THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN (BY) SHERMAN ALEXIE

Published 1993, 240 pages
Characters: B
Writing: B+
Plot/Pacing: N/A
Poignancy: B+

It's telling that, for all the vivid, attention-grabbing prose in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, there's barely any description of scenery or setting.  Sherman Alexie's first published book, a collection of short stories, shows us a reservation where alcoholism, marital problems, basketball, and poverty have become almost mystic. Alexie is interested in the struggles of Indians in contemporary America, turning their faults and failings into a new Indian tradition, a culture of Shakespearean Fatal Flaws.  Through interconnected vignettes, memories and fantasies, stories are whittled down to the essence of character's emotions and then mythologized into some kind of Indian lore.  It's both a strength and missed opportunity — for all we're shown about how Indians think and act amongst each other, Fistfight in Heaven certainly doesn't reveal much context.  We get a few clues — lots of gas stations, hitchhiking along the highway, various cities around Washington, and a slew of problems that seem to suggest these places are inescapable — but unless you've been to the geographical region in question, these tragedies seem almost to take place in a floating, disembodied wasteland. And in that sense, you don't have to be an Indian to understand the suffering here, though it would certainly help to explain where it all comes from.

Alexie's characters are both stereotypes and justifications, full of idiosyncrasies that we're told again and again are uniquely Indian and thus transcendent.  Still, the plight of these characters shouldn't seem too alien to anyone — as long as you're at least somewhat familiar with drunkenness, abuse, poverty, alienation and failure.  Alcoholism is such a common theme that it almost fades into the background, lost in the weight of the cultural burdens these characters drag around with them.  The prose, too, is ambiguous enough to leave readers at the risk of their own interpretations, noticeably similar to poetry in both style and substance.  Stories are held together by metaphorical non-sequiturs and extended poetic abstraction, all of which is well written and intelligently conceived, but leaned upon so heavily that the reader's appreciation will likely come down to their threshold for such devices.  Fortunately, Alexie is wise enough to not force any of the character's burdens too hard on the reader, his prose skipping nimbly around either explanations or solutions, and so there's little in the way of redemption here.  There is, however, a great deal of casual racism on both sides, something that is undoubtedly a reality for people in and around an Indian reservation.  As Alexie never goes far beyond his main characters' heads, there's no real depth to these prejudices, and it begins to seem a little too much like Alexie is providing his readers with a reassuringly-sophisticated, book-shaped confessional into which they can dump their white guilt.

Though Fistfight in Heaven steers more toward "interesting" or "thought-provoking" than entertaining or even relateable, it is admirable for its unique voice and examination of a people often ignored by literature and film.  One begins to see how there can be nobility in failure and suffering, and despite the stereotypes and cultural confusion these characters seem to wrap around themselves like a protective blanket, the emotions are genuine, the pain easily, uncomfortably felt.