In adiary narration style, the novel explores The Business of Fancydancing is Sherman Alexie's first published novel. It is a collection of many poems and five short stories. Like most of Alexie's works, these poems and short stories are about Native Americans. Most deal with themes of A magical realist novel, it tells the story of a troubled Native American teen who has reached his breaking point after years of abuse at the hands Published in , Indian Killer is a fictional novel that takes place in the city of Seattle.
During the course of the novel, an outrageous serial killer runs about the city, undetected, scalping all of his victims. The murderer is believed to be Sherman Alexie's first book, The Business of Fancydancing, was published in by an independent press, and Alexie was 26 years old at the time. His work received critical acclaim and attracted a great deal of attention from mainstream On the night of his twenty-first birthday, Alexie -- drunk, as usual -- was robbed at knifepoint.
He had sunk low enough. He gave up drinking for good and reenrolled as a student, this time at Washington State University. By now, he had abandoned his original dream of becoming a pediatrician fainting three times in an anatomy class hadn't been very encouraging , and, on a whim, he signed up for a poetry class, hoping to write sonnets to impress girls.
He had no idea that his professor, Alex Kuo, would radically rechart the path of his life. A few days later, Alexie handed in his first assignment -- a poem about life on the reservation. Kuo immediately recognized Alexie's talent and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he should become a writer.
Alexie went on a tear, cranking out poems and stories. Soon, booksellers across the Pacific Northwest were recommending The Business of Fancydancing to their customers. For his first reading, held at Seattle's Elliott Bay Book Company in , Alexie gave an impromptu stand-up performance.
Arriving minutes before showtime, dressed in an old coat and carrying a bottle inside a brown bag, he stood at the back of the store and hollered, "Where's that IN-jun poet? After shedding his disguise, he began reciting his work from memory, without a book or manuscript, as he still does today at readings.
I also became increasingly aware that my audience was made up of white faces. It bugged me that there weren't more brown faces. Then I realized that books weren't going to do it.
I needed to broaden things, working in art forms that were more accessible to Indians. Although poetry remained an abiding love he published four additional volumes in the next two years , Alexie began concentrating more on his fiction. The novel begins with legendary bluesman Robert Johnson arriving at a Spokane reservation crossroads and bestowing his guitar to young Thomas Builds-the-Fire.
Thomas and his rock 'n' roll band then careen through a roller coaster of triumphs and misadventures in the music business. Like most of Alexie's work, Reservation Blues sparkles with black humor and lyricism, and its roots are in the Native American traditions of mythology and story-telling. Thomas repeated stories constantly.
All the other Indians on the reservation heard those stories so often that the words crept into dreams. An Indian telling his friends about a dream he had was halfway through the telling before everyone realized it was actually one of Thomas's stealth stories. Thomas Builds-the-Fire's stories climbed into your clothes like sand, gave you itches that could not be scratched. If you repeated even a sentence from one of those stories, your throat was never the same again.
Those stories hung in your clothes and your hair like smoke, and no amount of laundry soap or shampoo washed them out.
Victor and Junior often tried to beat those stories out of Thomas, tied him down and taped his mouth shut. They pretended to be friendly and sweet-talk Thomas into temporary silences, made promises about beautiful Indian women and cases of Diet Pepsi. But none of that stopped Thomas, who talked and talked. Alexie chose to go in a different direction with his second novel, Indian Killer, a murder mystery about a serial killer who scalps white men in Seattle, and the racial tension that ensues.
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List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Mark Flanagan. Literature Expert. Mark Flanagan is a book reviewer and writer with over 15 years of experience. He's also the founder of Run Spot Run, a website dedicated to reviewing contemporary literature. Updated January 30, Fast Facts: Sherman Alexie, Jr.
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