je pensais pas autant aimer ce livre!
Les thèmes abordés sont super intéressants et très nuancés je pense en particulier au sujet du metissage- quand est ce qu’on est légitime ou pas de se réclamer d’une culture/un peuple? lequel prévaut? est ce que le mélange des cultures est possible malgré les antagonismes, les dynamiques colon/colonisé??
Sherman Alexie parle de racisme, racisme intériorisé, misogynie, respresentation, religion sans être manichéen ce qui permet de poser des questions et relever des apories super interessantes. Le tout en étant très drole

مثل خواب می‌مونست خوندن و پیش بردنش. یک جور لفت دادن از عمد می‌طلبید درواقع تا لذت رویا رسوخ کنه به تمام جون و دلت. شرمن الکسی جزو تاپ‌ترین نویسنده‌های محبوب زندگی فعلیِ منه که امید رو بهم برمی‌گردونه، همیشه راه درست پیش رفتن ر‌و نشون داده از لا به لای ماجراهای کارکترهاش. یک جایی از کتاب صفحه‌های آغازین گفته: ‏رویاها درمورد همه چیز تصمیم می‌گیرن. و چه خوب گفته.شرمن الکسی در واقع یک سرخ‌پوست نگار لعنتی دوست داشتنی است 3>
سعید توانایی درست مثل عباس پژمان جزو مترجم‌هاییه که دوست دارم سرظهر انتهای کوچه خِفتش کنم؛ یخه‌اشو بگیرم تخته سینه‌اشو بکوبم به دیفال و توی صورتش هوار آبدار بکشم: مگه مجبوری ترجمه کنی؟

Oh, man. I felt frustrated and sad that I really didn't love this at all. It seemed like there was SO much going on and I couldn't figure out where to focus. Alexie has some disturbingly hilarious insights about American Indians & white culture, but those moments were few and far between, and I just felt like I didn't really "get" the rest of it.

I really wanted to like this, but didn't. I saw Smoke Signals many years ago and remember thinking it was pretty cool, but clearly Alexie is better as screenplays and short stories - what he's more known for I guess anyway - then novels. This really read more like a bunch of short stories. Interesting characters, but the story is almost all allegory rather than plot or character development. Lots of dream scenes. Lots of conspicuous social commentary. Important topics, but doesn't make for a very interested novel. I liked it enough to finish it, but that's about it.

VERY depressing. Funny though.

Sherman Alexie is one of the few writers who has managed to survive the late '80s/early '90s vogue for all things Native American, a cultural wave that incorporated any number of now mostly forgotten Indian writers, and the Oscar given to that melodramatic piece of shit Dances With Wolves. And there's a reason he's survived-- he writes with a sort of Murakami sense of archetypes freely floating around, traditional stories colliding with rock musicians and corporate brands, and it's all tempered with the sort of bitter sense of humor that comes from the bitter truth of life on the Res. It would be hard for me to put labels like "timeless" or "transcendental" on Reservation Blues, but it nails down its particular thing awfully well.

a good read especially if you live on a reservation! :) the author, a native american himself, has an amazing way of joking about things that are in fact sad, but he did it in a beautiful way so that a sincere reader would understand the subtle innuendos of how reservation life really is for many. it was disturbing but magical, although the characters in the story probably would not see it as magic. this book really got into my head in a sort of phycological/sociological kind of way. and the longer i am here, the more haunting this realization has become.

“Mr. Builds-the-Fire, I sold my soul to the Gentleman so I could play this damn guitar better than anybody ever played guitar. I’m hopin’ Big Mom can get it back"

I'd like to write a linear review of Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues, but the story is only part of the story and a linear summary would miss it. Robert Johnson – the Robert Johnson – gives his guitar to Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who gave it to Victor Joseph. Under the guitar's tutelage, their musical skills grew and the friends began the band Coyote Springs. Coyote Springs was joined by two Flathead women and, briefly, two white women, Betty and Veronica (yeah, Betty and Veronica). Big Mom helped them become an epic band, then Coyote Springs went to New York City – where they lost touch with their roots – and fell apart.

Read Alexie's stories only partly for the larger plot. They are an opportunity to play with language: his words sounded like stones in his mouth and coals in his stomach. Or here: Some said [he was] Lakota Sioux because he had cheekbones so big that he knocked people over when he moved his head from side to side. Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s stories – and Alexie's – climb into your clothes like sand, [and] gave you itches that could not be scratched.

Reservation Blues is in the style of reservation realism: both larger than life events – meeting the long-dead including Robert Johnson, working with the magical Big Mom – and realistic emotions. Alexie's metaphors, for example, while not strictly true, are more true than what might be captured in a video.

Reservation Blues acknowledged and considered oppression and privilege, reconsidering history. Alexie avoided easy stereotypes, calling out both Whites and Native Americans.

Thomas thought about all the dreams that were murdered here, and the bones buried quickly just inches below the surface, all waiting to break through the foundations of those government houses built by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

And:

[General George] Wright looked at Coyote Springs. He saw their Indian faces. He saw the faces of millions of Indians, beaten, scarred by smallpox and frostbite, split open by bayonets and bullets. He looked at his own white hands and saw the blood stains there.

Reservation Blues sneaks in, under your awareness, seeming to be only a silly and a goofy Summer read – and some will read it that way – but Reservation Blues is still reverberating in my head, something I look for in a book.

The music rose past the hitchhiker up into the sky, banged into the Big Dipper, and bounced off the bright moon. That’s exactly what happened. The music howled back into the blue van, kept howling until Coyote Springs became echoes.

Good book. The last two chapters felt like a rush to finish the story.

This is one of those books I didn't want to end. I've been reading it off and on for a while now and I liked picking it up and having a read whenever I felt like escaping for a bit. Any book that starts out with Robert Johnson mysteriously appearing at the Spokane Indian Reservation decades after his death and handing off his enchanted guitar with its devil-dealed skills ready to transfer to its next caretaker is all right with me. I was easily charmed with the dialogue and the subtle humor of a culture and history that I haven't encountered before, at least not like this. The local youth starts a band called Coyote Springs and head off on a musical and self discovery adventure that is quite fascinating and heartfelt. I loved how the storyline weaved seamlessly in and out of dream states, present locations and another world full of mystery and wonder ... sorry, the phone just rang and I lost my train of thought ... there was also an enormous sadness built in throughout and a fascinating encounter with Cavalry Records in NYC which was quite heavy and quite brilliant as the cruel and exploitative music business was written in to help display a much bigger story than the average rise and fall story of an American rock band.

It's a story of the rise and fall and mystical wonder of an Indigenous blues band. Perhaps I was expecting more. Perhaps, it straddled the line between mystical and wild folklore and music business reality. Perhaps a couple of the characters just were so unlikable, but I came away disappointed. One side, there is the story of life on the reservation itself and understanding the sense of hopelessness one can have when a people have been pushed somewhere and then given rations. On another side, there is the mysticism of Big Mom, of the dreams and the magical guitar. Still, there is a story of a blues band strung together for no other reason as it provides some hope, but why would they let a jerk and his crony be a part of the band. It seemed the parts were greater than their sum.

In the end, I liked it, but was hoping for more.

Sorry it took so long for me to get around reviewing this - I finished it ages ago. I love Sherman Alexie and his sly, VERY Indian sense of humor. The best way to sum this book up is just to say that it couldn't have been written by anyone other than someone who had grown up on a res.

The protagonist is a Spokane Indian. (And I use the term "Indian" - knowing that not only does Alexie prefer this term to "Native-American" - but so do 90% of the Indian friends I've had growing up in New Mexico. I think best of all terms may be the Canadian one, "First Families" -- but my tongue immediately, automatically goes to "Indian."

This book was a huge surprise to me from the very start, as it begins with the famous bluesman, Robert Johnson (He of the Crossroads fame) entering the Spokane res to meet with the Old Woman Who Lives on a Hill. He (Johnson) passes his accursed guitar to one of the young guys standing around, saying that he doesn't want to meet "the Gentleman" again any time soon. The book has a wonderful, peaceful resolution for the man who sold his soul to the devil to play guitar better than anyone else. So much better than his being poisoned by a jealous lover when he was just in his 20's.

I loved this book, dearly, and I plan to read anything and everything I can find that Alexie has written.

P.S. His poetry's pretty damn good, as well!