Thoughts on the Novel Indian Killer

We are what We have lost

In Indian Killer, Sherman Alexie uses a pulp-fiction form, the serial killer mystery, to frame the social issues facing American Indians. He populates the book with stock characters such as a grizzled ex-cop, a left-wing professor, a right-wing talk radio personality, drunken bums, thuggish teenagers and a schizophrenic main character who serves as the most obvious suspect in a mystery that never quite resolves itself.

John Smith, the troubled Indian adopted by whites appears at first to be the main character, but in some respects he is what Alfred Hitchcock called a McGuffin. The story is built around him, but he is not truly the main character and he is not the heart of the story. His struggle, while pointing out one aspect of the American Indian experience, is not the central point. John Smith’s experiences as an Indian adopted by whites have left him too addled and sad, from the first moment to the last, to serve as the story’s true focus.

The damage that had been done to John Smith was irreparable from the moment the story began. His death, while a gloomy ending for his character, is in many ways a release from his torment, as demonstrated by his rising from the point of impact and leaving his body behind. The value of John Smith is to serve as an extreme example of the damage being done to Indian society.

The heart of the story is the experience of Marie Polatkin. Unlike the somewhat stock characters that make up much of the mystery element of the novel, Marie is a fully realized and nuanced character. While her views are as passionate as any character in the book, her views are backed by her actions. It is Marie who faithfully drives the sandwich van, feeding the homeless. It is she who faces down the three thugs who mean to attack the homeless Indians. It is she alone who believes that John Smith is not capable of murder.

Marie, first with Dr. Mather, then with the university president and finally with the police restates the central argument of the novel, that white involvement with American Indians is destroying their culture. Marie does not see a difference between the left-wing sympathizers and the right-wing antagonists. She makes the argument quite clearly that, if the ghost dance had worked, all the whites would have been slaughtered. The dance does not make exceptions for the well meaning. To Marie, any interference is damaging, and the thought of whites co-opting her culture is especially galling.

The book points out many different attacks on Indian culture. John’s adoption, legal or not, by his kind but misguided parents demonstrates the tragedy that can come from cross-cultural adoption. The experiences of Marie’s cousin Reggie, who has the tapes of his family’s stories stolen and co-opted by Dr. Mather (who has convinced himself that he is doing the right thing because the find is anthropologically valuable) demonstrates the wrongs done by intellectuals who only view other cultures in terms of what they can learn from them. Truck Schultz and the three enraged college students demonstrate how quickly the underlying distrust of Indian culture can turn to outright bigotry and violence. Truck Schultz fans the flames with his statements, such as, “The only good Indian Killer is a dead Indian Killer.” The college students serve as the freehand instrument of his attacks. The police and the university board demonstrate the damage of well-meaning but ill-advised authority figures. The police do not oppose the Indians, but they do view them with a sort of hesitant confusion. The police officer who encounters John Smith and the vagrant knows that schizophrenics are not dangerous, but the stories of the Indian Killer keep him from aiding John. When he has a chance to bring him in, he is afraid to chase after him. The university board shows the biases of education. When Marie tries to make them understand that a white professor of Indian culture isn’t just misguided, it is an affront to their culture, they cannot see her side for even a moment. The fact that Dr. Mather had studied Indians and written extensively about them qualified him for the position — end of thought.

For me, the character of Jack Wilson hit closest to home. Jack Wilson is the retired police officer who has turned to writing Indian-themed crime novels, which he justifies by pointing to a tenuous Indian ancestry through a distant, unobserved relative. Jack Wilson longs to be an Indian so much that he has convinced himself that he is one, and that he has a right to write from their perspective, despite a total lack of cultural education in their society.

This character interests me because I have a somewhat similar background. My biological grandfather is half Oklahoma Cherokee Indian. He spent part of his time as a child as a member of their culture but spent most of his time in white culture and considers himself white. Because he and my grandmother divorced many years before I was born, I did not even meet him until about the time I graduated from high school in the mid-eighties. We have never discussed his experiences in Indian culture and I doubt we ever will. Biologically I am one eighth Cherokee Indian, but I have only cursory, second-hand knowledge of their culture. I have a greater claim to Indian ancestry than Jack Wilson, and even I think it would be absurd for me to declare I was an Indian.

Despite this, I have always had an interest in Indian cultures and especially in the oral traditions of those cultures. I took classes in this from N. Scott Momaday, a Kiowa Indian and Pulitzer Prize winning author, when I attended the University or Arizona. At the time, I tried to incorporate some of the Indian poetic style into my own poetry, but it felt false and I eventually abandoned it. I simply do not have the background to justify such writing, and I felt it without being told. I did not need a Marie Palotkin to tell me that I have no business meddling in their culture.

Still, I could not help but feel sorry about Jack Wilson and the damage eventually done to him by John Smith. Jack Wilson wanted to believe in something so badly that he eventually convinced himself it was true. His experience mirrors John Smith’s experience. John Smith had a legitimate claim to Indian culture but could not regain what was lost when he was separated by adoption. Jack Wilson’s claims were far less legitimate, but he essentially had the same desire, to belong to a culture that would forever be denied to him. For both of them, the results of that desire were disastrous.

For me, the novel drove home a point that I had already come to. I will never be a part of Indian culture. It is something that is beyond my experience even if it is not beyond my biology. Sherman Alexie obviously believes that Indian culture, especially literature, should be left up to Indians and I agree. While I will continue to take an interest in native cultures all over the world, I understand that these are not my cultures and I should not try to have an undue influence on them.

• Visit Sheman Alexie’s Web Site
• Sherman Alexie–Library and Internet Sources
• Salon Review of Indian Killer
• BookBytes review of Indian Killer
• Booklist Review of Indian Killer
• Crime Time review of Indian Killer

Review: The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual

Norm Goldstein (Editor), et al

ISBN: 0201339854

The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual is the standard most newspapers and magazines follow for such details as names, dates, numbers, and the proper use of hundreds of words and phrases that commonly come up in articles about government, business, and science, as well as words in the common lexicon.

AP is set up dictionary style. This makes it easy to look up most usage terms. Even when a term is not the preferred usage, there is generally a see also entry for the listing that will direct you to the accepted term or usage. Even larger sections such as abbreviations and acronyms, capitalization, datelines, and possessives are covered by dictionary-style entries. Conversely, if all that is needed is the spelling of a word, such as pooh-pooh, questionnaire or shopworn, the word simply appears without further explanation.

The AP’s focus on journalism makes it very useful for general terms and grammar but it is less effective in a technical environment. There is a separate punctuation guide, business guide, sports guide, copyright guide and of course the libel manual. There are also some newspaper specific guidelines such as how to file electronic copy.

This is a very handy book to have when your are working in a journalistic environment. There are very few entries for technical terms, but very detailed entries for public places as well as governmental names and terms.

Review: How To Write a Book Proposal

Michael Larsen
Paperback
Published 1997
Writers Digest Books; ISBN: 0898797713

Many people stumble in their attempts to find an agent or a publisher because they simply don’t know enough about the process. They send a book when they should send three chapters, they write poor cover letters that don’t give the necessary information or fail to attract interest.

There are plenty of books about the process of writing book proposals. One of the advantages of How To Write a Book Proposal
is it gets to the point. There are barely over 100 pages to read, and for a process like this, that is really enough. Writing a book proposal isn’t terribly complicated, but the rules you learn are rules you need. Could you sell a book without knowing this process? It’s very possible. People do it all the time. The goal here is to increase your chances. A well written book proposal has a better chance of selling an idea than a badly written one.

Larsen’s book covers such topics as creating chapter outlines, choosing your sample chapters, and finding the publisher or agent best suited to your work. Larsen also includes samples to guide you in your effort. This book doesn’t include a revolutionary new method for selling books. This is tried and true advice that has been repeated to me from many a source. The benefit here is that all the advice is wrapped up in a bow for easy reference.

Review: The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insider’s Secrets from Hollywood’s Top Writers

Paperback: 232 pages

Publisher: Adams Media Corporation; ISBN: 1580625509

View at Amazon

“You have no idea what happens next, you’re continually surprised, you’re satisfied by the surprises, and ultimately, the pleasures of the narrative resonate with deeper themes.”

Nicholas Kazan on Knowing What Makes a Great Story

Does everybody want to be a screenwriter? That depends on how you define everybody. If you look at the entire population of the planet, then very few have a half-written screenplay hidden under their bed. If you’re standing in line for groceries in Los Angeles, however, chances are that half the people in front of you have at least thought about writing a script. Thinking about it, however, is as far as most people get. Quite a few less have actually written something. Even less completed a script, and half of those never sent it out. Most of the remaining people had their script immediately rejected due to poor writing. The remaining few are somewhere in the mix, just about ready to give up if they haven’t already.

So, the bad news is that you have a lot of competition if you want to be a screenwriter, but the good news is that most of your competition isn’t worth worrying about. They are either unable to put the time and effort in, or they give up because they don’t understand the process or they are unable to handle the initial obstacles. If you are willing to put in the work, not just on your first script but your first dozen scripts, and you are intelligent about how to write and market a screenplay; your chances of being a successful screenwriter are quite reasonable. Before you vow to put in that time and effort, however, you should do your homework and figure out if this a career you can and want to work toward. If you are considering a screenwriting career, then The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters is a book you should invest in immediately. It will tell you the good and bad of being a screenwriter with honesty and in great detail.

There are many books to choose from if you wish to learn the mechanics of screenwriting. Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, is probably the most successful, and for good reason. It is an excellent technical guide to writing movies. Interestingly though, it is not written from a screenwriter’s point of view. Syd Field is not a screenwriter, but rather a Hollywood executive. His viewpoint is about what sells. His methods are probably the most risk free way to create and sell a screenplay, but Screenplay is not really about the creative process so much as the end product.

101 Habits takes a dramatically different approach. Karl Iglesias conducted in-depth interviews with 14 Hollywood screenwriters who have each written several screenplays that have been turned into high-profile films. These are not what I would call film snobs either, these people write Hollywood movies ranging from Rainman to Operation Dumbo Drop, from Forest Gump to Die Hard.

101 Habits is a comprehensive look at the entire screenwriting process: the qualities successful writers have, creative development, discipline, story craft and marketing. More importantly, Iglesias stays out of the way. Each piece of advice comes with multiple writers giving their views in their words. In some cases, writers disagree wildly on how important one part of the process is or how to best approach another. Usually though, there seems to be a consensus of what it takes. From the 101 Habits come four genuine principals: patience, perseverance, passion, and practice.

On the way to these principals, however, you get an honest, intelligent description of the frustrations and pleasures that come from being a screenwriter. These veterans have seen script after script get rejected, rewritten, misinterpreted and outright attacked. The screenwriter is not exactly at the top of the Hollywood hill. Still, the persistent ones, like those interviewed here, eventually get see something they’ve helped create become a feature length movie. The successful ones also make quite a good living, so there is hope.

Much of the advice in 101 Habits goes beyond screenwriting to the writing process in general. There is important advice about setting deadlines, time management, dealing with criticism, facing the blank page, editing and rewriting, creating a writing environment, understanding what makes a story great and understanding what makes a script saleable.

101 Habits is a storehouse of important technical information, but it is not a technical book. It is a realistic look at the entire screenwriting profession. It is the sort of book that you open up when you run out of ideas, just to get inspired again. These people have built themselves screenwriting careers. Reading this book will either inspire you to attempt the same, or let you know that the career isn’t for you. Either way, it is an important book to read if you are looking at screenwriting as a career.

Next Page »