Alexie, in some 10 volumes of poetry plus novels, short stories, screenplays and songs, has been at pains to deflate just such romantic myths, whether steward of the earth, stoical warrior, shaman or savage, still projected on to the country's roughly two million Indians - a term he prefers to what he sees as the guilt-ridden liberal coinage, Native American. He is speaking in a bistro in his 'adoptive hometown' of Seattle, the Pacific city named after a 19th-century Suquamish chief now revered as a guardian of nature. Being funny you win hearts quicker people laughing are more apt to listen.' But I've borrowed their sense of humour and made it darker and more deadly - a weapon of self-defence. 'I was always the depressed guy in the basement. His siblings, with whom he grew up on the Spokane Indian reservation in the east of Washington state, are surprised people find him funny, he says. S herman Alexie combines his successful writing career with stand-up comedy.
