SOURCE: "Big Bad Wordies," in New York Times Book Review, November 8, 1992, p. 18.

In the following review of Dead Voices, Crum commends Vizenor's efforts to retell traditional Native American myths but finds the work unconvincing.

Those wild animals that hold center stage in the traditional stories and dreams of American Indians, those beings that are mythically empowered with magical talents—whatdo they think about this crazy century of ours? In his latest novel, Gerald Vizenor gives them voice, and it turns out that they easily fit the post-modernist mode.

The governing condition of the animals in Dead Voices: Natural Agonies in the New World is dislocation. These creatures—bears, fleas, praying mantises, crows, beavers and others—have lost some of their power. Or they have power and don't always know what to do with it. They are urban animals now, and they display a discomforting urban energy. They're still...