation, Wyoming).

the poems in this collection range from merely mediocre to bad. the major theme is being indian and the wrongs done. but if you are familiar with alexie's worth than that won't surprise you. and his sister's death by fire makes an appearance in several poems. the problem is alexie never says anything new in this book. you could pick any five poems at random and that's all you need. the other poems say the same thing. there is one bright spot, the first section of his poem "Inside Dachau", but it completely falls apart after that first section. i hope that one day alexie will select his best 10 poems and the best of his short stories and put out a selected poems and prose, that way instead of having so many mediocre books, maybe we can get one book that is really good.

This book seems the most abstract of Alexie's works to date. Containing the same insightful, introspective and powerful images and descriptions as his past works, this one differs in that it is slightly less "in-your-face". Keeps the reader thinking, wondering what the underlying meaning of the work could mean. This is not a spoon-fed collection of easy to read poems. Keep this one around awhile for study and contemplation. Truly inspired.

This collection of poems is woven beautifully together. Like his other books of poetry and novels this book is thought provoking, humorous, disturbing and wonderful. Once again I am left breathless at the end of one of Mr. Alexie's book wanting more. I found myself weaving in and out of the book, reading one poem then returning to a previous poem because of the way they interconnected. A truely wonderful experience and cannot wait for the next release be it novel, poetry or film by this young talented writer.

Robert Hawks, a hydrologist, finds himself caught between the FBI and a Native American group in a mystery that deals with treaty rights, civil rights and water rights. Sounds a bit heavy doesn't it? But Everett pulls it all together in this book. Interspersed with actual treaty information, commentaries on peyote use, hydrology tables, this book moves effortlessly from the central mystery to Hawks' own past, filled with a distrust for authority, to Hawks' disastrous love life, Watershed seems to have a bit too much going on to be successful, but it is. Everettt builds the tension well and only the slightly pat ending interferes with the enjoyment of this book. But the journey is definitely worth your time.

"Writin' is fightin'!" poet/novelist/essayist Ishmael Reed has declared. No doubt. Saying the pen (or the word processor) is mightier than the sword recognizes that literacy and literature are heavy weapons. Writers I respect and cherish wield words effectively to combat ignorance, bias, prejudice, limited expectations, all sorts of social and intellectual short-sightedness. A writer throws down a gauntlet to the reader-"Deal with this!" A really good writer will likewise challenge himself.

Sherman Alexie steps up with his second collection of short stories. Here are only about half as many stories as THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN, but they're longer, fuller. They evidence his growth, maturity, in craft and imagination. Though he's not above old tricks like narrative sleight-of-hand - his ironic sense of humor is, if anything, even wryer - his style, while still lean, is now not quite so spare.

THE TOUGHEST INDIAN IN THE WORLD reflects Alexie's and his characters' journeys in "the adult world." They must make choices about who they are, where they live and what they do, and especially, who they're with. Then again, just as journalist Louis Lomax noted, every writer ("like every preacher") has "one great theme" that he returns to over and again. Alexie's is (to borrow from James Baldwin) "the price of the ticket," that two-way cost of modern Indian assimilation - forward and outward into "American" society, while yet attempting to bridge the disconnection from tradition and heritage.

These stories range in emotional resonance from resigned sigh to primal scream. They depict, often, people at personal crossroads. In fact, love and choice (with "love," particularly, in the sense of M. Scott Peck's landmark THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED - the expression of a will and commitment to enable spiritual growth and respect uniqueness - not to be confused with "romance") are the source of their drama - and the elusive solution.

There are the Coeur d'Alene woman high-tech executive and the city-bred Spokane corporate lawyer, each living "the American dream" life while harboring inner rage at the choices they've made, their self-reflective rage literally finding stereotypic Indian figures to help shatter their "civilized" boundaries. There's the feckless poet looking for love in all the wrong people. The pudgy teenager willing to be the hostage of an inept, alienated holdup man. Most harrowing (and deliberately so, since it's a literal nightmare) is the protracted horror of a young boy swept along in the cascading events of "the final solution of the Indian problem."

There's some wistfulness also: The recollections of the woman loved by John Wayne on the set of "The Searchers." The adult son who extends himself to ease the last days of his diabetic amputee father. And my favorite, "Saint Junior," where the recognition that a married couple achieves strikes me as being, really, about anything you truly hold dear in life: Affection is helpful, maybe essential, but will and commitment get the job done...

"He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love--it just happens!--but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch... Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left--the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together."

The best thing I can say about this book (keeping in mind it was like "dessert," the third Alexie book I read in one week - yes, that taken by his work!) is that a year later, I can still feel the stories. Know what I mean? They "live" with me! Like someone's children you've grown fond of, you may forget the names but you don't forget the shape of the faces, the outline and texture of their personalities, your emotional response to them. And you're sure that you'll carry the memory with you for the rest of your life.

I got my copy of Toughest Indian in the World from a book club and the club edition included a little foreword from the author. I don't think this appeared in "regular" copies. In it, Alexie describes this book as a collection of love stories and also a collection of "Indian stories" with Indians he's never seen/heard/read about but would like to. Yeah, I grok that.

Anyway, this is my first experience with Alexie's work and I like it. I used to be a major Louise Erdrich fan (actually, still am) but I'm now adding Alexie to my list. I was particularly moved by "One Good Man."

Alexie's latest book is very good. The longest story, The Sin Eaters, didn't quite come together for me, but most everything else is extremely readable. These works have a strong sense of the Northwest in them, especially the Spokane Indian reservation Alexie grew up on. They're hardly provincial, though, embracing varieties of character, place, and theme.

The characters are usually Indian, often from the Spokane tribe, but also from many other tribes. Sometimes, one wishes Alexie didn't feel it necessary to repeat phrases so often, but his skills are too superior for that to be anything but a minor hitch. There's a great deal of imagination, and an awful lot of strength, behind his best stories: One Good Man, for example, is an elegant, blunt and elegaic image of a Spokane and his dying father. The wonder is at his ability to, in about a decade, produce so many books at a consistently high quality. He's gone from his roots as a very personal chronicler of his native people to, in this collection, an analysis of a failing marriage involving a Microsoft plebian, without hesitation. His writing could use some improvements, but he's still just in his early 30s, and already at the highest literary levels.

With impressive consistency, this book gathers up deeply interesting characters, puts them on the page, and demands that we pay attention to them. And indeed, it is the vigorous, blemished, unheroic and occasionally violent characters of Alexie's work who represent his greatest skill. His sparse and blunt style concentrates on character and plot: Metaphor and imagery are secondary concerns. In summary: buy this book, buy his other books, and plan on buying the books he'll write in the future.

After looking at the book and reading the reviews I agree most with the reader who said you must have interest in the subject matter. In the last review the reader rated the book as very good but in his own words he had stayed on a reservation and had a great interest in and a super knowledge of the subject. I can see how someone with interest would enjoy it but for me,as someone without the above after 30 or so pages this book became a chore to get through.

I met Cates at the Native American Music Awards in 2001 and many of the artists photographed for her book were there. All of them were beaming at the how beautiful the book is, and Cates was even getting autographs! She captures a lot of the truth - good and bad- about modern Native America.

When I opened the first page of this book I was totally mesermized with it and did not put it down until I looked through the whole thing. I have been all over the Southwest and have many Native friends and this book brought such warm feelings to me. I like the way it shows the different ways the people live, and diminishes the sterotype that so many think about when they think of "Indians".

This is obviously beginner fiction and it is very good by that standard; unfortunately, beginner fiction really isn't deserving of the money we pay to read it. I've been in several writing workshops at an undergraduate level (I just graduated,) and you wouldn't believe how horrible most aspiring writers are (myself included). I mean, even in the best manuscript you found uneven pacing, semi-developed characters, incoherent ramblings, and a few (and I mean a few) redeeming images. The truth is, writing is very hard. I enjoyed reading these stories to see how the writers tried to get themselves out of tight spots where they might be stuck and not know how to get from A to B or B to C (other beginning writers will know what I'm talking about.) I agree with the other reviewers that some of these stories are without substance, but I don't think it is acceptable to say that a story is bad because the characters or the author's vision is bleak. Perhaps these young writers are only being honest about what they see around them?

Sherman Alexie has done an excellent job in selecting stories for what, regrettably, looks to be the last in Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops. Though I have at times been guilty of blasting many stories written in graduate school as being unpublishable, I rank 12 of these 19 as at least "above average," 5 of those 12 as "good," and Adam Johnson's "Death-Dealing Cassini Satellite," which begins the collection with a tale of a young bus driver's interactions with cancer patients, as truly excellent.

Alexie certainly allows the reader to take a journey throughout the literary world, as tales from Vietnam, to the Pacific Islands, to Nepal, and back to the States are presented. Along with Johnson, the University of New Hampshire proves its students are on the right track with Laura E. Miller's "Lowell's Class," concerning a poet whose struggles and successes in the field are deftly covered from workshop study to the brink of old age, as well as Clark E. Knowles's haunting tale of abduction and fear in "Little George." The other all-star short stories include Dika Lam's "Judas Kiss" and Kim Thorsen's "Alien Bodies."

Though there are a few clunkers in the mix, Alexie's decisions have been justified with SS collections published to much acclaim by Johnson, Christie Hodgen, and Samrat Upadhyay, all of whom first gained national exposure through this series, which Scribner would do itself a favor by renewing.

I love this anthology--it's filled with great stories. My favorite is "Judas Kiss" by Dika Lam. It's beautiful, innovative, and original; this series of anthologies refutes the idea that there is such a thing as a "workshop" story.

If you want a compendium of "poetry" that sounds like it's been written by horny high school students, this book is for you. Otherwise, don't bother. There are f-words and spread legs in about every third poem, which would be fine if the book was billed as erotic poetry rather than spiritual, and if the poems were actually good. I write this as a Gen-X former Seattlite who is not easily offended, except by stupid juvenille works like "Ode to My Scrotum." The notable exception to this pedantic tripe (hence the one star) is the inclusion of Sherman Alexie's contributions - which can be found in his own readily available books. A glaring omission is anything by Denise Levertov (too Christian?). Also, Theodore Roethke is absent - a stunning lack given his racy writing (which is actually good). If you're looking for something worthy of the title of this unfortunate publication, check out Alexie, Levertov, Roethke, Hugo, or Anne Dillard instead.

Editor Charles Potts has assembled a number of very talented poets hailing (sort of) from the Pacific Northwest. Some are extremely obscure, others like Sherman Alexie and Bukowski are relatively well-known, and all follow a certain Beatnikish ethos: writing should be spare and powerful, and, yes, pissing, drinking beer and having sex can be as spiritual as any other activity. Which is not to say that that this anthology is all farts and one word lines. Plenty of strastopherically high culture is here, experimentalism, pathos, insight too. Potts lays out his philosophy in the introduction; if you've ever appreciated his work, or that of d.a. levy or Bukowski, you'll enjoy this volume. It will send you scurrying back to the internet to seek out more work by the contributors.

I was fortunate enough to see Alexie's second movie, The Business of Fancydancing, three times in its run in Seattle, which should give you some idea of what kind of esteem I hold it. When I read on his website that plans were in the works to release the screenplay, I knew that I'd have to get it when it was released.

Having read it, I can safely say that if you enjoy reading screenplays to see how much the movie changed from page to screen, that this would be a good one to read. Unfortunately, the book has a very slipshod feel to it, from an uninspired cover design to far too many typographical errors, inconsistent formatting and what appear to be twenty some pages of repeated text towards the end of the book. This last is not a misbound signature, as the pages are numbered consistently throughout. Rather it looks as though someone accidentally pasted a large portion of the manuscript in just before printing.

All in all, I found the content of the book to be fascinating, but the actual presentation of it to be mediocre at best. I would love to find out that I have a bad copy but somehow I doubt that this is the case.