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sanguinity18. Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche), Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong.
Grab bag of Smith's essays, spanning fifteen years, and hell if I know how to summarize the collection. Some of these essays I've read before -- on the 'net, in other anthologies, or the previous time I sat down to read this book (so bad at finishing anthologies!) -- but here's an odd thing about reading one of his essays a second time: it's like a brand new essay. Any given essay of his tends to range wide in pursuit of his final point, and the parts that make me go "Ohhhh!" on the first go-round aren't necessarily the parts that make me go "Ohhhh!" on the second go-round.
A decent chunk of these are about Native art and artists -- Smith is a curator for the NMAI -- or no, not necessarily about the art itself, but about things that the art is about. Or not about. Or dialoguing with. (It really is that wide-open, because it's sometimes not until the final third of an essay that I'll realize that this is another one that he wrote for an exhibition catalog, and while the essay is about the topic I had thought it was about, it was also a preamble for introducing a particular set of artworks.) A few more essays are about the NMAI itself -- which is typically distinct from writing about art (except when it isn't). Several more are about movies (some about Indians, some by Indians). Others are about his time with AIM. Some are about Native intellectuals. And then you have the essays where he's writing about the AIM to explain about the NMAI, and so forth.
You see? I don't try to sum up, I just read. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I mark something to quote later. Sometimes I grab my girlfriend's sleeve and make her listen to this one bit right here. And I'm guessing that the next time I read one of these essays, I'll note very different things altogether.
(Yeah, I, too, am convinced that I could have written a better review than that. But I don't think you can review it so much as quote it, and I'm not gonna back and pull a half-dozen quotes. Especially since when I tried, most of them were jokes that required a page and a half of set-up.)
Grab bag of Smith's essays, spanning fifteen years, and hell if I know how to summarize the collection. Some of these essays I've read before -- on the 'net, in other anthologies, or the previous time I sat down to read this book (so bad at finishing anthologies!) -- but here's an odd thing about reading one of his essays a second time: it's like a brand new essay. Any given essay of his tends to range wide in pursuit of his final point, and the parts that make me go "Ohhhh!" on the first go-round aren't necessarily the parts that make me go "Ohhhh!" on the second go-round.
A decent chunk of these are about Native art and artists -- Smith is a curator for the NMAI -- or no, not necessarily about the art itself, but about things that the art is about. Or not about. Or dialoguing with. (It really is that wide-open, because it's sometimes not until the final third of an essay that I'll realize that this is another one that he wrote for an exhibition catalog, and while the essay is about the topic I had thought it was about, it was also a preamble for introducing a particular set of artworks.) A few more essays are about the NMAI itself -- which is typically distinct from writing about art (except when it isn't). Several more are about movies (some about Indians, some by Indians). Others are about his time with AIM. Some are about Native intellectuals. And then you have the essays where he's writing about the AIM to explain about the NMAI, and so forth.
You see? I don't try to sum up, I just read. Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I mark something to quote later. Sometimes I grab my girlfriend's sleeve and make her listen to this one bit right here. And I'm guessing that the next time I read one of these essays, I'll note very different things altogether.
(Yeah, I, too, am convinced that I could have written a better review than that. But I don't think you can review it so much as quote it, and I'm not gonna back and pull a half-dozen quotes. Especially since when I tried, most of them were jokes that required a page and a half of set-up.)
