You never know what is going to leap up on the Internet--Sherman Alexie in 2023

 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 44 (2023): 35–56
ISSN 2531-1654
“The Sin Eaters” by Sherman Alexie: A Dystopian Island
in a Mostly Auspicious Archipelago
“The Sin Eaters” de Sherman Alexie: Una isla distópica
en un archipiélago más prometedor

In the opening chapter of his book Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons

(1984), renowned textual critic Hershel Parker maintains that although “all

authority in literature comes from the author, . . . that authority can be

blurred or wholly lost and, paradoxically, it can persist even when the

author thinks it has been removed” (16). Parker’s point is basically that

different kinds of “accidents” may happen between the moment the text

was first written and when it finally sees the public light that will somehow

transform the intended meanings in the original work (Parker 3). These so-

called “accidents” may typically be due to the type of expurgations or

revisions that authors and editors are likely to incorporate to the original

manuscripts; however, as this specialist admits, these changes may also

happen because of format, generic or contextual transformations that will

inevitably affect the relation of readers to texts. In this regard, it is fairly

evident that “The Sin Eaters” shifting position from being the skeleton of

a longer work of fiction to becoming a chapter in a short story collection

has had important consequences for how the readership of the work has

experienced and interpreted the text.