Deconstructionist use of Humor and Manicure, 12 Dec 1997
The Heirs of Columbus Humoring the Patients: Gerald Vizenor, in The Heirs of Columbus, uses the image of humor in the blood in a pun that leads the reader through a series of historical medical associations. Vizenor's combination of genetics and story in healing weds the rational and the non-rational in giving the future generations a chance for better survivance. But Vizenor uses the double pun of humor and manicure to reference the beginnings of science in the past mysticism of shamans. Medicine began, in most cultures, with laying on of hands and determining the basic elements of the body. Manicure, or manual cure, implies the laying on of hands and has a sort of mystical reference when the manicurist is an ex-priest: "Padrino de Torres...persuaded the captain and teh judge to sit for a manicure; the judge knew him as a priest and she was surprised that he had turned to hands" (177) The priest is healing through his hands and the Heirs heal through humor. Humor is a pun on the four humors of the body, which needed to be brought into balance in order to make the body healthy and the mind sound. When discovering neurosis, the heirs don't promise to cure fear, but rather to "balance her fear of animals" (Vizenor 137). The connection between technology and myth exists more to show the inadequacy of modern techniques compared to ancient understanding: "Our computer memories and simulations are not yet powerful enough to support what shamans and hand talkers have inherited and understood for thousands of years" (136). The Heirs succeed where the government has failed; it is the stories in the blood rather than the "rationalists, empiricists and logical positivists" (150) which find the secret of creation and heal the abused.

Deconstructionist use of Humor and Manicure, 12 Dec 1997
The Heirs of Columbus Humoring the Patients: Gerald Vizenor, in The Heirs of Columbus, uses the image of humor in the blood in a pun that leads the reader through a series of historical medical associations. Vizenor's combination of genetics and story in healing weds the rational and the non-rational in giving the future generations a chance for better survivance. But Vizenor uses the double pun of humor and manicure to reference the beginnings of science in the past mysticism of shamans. Medicine began, in most cultures, with laying on of hands and determining the basic elements of the body. Manicure, or manual cure, implies the laying on of hands and has a sort of mystical reference when the manicurist is an ex-priest: "Padrino de Torres...persuaded the captain and teh judge to sit for a manicure; the judge knew him as a priest and she was surprised that he had turned to hands" (177) The priest is healing through his hands and the Heirs heal through humor. Humor is a pun on the four humors of the body, which needed to be brought into balance in order to make the body healthy and the mind sound. When discovering neurosis, the heirs don't promise to cure fear, but rather to "balance her fear of animals" (Vizenor 137). The connection between technology and myth exists more to show the inadequacy of modern techniques compared to ancient understanding: "Our computer memories and simulations are not yet powerful enough to support what shamans and hand talkers have inherited and understood for thousands of years" (136). The Heirs succeed where the government has failed; it is the stories in the blood rather than the "rationalists, empiricists and logical positivists" (150) which find the secret of creation and heal the abused.

Vintage Vizenor!, 20 Feb 1997
Throw out your old, tired American Indian stereotypes before stepping through Gerald Vizenor's looking glass, Alice; you'll find bears and tricksters in here! This is wonderful and true-to-form and very funny.

Deconstructionist use of Humor and Manicure, 12 Dec 1997
The Heirs of Columbus Humoring the Patients: Gerald Vizenor, in The Heirs of Columbus, uses the image of humor in the blood in a pun that leads the reader through a series of historical medical associations. Vizenor's combination of genetics and story in healing weds the rational and the non-rational in giving the future generations a chance for better survivance. But Vizenor uses the double pun of humor and manicure to reference the beginnings of science in the past mysticism of shamans. Medicine began, in most cultures, with laying on of hands and determining the basic elements of the body. Manicure, or manual cure, implies the laying on of hands and has a sort of mystical reference when the manicurist is an ex-priest: "Padrino de Torres...persuaded the captain and teh judge to sit for a manicure; the judge knew him as a priest and she was surprised that he had turned to hands" (177) The priest is healing through his hands and the Heirs heal through humor. Humor is a pun on the four humors of the body, which needed to be brought into balance in order to make the body healthy and the mind sound. When discovering neurosis, the heirs don't promise to cure fear, but rather to "balance her fear of animals" (Vizenor 137). The connection between technology and myth exists more to show the inadequacy of modern techniques compared to ancient understanding: "Our computer memories and simulations are not yet powerful enough to support what shamans and hand talkers have inherited and understood for thousands of years" (136). The Heirs succeed where the government has failed; it is the stories in the blood rather than the "rationalists, empiricists and logical positivists" (150) which find the secret of creation and heal the abused.

Vintage Vizenor!, 20 Feb 1997
Throw out your old, tired American Indian stereotypes before stepping through Gerald Vizenor's looking glass, Alice; you'll find bears and tricksters in here! This is wonderful and true-to-form and very funny.

Hoot Loudly and Swing a Big Stick, 14 May 1998
What, no reviews for a book which emerged from a tiny small press collective to become an American Book Award winner? Griever is a delight, a postmodern absurdist melange which offers a scathing indictment of suppression of human rights in China, and, more broadly, government and individual hypocrisy and the manner in which both big business and big government degrade human experience. Vizenor uses the common thread of the trickster in Native American and Chinese culture to present a fantasized version of his travels to China on an academic exchange program. He becomes a trickster Monkey King and all sorts of hell breaks loose. You can bet that the Chinese government will not be inviting Vizenor back soon, but I invite you to read Griever. It's a hoot! (Jim Dwyer is author of Earth Works: Recommended Fiction and Nonfiction about Nature and the Environment. Buy it here at amazon.com.)