Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition [Hardcover]

Kimberly M. Blaeser (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1996

Gerald Vizenor, the most prolific Native American writer of this century, has produced more than twenty-five books in genres as varied as fiction, journalism, haiku, and literary theory. The first book-length study devoted to this important author, Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition lays the groundwork essential for understanding his complex work.

Kimberly M. Blaeser begins with an examination of Vizenor’s concept of Native American oral culture and his unique incorporation of oral tradition in the written word. She then explicates Vizenor’s method of linking the traditional oral aesthetic with reader-response theories and details Vizenor’s efforts to produce a form of writing that resists static meaning, involves the writer in the creation of the literary moment, and invites political action. She also explores the place of Vizenor’s work within the larger contexts of contemporary tribal literature, Native American scholarship, and critical theory.

Individual chapters examine Vizenor’s renditions of the Native American trickster figure in his fiction; analyze his employment of a network of critical, social, and literary subtexts within the larger text; and explain the sometimes difficult "Vizenorese," a complex of terms that characterize people and ideas. Blaeser offers explanations of the origins, meanings, and dialogic purposes of a variety of terms, such as manifest manners, dead voices, word cinemas, terminal creeds, and socioacupuncture.

Blaeser’s is the first study to reveal the full importance of haiku in Vizenor’s work. His poetry, which draws equally from Zen aesthetics and Ojibway dream songs, contains concise, economical descriptions, made up equally of absence and presence-a style characterictic of Vizenor’s writing in other genres as well.

Based upon scholarship, close reading, and interviews with Vizenor himself, and written by a Native scholar of Vizenor’s own tribe, this book explicates Vizenor’s ideas, methods, and forms, making even his most sophisticated arguments accessible to the general reader.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Vizenor, arguably the most prolific contemporary Native American author, has written more than two dozen books, from fiction and haiku poetry to literary theory. A mixed-blood whose father was murdered when Vizenor was still an infant, he grew up amid poverty, dropped out of high school, joined the military, completed a degree at the University of Minnesota, became a political activist and journalist, and has held professorships at a number of universities. So energetic and elusive a figure is difficult to capture, but Blaeser (English and comparative studies, Univ. of Wisconsin), an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, explains much of the richness of Vizenor's work. She does an excellent job of describing her subject's use of the Native American trickster in his fiction, his incorporation of Ojibway dream songs and Zen aesthetics in his poetry, and his retention of the Ojibway oral culture in his writings. Her book can be read most profitably by those thoroughly familiar with Vizenor's work and knowledgeable about literary theory and recent Native American writing.?Nicholas Burckel, Marquette Univ., Milwaukee
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Kimberly M. Blaeser, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the author of Trailing You, a prize-winning collection of poetry.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (October 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806128747
• ISBN-13: 978-0806128740
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,820,039 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blaeser adds continuity and coherence to the Vizenor canon., August 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition (Hardcover)

For students of Native American Literature puzzled by Gerald Vizenor, perhaps the most important--but often the most difficult--Native writer, Blaeser's book is long-awaited and highly recommended.

Blaeser shows how Vizenor's prose, oftentimes cryptic and fraught with neologisms, parallels influences that come from his interest in Chippewa oral tradition and haiku. She explains how Vizenor's concept of "word cinemas," for example, stimulates the reader into active thought. Vizenor's prose leaves a great deal unsaid and unfinished, and it is up to the reader to participate in the production of ideas Vizenor introduces.

Finally, Blaeser shows how Vizenor's prose is most effective in dismantling stereotypes regarding Native identity; by creating an active relationship with the reader, the reader's conception of "Indianness" becomes a dynamic, continually changing process, never static.

For a critical study of this type, Blaeser's book is well-written and not difficult reading. This study is highly recommended, and readers who are interested in Gerald Vizenor and Native American Literature and culture will find this book essential