Books
After the highly successful, critically acclaimed debut publicaron of The Business of Fancy Dancing," author Sherman Alexie fulfills and far-exceeds the expectations of his critics with the publication of his second book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven."
My initial exposure to Alexie's work carne at a poetry reading a year ago at Eastern Michigan University. I was informed that this young poet, only 26 at the time, was being hyped by some critics as one of the "major lyric voices of our time," not to mention that he was making hundreds of dollars at readings across the country (almost unheard of by first-time authors).
True to expectations, Mr. Alexie gave a commanding performance of his work, an unnerving frontal assault on all that is false, archaic and mistaken in current American thought about Native American Indians. Afterwords, I found myself among the young, white, suburban hipsters who carne just to be "seen" and actually felt bowled over and surprised that I was not bored to death or daydreaming about sex during the reading. In fact, I felt inspired to get up and yell "GO" at the top of my Marlboro-infested lungs like Kerouac while watching Charlie Parker perform on stage, but a lack of gumption and the realization of "where I was at prevented me from doing so.
In "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," Alexie moves from crafting predominantly poetry to the short story genre. From the very first each of these stories captures the imagination of the reader away from its coffee shop delirium and sends it blazing into the harsh and often painful reality of its characters' beautiful, yet brutal lives.
Victor is our eyes and ears in this panoramic landscape of reservation philosophers, drunkards, crooked cops and Crazy Horse fancy dancers. He has experienced life both on and off the Indian reservation, and paints heartbreaking portraits of the contradictions of both worlds.
Thomas Builds-the-Fire is the reservation visionary and misfit, often ridiculed for his relentless storytelling, but who may offer the only real insight into his people's past, present and future.
Alexie travels with these characters from story to story in a presiding spirit which challenges us to re-examine our ignorance of the Indian world. His writing is not wholly new, but it feels that way because he is consistently capable of raising the reader's ears with provocative phrasings which make it hard to believe that he is a man in his mid-twenties: "If s hard to be optimistic on the reservation. When a glass sits on a table here, people don't wonder if it's half-filled or half-empty. They just hope it's good beer." Confrontational and challenging rather than confessional, Alexie is the voice of Crazy Horse growing up on the reservation with his eyes wide open.
At the heart of the blunt reality of these stories, though, acters. Alexie writes with a vibrant compassion for each of them, sketching a bleak world where one is trapped by the reality of what "is" and the pipe dream expectation of what should be: "At that kind of moment, a person begins to realize how he can be fooled by his own games. And at that kind of moment, a person begins to formulate a new game to compensate for the failure of the first." Somewhere in the middle of either extreme lies the true nature of each of the author's characters.
After finishing The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, "l found myself hungry for more, that is, wishing there were more stories to read. Sherman Alexie is a writer who, the literary world permitting, may become one of the most influential writers of our time. In order to reach a larger audience, he will have to escape the intellectual trappings of being labeled a Native American writer. Regardless, his is the writing which commands us to examine our world and its imposing hypocrisies, and, like myself, entices us into wanting to read them over and over again in order to feel their wisdom.
After listening to him read a year ago, I remember wanting to speak to him afterwards to see if some of his wisdom from the night might rub off on me a little. Instead I realized that l'd sound like every other suburban hipster pretending they could write a lick of poetry. Besides, if s true, all hippies are trying to be Indians. "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" By Sherman Alexie, 223 pages, $21.00 in hardcover, (Atlantic Monthly Press, New York 1993).