03/50: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

[bulliciosa.livejournal.com]

If you're looking for a starting point on Sherman Alexie's work, I'd recommend "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven." A collection of 24 short stories, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto..." seems to serve as the foundation for many of Alexie's characters in other novels. I got the impression while reading that he was comfortable with his writing, but still fleshing out characters and plots. The stories are loosely connected and Alexie says in the book's introduction that the main theme/topic/idea/etc. is that "the sons in this books really love and hate their fathers." This is mainly true and I'd argue that they're also about the role of tradition and identity as well.

"The Lone Ranger and Tonto..." is definitely much more prose-y, poetic and abstract (in some stories) than "The Absolutely True Diary...". Personally, this made it a bit harder to read for me and didn't get into the stories as much. They were good, interesting stories, but demanded much more of my attention and concentration.

"They are the vision of one individual looking at the lives of his family and his entire tribe, so these stories are necessarily biased, incomplete, exaggerated, deluded, and often just plain wrong," Alexie says of the stories that based or influenced by a grain of reality and/or truth. "But in trying to make them true and real, I'm writing what might be called reservation realism."

Although "The Lone Ranger and Tonto..." was a bit harder to digest, it would serve readers well to read it before some of his other works. Alexie admits "it feels sad, mostly hopeless, and hot with loneliness," but also seems to offer a deeper insight and understanding of his other works.

Comments

[mahoni.livejournal.com]

Whoa! Can you cut the picture? That did some crazy things to my flist...

Thank you!

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

I recommend "Smoke Signals," (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120321/) a movie based off one of the stories (I think the titular one). It's very good, and features an excellent cast.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Seconded. Smoke Signals is wonderful.

[bulliciosa.livejournal.com]

You may want to add that to the recs post (http://community.livejournal.com/12films_poc/570.html) over at 12films_poc