Indian Killer
by Sherman Alexie
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sherman AlexieEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-07-01
ISBN: 0802143571
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of Indian Killer
Book Review: Alexie is out of his element in a full-length novel
Summary: 1 Stars
I've read a short story by Alexie that was decent, and I even found the film Smoke Signals to be watchable. This particular attempt at a full-length novel, however, really is not worth reading. Alexie has achieved something in common with Quentin Tarantino and John Irving, which is stretching both thinly drawn characters and hastily sketched scenes together, falling well short of the impression of a more holistic work. The result is that there's no real novelistic synergy. The opening chapter with the cascade of noun phrases with no predicates foreshadows all too well how generally under-developed the remainder of the novel is. Perhaps the writer impressed himself as much as his devotees with how confrontational the book was as a defiant slap in the face against a dominant culture. The violent scenes truly only reveal the force of the author more than his finesse. The book shows what Henry Miller's or Norman Mailer's writings would have been like if they had also lacked continuity. The work contains a ferocity that accidentally impugns the ranter as much as the intended object of the rant. I offer the example of a character in the novel who despised whites for objectifying non-white women through producing interracial pornography. And what exactly did the author himself hope to find when he first explored pornography? Was he perhaps opening a Playboy, expecting to see a spread titled, 'The Girls of Northwest Indian College'? This novel shows that Alexie is as capable himself at hideous objectification of people of another race as any director of porn. If someone had gouged out my eyes for being too blue (like in the scene of capricious violence in the book), I would be even more angry if it hadn't been done timely enough for me to have a medical excuse for not reading this last, and certainly least, book of the syllabus of the lit course I took. I once read that Alexie said he didn't believe in writer's block, and that it seemed merely an excuse for laziness. I do believe that writer's block is very real for writers who care about achieving well-deserved praise for their work. If a writer is shameless, greedy, or penniless enough to not mind hastily submitting first drafts, then I understand why he wouldn't believe in writer's block.
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