Dances with Wolves

Michael Blake's story of getting Dances With Wolves made is in itself a fascinating one! Having started off as an unsold spec script, it was the strong advice from Kevin Costner that gave us the movie (and novel) we know and love today. Blake spent a full year living in his car so he could fully dedicate his time converting what he had already written as a screenplay into an ever expanding novel. Finally, having finished writing it, he sent it back to Costner and their other friend Jim Wilson, and the rest as they say is history.The novel itself is certainly the essence of the movie written down on paper. However, apart from the obvious changes - such as the Comanches being in the novel, the "whacky" major who shoots himself in the movie but doesn't in the novel, plus the very ending where Dances With Wolves and Stands With A Fist leave the camp in the movie, but isn't quite explained in the novel if they decided to leave or not - the novel and movie are true to one another. Michael Blake wrote both the novel and the screenplay, so he had full creative freedom to make sure his story belonged on the big screen as much as it did in paperback.Overall, a fantastic read, it took me 2 days to get through. With the visuals of the movie in my head as I was reading, it certainly sped up the process, but it flowed naturally and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There is a sequel novel entitled "The Holy Road", however, due to Michael Blake sadly passing away in 2015 before the third novel could come to fruition (and thus completing the story), I am opting to not read the sequel, as I dislike cliffhangers with no resolve. Not the fault of anybody, but it is what it is.

'Dances With Wolves' is an excellent novel.Michael Blake's English is very simple and straight-forward, as others have remarked. It tells a story of a man at odds with his own culture who rediscovers himself in another. Culture and characters dance around John Dunbar and provide colour to his emerging personality. The descriptions are very effective because of their simplicity and clearly the author has great sympathy with the COMANCHES.Note the capital letters because, like others I cannot understand why Kevin Costner made the 'locals' into Sioux or Lakota. As in the book, John Dunbar starts out from Fort Hayes, deep in Comanche territory, but he meets up with the Lakota, in reality far away. The book is set in the middle of the Civil War: Costner places it firmly in 1865 - just at the time when relations between whites & Sioux were rapidly slipping into what is styled Red-Cloud's war. As others have asked: Why?I've enjoyed Costner's film but it drags at times as he plays out key scenes such as the buffalo hunt and the fight with the Pawnee (blending in a memory, in the book, of Stands With A Fist). Some subtleties Costner evades, such as Captain Cargill evacuating Fort Sedgewick immediately before Dunbar's arrival(book) rather than it being deserted a long time (film),the major at Fort Hayes being removed as insane (book) rather than shooting himself(film), the buffalo-skinners being caught & killed (book) rather than just disappearing (film.The book doesn't use 'foreign' words because it doesn't need to. It doesn't use vocabulary of a level the film employs because it doesn't need to. It doesn't show Dunbar and wife disappearing into the wilderness hunted by the cavalry, because it doesn't need to.In sum, the film does it's job with great music, fantastic photography and first-rate direction and acting. The book is just as effective in a simpler, more direct fashion.Once again this shows how the written-word is so muxh more effectivee in exploiting the IMAGINATION of its 'audience'. That is the power of books.

I read this book constantly waiting for things to kick off. Given the acknowledged fearsome reputation of the Comanches the book tended to gloss over any details of the violent confrontations between the indians and whites, and veered towards the 'noble savage' stereotype. Similarly the Lieutenant Dunbar character was without apparent flaw. The story was predictable even if you hadn't seen the film, and too sanitised and romanticised to give any real appreciation of the hardships and privations prevalent at the time.

After watching the film many times I felt I must read the book, this is the tale of Lt Dunbar, wounded in the civil war he is assigned to a post out west, when he gets there no one is there but he stays anyway, Timmins his driver is killed by the Pawnee on the return journey, he made friends with a wolf and called it two socks and often rode his horse Cisco out on the praire, Dunbar had been seen by the Comanche, Kicking Bird tried to steal Cisco without much luck, Dunbar admired the warrior, Ten Bears the chief wanted to think on this white man, Wind in his Hair wanted to kill him,three Comanche children tried to steal Cisco again they could not with one boy breaking his armTen Bears decides Kicking Bird and Wind in his Hair must go and talk to the white man, Dunbar welcomes this and feels at home with the Indians, one day feeling lonely Dunbar heads to the Indian village, he finds a wounded women on the way and takes her to her village, the Indians are hostile towards him, the woman was white taken as a child but her Indian husband had just died on a raid, what follows that with his new Indian name Dances with Wolves, given because he is seen playing with two socks, Dunbar slowly embraces the Indian way of life, he hunts with them, the wounded woman Stands With a Fist teaches him Comanche, Dunbar falls in love with the woman, Kicking Bird leads a war party against the Pawnee, the village is attacked in their absence but you must read on to see how Dunbar becomes a full Comanche and the incidents that follow in his lifeMy verdict, very slightly different from the film but a very good book, I am reading part two now The Holy Road

This is an epic journey from which two worlds collide. Beautiful imagery and a sad but realistic story of the ending of the free people of the plains.

Je le recommande.

The printing quality is poor.Hardly legible at times.i find it hard to keep reading the book and quit it just because of the awful printing."Buyers beware".if you want to spend money on a book and later regret it,then go for this

An excellent read! I truly lost myself, alongside John Dunbar, on the plains and in the camp with his Indian friends.

After seeing the movie - uncut and cut versions - there are some differences but I still love both. Good insight to the life of the American Aboriginals ( not Indians). They lived in there environment and did not want to change it like Europeans have wherever they went. Many similaraties between the Australian Aboriginal and the Americas (North & South) Aboriginals.