SOURCE: A review of The Business of Fancydancing, in Western American Literature, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, August, 1993, pp. 161-62.

Below, Baxter comments on the themes of isolation and alienation in The Business of Fancydancing.

Sherman Alexie's remarkable debut, The Business of Fancydancing, is an outstanding collection of poetry, prose, vignettes and epigrams that will surely launch him firmly into the Native American literature scene.

A spontaneous combustion propels the reader into the complex density of the modern Indian world, on and off the reservation, at once painful and compelling yet somehow balanced with humor and hope. Alexie's razor-sharp irony races toward unexpected twists and turns.

His stark portraits are vivid and disturbing: house fires, sin and forgiveness, Crazy Horse dreams (the kind that don't come true), Buffalo Bill opening a pawn shop, pow wows and fancydancers like Vernon WildShoe (Elvis in braids), Crazy Horse just back from Vietnam in...