Robert Olen Butler Critical Essay | Critical Review by Jonathan Levi

Critical Review by Jonathan Levi

SOURCE: Levi, Jonathan. Review of Mr. Spaceman, by Robert Olen Butler. Los Angeles Times (23 January 2000): L1.

In the following review, Levi criticizes Mr. Spaceman for the failure of its alien protagonist to examine cultures and societies outside of America.

The good news for all you folks who read about Edna Bradshaw of Bovary, Alabama, in Robert Olen Butler's Tabloid Dreams is that she's back [in Mr. Spaceman]. The 1996 short story “Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover” in that collection was Edna's first-person account of her third-kind encounter with a spaceman. Back then, Edna was a fortysomething hairdresser living in a trailer park with her yellow cat, Eddie. One night, on her way back to her car in the parking lot of the local 24-hour Wal-Mart, she meets a spaceman.

“I am waiting for you, Edna,” he says, “because I study this planet and I hear you speak...
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