SOURCE: "Walking Backwards into the Fourth World: Survival of the Fittest in Bearheart," in American Indian Quarterly, Vol. IX, No. 1, Winter, 1985, pp. 61-5.

In the essay below, Keady discusses Vizenor's use of language in The Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart, and how his technique emphasizes the importance of a strength of spirit over belief in empty words.

Gerald Vizenor's book, The Darkness in St. Louis Bearheart, is a comic and brutal satire on all of us who cling to "Terminal Creeds," whose values, and very identities, amount to no more than bundles of words, bereft of meaning. Just as the characters in Bearheart suffer because of their vanities, their attachment to words and "sacred" idiosyncrasies, we too are challenged, and even assaulted by Vizenor's ruthless depictions of bizarre sex and violence, and his consistently crude language. Throughout the book, our expectations are thwarted, our notions of morality are...