<![CDATA[On The Rez]]>

false <![CDATA[On The Rez]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182544978m/1292849.jpg 45033 2 Given that the Great Plains long functioned as a stomping ground for the Oglala Sioux, it was inevitable that Ian Frazier would cross paths with them when he wrote his 1989 chronicle of that sublime flatland. But the encounter between the self-confessed "chintzy middle-class white guy" and his Native American counterparts went so swimmingly that Crazy Horse assumed a starring role in the book. Now Frazier continues his cross-cultural romance in On the Rez. This account of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota is as touching, funny, and maniacally digressive as anything he's written. What's more, he manages to avoid most of the politically correct potholes along the way, producing a vivid, ambivalent (i.e., honest) portrait of a community where the very "landscape is dense with stories." Much of On the Rez revolves around Le War Lance, whom Frazier first met in Great Plains. This yarn-spinning, beer-swilling figure serves the author as a kind of Native American Virgil, introducing him to the hard facts of reservation life. In fact, their friendship, with its accents of deep affection and dependency, anchors the entire narrative and elicits some typically top-drawer prose: <blockquote> Le's eyes can be merry and flat as a smile button, or deep and glittering with malice or slyness or something he knows and I never will. He is fifty-seven years old. I have seen his hair, which is black streaked with gray, when it was over two feet long and held with beaded ponytail holders a foot or so apart, and I have seen it much shorter, after he had shaved his head in mourning for a friend who had died. </blockquote> On the Rez delivers a history of the Oglala nation that spotlights our paleface population in some of its most shameful, backstabbing moments, as well as a quick tour through Indian America. The latter, to be honest, seems a little too conscientiously cooked up from primary sources and news clippings. But elsewhere Frazier is in superb form, reporting everything he sees and hears with enviable clarity and promptly pulling the rug out from under himself whenever he seems too omniscient. Few accounts of reservation life have been this comical; even fewer have moved beyond the poverty and pandemic drunk driving to discern actual, theological wickedness on the premises: "At such moments a sense of compound evil--the evil of the human heart, in league with the original darkness of this wild continent--curls around me like shoots of a fast-growing vine." In the hands of many a writer, the previous sentence might resemble a rhetorical firecracker. In Frazier's, it comes off as a statement of fact--which is only one of the reasons why every American, Native or not, should take a look at this sad, splendid, and surprisingly hopeful book. --James Marcus 44349 2000 On the Rez total:254|5:51|4:114|3:75|2:12|1:2| 254 962 395 39 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 1 1 false Sun Jun 29 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat May 03 11:53:05 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 29 19:49:04 -0700 2008 more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 0 0 false Mon Jun 22 11:37:37 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 11:37:37 -0700 2009 STOP SMILING interview with author Ian Frazier

Of No Fixed Accord
By Nathan Kosub

(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Documentary Issue)

Ian Frazier is a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he began his career over 30 years ago. In April ...more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 5 0 false Tue Nov 17 18:21:17 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 19 06:27:36 -0800 2009 more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 4 0 false Thu Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2002 Sun Dec 28 17:49:15 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 28 17:56:13 -0800 2008 I normally don't care for the New Yorker style first-person, narrator-centric style of storytelling, but this book could only have been written in this sty...more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 2 0 false Sat Jan 17 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Aug 08 11:52:50 -0700 2008 Sun Jan 18 09:24:55 -0800 2009 more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 4 0 false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Dec 20 07:53:38 -0800 2007 Tue Jun 24 04:08:18 -0700 2008
Frazier's connection to, ...more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 5 0 false Wed Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Jan 17 06:19:04 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 17 06:25:07 -0800 2009
Having grown up in Lakota territory, his words resonate the truth of...more...]]> 1292849 0374226385 9780374226381 16 6 On The Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182544978m/1292849.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1292849.On_The_Rez 5 0 false Thu Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sat Jul 28 21:27:01 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 28 21:36:04 -0700 2007 more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 2 0 false Mon Apr 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 21 14:50:49 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 21 14:54:53 -0700 2009 more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 3 0 false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Fri Feb 01 21:20:27 -0800 2008 Sat May 31 21:58:26 -0700 2008 more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 3 0 false Sat Jul 04 18:21:04 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 04 18:21:04 -0700 2009 1292849 0374226385 9780374226381 16 6 On The Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182544978m/1292849.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1292849.On_The_Rez 4 0 false Sun Jul 12 11:36:56 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 12 11:38:06 -0700 2009 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 4 0 false Thu Jul 10 09:16:31 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 10 09:25:28 -0700 2008 more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 4 0 false Fri Aug 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 20 13:13:55 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 28 18:00:22 -0700 2009 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 4 0 false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2011 Sun Dec 09 08:57:25 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 09 09:02:40 -0800 2007
This book...more...]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 4 0 false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Sun Jun 14 17:16:23 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 21 17:35:37 -0700 2009
Rereading June 2009 after finishing Matthiesen's In The Spirit of Crazy Horse and my own visit to the Rez in June 2003.
]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 4 0 false Tue Jan 27 16:50:42 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 12 07:50:41 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 16:50:42 -0800 2009
It starts out slow, or perhaps that was only my impatience setting in because I already knew a great bit of the Lakota's history.

However, starting about page 100, I couldn't put it down.]]> 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 5 0 false Wed Oct 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 14 12:03:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 14 12:03:18 -0700 2009 45033 0312278594 9780312278595 238 33 On the Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170273414m/45033.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45033.On_the_Rez 3 0 false Sat Jun 28 10:44:23 -0700 2008 Sat Jun 28 10:51:08 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1292849 0374226385 9780374226381 16 6 On The Rez 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182544978m/1292849.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1292849.On_The_Rez 3 0 false Wed Mar 26 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Aug 03 15:44:43 -0700 2007 Sat Apr 05 16:57:47 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=1292849