The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven [L0036]

1993 - PB Good condition. "Mr. Alexie's is one of the major lyric voices of our time" New York Times Book Review editor Rich Nicholls wrote of Alexie after reading his work The Business of Fancydancing. 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 22 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 James Many Horses III," even though he actually writes them 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 most poetically, between modern Indians and the traditions of the past.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Sherman Alexie is a wonderful writer. This collection of short stories is a winner. Whether he's called Native American, Indian or simply author extraordinaire, Sherman is entertaining, enlightening and educational in his stories about life near and in the Spokane Reservation. This is really a most entertaining book and a pleasure to read."; "The Chicago Tribune states, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven is for the American Indian what Richard Wright's Native Son was for the black American in 1940."

Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian whose collection of interrelated short stories run the gamut of emotions from whimsical to heartbreaking. Alexie's Indians don't fit the stereotype; they have hopes and dreams, good points and failings; they love, they hate; they laugh, they cry."; "Alexie's talent at creating characters rivals that of Dickens - the residents of the Reservation whom he introduces in these short stories will stay in your imagination forever. His sense of humor and comic timing are just as deft as his skill at emoting bitterness and despair, something that helps to soften the blow of his grim vision allowing us to appreciate its bitter beauty. After reading this book, Sherman Alexie joined the list of my favorite authors. He is a master talent who deserves a place in the American pantheon of writers. His writing was a wonderful discovery, and if you have not yet experienced his work, well then, get to it!"