The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven"Poetic [and] unremittingly honest... "The Long Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" is for the American Indian what Richard Wright's "Native Son" was for the black American in 1940." -- "Chicago Tribune" In this darkly comic short story collection, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. These twenty-two interlinked tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet are filled with passion and affection, myth and dream. There is Victor, who as a nine-year-old crawled between his unconscious parents hoping that the alcohol seeping through their skins might help him sleep, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who tells his stories long after people stop listening, and Jimmy Many Horses, dying of cancer, who writes letters on stationary that reads "From the Death Bed of Jimmy Many Horses III, " even though he actually writes then on his kitchen table. Against a backdrop of alcohol, car accidents, laughter, and basketball, Alexie depicts the distances between Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and mostly poetically between modern Indians and the traditions of the past. "Spare, disturbing stories...with stark, lyric power." "A compelling and impressive collection." "Alexie blends an almost despairing social realism with jolting flashes of visionary fantasy and a quirky sense of gallows humor." "Stunning and compelling. Alexie is a visionary and by far thebest writer I've seen published in recent years." |
From inside the book
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... fell so hard on the Spokane Indian Reservation that it knocked Victor from bed and his latest nightmare . It was January and Victor was nine years old . He was sleeping in his bedroom in the basement of the HUD house when it happened ...
... fell like drums into buckets and pots and pans set out to catch whatever they could . In those nightmares , Victor sat in his chair as rain fell , drop by drop , onto his head . In those nightmares , Victor felt his stomach ache with ...
... fell and we retreated a little as we always do during dark . Somehow the surviving soldiers escaped during the night ... fell off his horse and didn't move again . I shot another soldier and he fell off his horse , too , and I ran over ...