The Only Good Indians

I see that a lot of people found this book scary and put it into the horror category, but to me it feels more like a mediocre slasher movie. There is a lot of gore described in great detail, but most of it just makes me question how it even happened. I'm also not a fan of Stephen's writing style in general.

If anyone has read H.P.Lovecraft's “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” they will know about a chase scene that happens in it. I found that whole story a lot creepier than this book, but the chase scene in particular, was in my opinion done a lot better by Lovecraft.

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Now, the thing that annoyed me during this whole reading experience is that this book could have been about any regular kind of white trash and with minimal changes, the plot would've stayed the same. Essentially, Native Americans could have very easily been “spared” the pointless bad light that this book shines on them.

For starters, The Only Good Indians doesn't actually have many good people in it. It focuses exclusively on a group of poor, fairly uneducated Native Americans driving beaten up trucks and wasting their lives away in bar fights. This might be a somewhat accurate representation of todays youth growing up in the reserves, but without the social commentary on why this is so, I feel like this book simply uses them as a sensation.There are no rituals here, besides one towards the end, that is only used as a convenient plot setting. There is no real folklore, there are no tattoos, no tales, these guys don't even follow their own clan rules. In fact, they don't seem to know much of anything related to their roots. Word “Indian” gets repeated a hundred times in this book, but besides protagonists thinking of themselves as such, there are no other indicators that they are.It's worth noting that the author himself is an Indian so I wonder why he chose to write this book the way he did. If anyone should be aware of both folklore and modern social problems, it should be him. And if anyone should feel the obligation to showcase the beautiful traditions and abilities of a certain group of people, it should be one of them.

Either way, I doubt that most Indians would like to be portrayed in this light. And I also doubt that the wider audience will gather anything positive or useful from this portrayal of Natives.

The Only Good Indians is a good monetization of author's roots, but one that, in my opinion, comes at a moral cost.