It’s kind of surprising that I’ve never read anything by Sherman Alexie, given that he’s pretty close to what Seattle has for a literary star. Plus, isn’t The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven the best title you’ve heard for a book in ages? Please come up with something better that isn’t a Philip K. Dick work.
This collection of short stories is set primarily on the Spokane Indian Reservation. There’s a lot of drinking involved, but in the introduction to this 10th anniversary edition, Alexie notes that When I write about the destructive effects of alcohol on Indians, I am not writing out of a literary stance or a colonized mind’s need to reinforce stereotypes. I am writing autobiography.
The Indians in his stories are laconic, as best as I understand the word. They spend much of their days drinking, waiting for something to happen. It reminds me a lot of teenagers, but without the frenetic impulsiveness seeking to find feeling of the teenagers I know. But there’s a sense among these stories that the Indians will live forever. That stories about each of them will go on without them, and that’s more important than actually living.
Some of the later stories in the book though veer into territory that isn’t quite my bag. They go from realistic stories tinged with metaphor and simile to something else. Not exactly magical realism. Something more akin to essays, where the play of language with time and nature seeks to evoke images.
However, much as I don’t get that kind of writing, Alexie is pretty damn good with turning the phrases. I am in the 7-11 of my dreams, surrounded by 500 years of convenient lies.
They all had the gift of storytelling, could pick up the pieces of a story from the street and change the world for a few moments.
We touched hands and our skin sparked like a personal revolution.
There’s a lot better in the book than these even, but I didn’t paperclip the pages like I should have.
Title: The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in heaven
Author: Sherman Alexie
Cover artist: Wendell Minor
Imprint / publisher: Grove Press / Grove/Atlantic
Format: Paperback
Length: 242 p.
Publication date: 2005 (original edition 1993)
ISBN-10: 0-8021-4167-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4167-5
Subject: Indians of North America — Fiction
LC classification: PS3551.L35774L66 1993
