Rating: 
Summary: Exceeds Five Stars
Review: Sherman Alexie knocks me out. He breathes original life into the art of literary fiction while laying out the realities of contemporary Native American Indian existence. The LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN is a collection of confluent short stories that can also be read as a novel. In fact they can be read much the same way as Cortezar's HOPSCOTCH, that is, in any particular order, and the whole still adds up with the motion and fury of a novel. Each story is a picture of life on or apart from the Spokane Reservation in Washington state. Alexie moves between voices and perspectives, from the aspect of Reservation children trying to dream of a future amid the oppressive poverty to the adults who often have lost the possibility of purpose. He moves seamlessly between dark wit and profound tragedy, uncovering a multi-layered existence of which white culture has no equal, no comprehension. Yes, he is angry, but he informs readers, he does not beat us up, and he gives us a beautiful literary experience to boot. And more praise: read his other novels, particularly RESERVATION BLUES which shares characters, settings and themes, and be astounded at how Alexie is not redundant but is able to further push his dialogue and artistic borders.
Rating:
Summary: ...And it feels like home
Review: I initially picked this book up for two reasons--I liked Alexie's novel, Indian Killer, and more importantly because I live in Spokane, WA and have traveled extensively through the Reservations and towns that are described in the stories. The descriptions and the characters are very realistic, the names and places are not very fictionalized, and it makes me feel right at home. Fortunately for those readers not privleged to live in the Inland Northwest, the stories also teach a lot about Indian culture, the modern Native American and their heritage. It is a disturbing picture at times with too much alcaholism, violence, and racism, but underneath it all there is a great deal of love which makes the stories comforting and redeeming. Alexie has a lyrical voice, and when combined with his authenticsity, beautiful, rich stories are produced. Aside from those academic traits, he is also very funny, honest, and affectionate throughout, and those qualities are what I will remember about this book far more than the descriptions of familiar hotels on Third Avenue and the basketball games played between Springdale and Wellpinit. It is a great, quick read, and a wonderful way to pass an afternoon.
Rating:
Summary: Sherman Alexie
Review: I'm a junkie for short story collections - I especially like this one. Alexie writes about the Native American culture in the modern world, presenting many perspectives, both negative and postive, and distinguishing stereotypes from truths. In the end, it's engaging and entertaining. I would recommend the movie "Smoke Signals" in addition to this text (a film that depicts some of the stories and characters presented in this collection).
Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT, BITTERSWEET TALES OF LATTER-DAY AMERINDIAN LIFE
Review: This is my personal measure of Sherman Alexie, the gifted young Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian writer: He caught my attention in a recently rebroadcast "60 Minutes" feature story. What appealed to me was his sardonic wit--edgy, thoughtful, ironic, challenging, and, yes, I thought, a bit sad. I told myself, Let's see if he can really write, let's see what he's got to say. So I pick up one of his books of prose; within a week, I had read three. This outstanding collection of interrelated stories was the first. Very, very impressive! I loved his writing, his crisp, bone simple and straight style. I felt for his finely etched characters, a handful of them--especially one named Victor, presumably the author's stand-in--recurring throughout. And these are all stories with bite. "Maybe hunger informs our lives," says the narrating voice of "Family Portrait." Roughly the first half of this book exposes us to what it means to be "Native American" today: The spoils of defeat--the tight-lipped, self-destructive despair of a once proud, historic people reduced to segregated conditions. Isolated from the white world, isolated from their own traditions. Subject to poor housing, education and food, chronic unemployment, rampant alcoholism, diabetes, blood fights and bloody ends. Alexie's sharp depictions of conflicted identity, uncertainty in the everyday and lifelong struggles for survival on the Spokane Indian reservation, the contradictory capacities for tenderness and tragedy, beauty and brutality, breaks down our detachment, jars us into realizing both the unique and common human attributes of his people. What he induces is simply called "empathy." As another who grew up in a "reservation"--"the urban ghetto"--I felt that same incoherent rage that plagues so many of his characters. In the commonweal of pain, it was a further demonstration that "you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy." Yeah, okay--"empathy." At the halfway point, I was ready to start writing this review--no question, Alexie had shown he had the literary goods and I wanted to proclaim it--but something told me, first finish the book. Good thing. Why? Because he tricked me--he still held an ace up his storytelling sleeve. "Hope feeds among the tombs," Melville wrote. "Always darkest before the daylight," goes the tireless adage we've all heard somewhere from our elders. "That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic," says the narrator in one of Alexie's stories ("Jesus Christ's Brother is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation"). "Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye . . . no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice." Might be Alexie begins his sleight of hand with the (deliberately) Kafka-esque tale of the trial of Thomas Builds-the-fire, "misfit storyteller" who can still feel the pulse of tradition within him and stubbornly refuses to disown it. (Hmm. Defiance.) Then there's "A Good Story," about the loving, mutually respectful relationship between an old man and a boy. Or the story about the Indian married couple who reconcile after the wife has left her wise-cracking husband for making one joke too many about his terminal cancer. (Hmm. Redemption!) Or the character arc of Victor--whose name, keep in mind, means "conqueror"--over an array of first and third person narratives, as he struggles against the pull of his parents' drunken, broken marriage; resenting his father's departure; the low expectations of Indian schooling; the high expectations of being a local hero; incipient alcoholism; the fear of and yearning for love. The Alexie magic is in balancing the bitter with the sweet; showing us that in the midst of desolation there is also room for resilience, for humor, for trust--for hope. It was during this time I happened to see a repeat of Chris Rock's last HBO special, the one where he advises those folks who're always popping off in the media about how bad their people have it now in this country--how they're "losing America"--to just shut up. "Nobody has it worse than the Indians," he says. "They're all dead!" No, not quite, Chris. Deliberately wounded by long-standing government policy, yes. Demonized and ignored by a "dominant" history, yes. Suffering, yes. But they still survive, human as the rest of us--with faults, foibles, and feelings, nightmares and dreams--and they're championed by one of their own, a writer with a singular voice who tells modern day Indian stories with clarity, style, perception and wit. This book opens a door to consciousness. A highly recommended read.
Rating:
Summary: My Review of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Review: There are relatively few books about modern Native American life, that is, life on reservations. There are also relatively less well-written books on the subject. However, I feel that Sherman Alexie has compiled a well-balanced volume of stories into what he titled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. The book is about an assemblage of short stories about a Native American boy named Victor who lives on a reservation in Washington. The reader indirectly learns about the character of Victor through his actions, thoughts, and speech throughout the book. His father is an alcoholic who leaves the family when Victor is young. Victor eventually falls into the same pattern as his father, and his only outlet in life is basketball. All of Victor's hardships are made unique by the setting that he is, living in a white man's world with a feeling of obligation to his native traditions. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a great piece of literature. Sherman Alexie wrote each individual story that makes up the book as though he had lived through it (and he very well might have). It is realistic fiction with great detail. The vividly described scenes are what make the book seem personal, and it gives the book a feeling of sentimentality. Alexie is a solid writer and wrote and laid out each story well. He created a compilation of many stories and placed them in an order that flows well from one to the next. He can state a point very clearly, and in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven he makes a lot of points. Through use of metaphor, and just by telling stories he writes about how fathers affect their children, how Native Americans are still being persecuted, Native American tradition, etc. I do not believe that there is an aspect of the book that I disliked, besides one or two stories I did not think were relevant. I wholly enjoyed reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. It is a fun and well-written book that has a lot to say about life, and a lot to teach about Native Americans. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys western literature.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting yet confusing at first read
Review: I was confused the first time I had read the book as to the connection of the stories but became clearer the second. This book a big eye opener to those of us who are uniformed of the Native American culture. I found myself wading in various feelings throughout and even began laughing out loud at times. I have suggested this book to several others.
Rating:
Summary: Great read
Review: A collection of short stories written by a local American Indian, Sherman Alexie that will bring you to a different world. Even though the stories are fiction, they are based on things he's seen and experienced. Some of the stories in this collection are a little boring, or too deep for some to catch. But most of them are worth reading more than once. For example: "A Drug Called Tradition", "Because My Father Always Said He Was they Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star Spangled Banner' at Woodstock", "All I Wanted to Do Was Dance", "The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire", and many others.
Rating: 
Summary: The Lone Ranger
Review: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is for the true American Indian. This book is several short stories that have both fantasy and real life events. These memories are sometimes dark but many times good. Through out this book Victor tells of his memories with his family and friends. Until the day of a horrific accident! In his family that will change his life forever. This book has many everyday problems and life problems of people that you can relate your-self to if not now, maybe In the future. This book has many modern traditions of both today and the past Indian cultures. The movie Smoke signals is based on this book I didn't think it was near as good as the book even know the movie got many awards. I felt that the movie was very boring.This book is a vivd account of the life on an Indian reservation in modern day. Instead of focusing on one character, Alexie shared stories of several different people which gives a more complete description. There is Victor, who is brought up around alcoholism, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who is constantly telling stories, and Jimmy Many Horses, who jokes about his cancer.
Rating:
Summary: You'll want to thank him for writing this book.
Review: For those of you who read the works of leading, contemporary writers, this book should be in your hands and in your library. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is an excellent collection of short short stories that delivers high-velocity entertainment and quickly rips away the space between reader and writer. You will be completely immersed in the realistic and sometimes fantastical literary world of Sherman Alexie.
As a mesmerizing storyteller with feathery wings, Sherman Alexie's keen, double-edged intellect will at times soar with the reader to extraordinary heights of literary fantasy while exploring the realistic and often difficult world of the Indians on the rez. Reading this collection of stories is more than entertainment. It is an experience.
Rating: 
Summary: A Well-Written Native American Book
Review: Sherman Alexie's "Lone Ranger" is a vivd accound of the life on an Indian reservation in modern day. Instead of focusing on one character, Alexie shared stories of several different people which gives a more complete description. There is Victor, who is brought up around alcoholism, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who is constantly telling stories, and Jimmy Many Horses, who jokes about his cancer. The characters are very unforgettable as their experiences are told in a most entertaining way. Since each chapter is a different story it is hard to tell which character is being described. It goes from VIctor in one chapter to Jimmy Many Horses in the next. That can definitely be confusing. But what it shows best is life through the eyes of true Spokane Indians and their struggle with depression, alcoholism, and seclusion. Alexie shows the contrasts between modern Indians and the Indians of the past and how the traditions were lost. It gives views of whites through Indian eyes and how they have dealt with inferiority. Though it has many strengths, it also has weaknessess. Other than the confusion between characters, there is also a confusion on time. In one chapter it's 1976 and in the next it's 1992 and sometimes it isn't explained very well. But Alexie definitey gets his point across in showing the world the hard times faced by Indians growing up in modren day USA. It's a very entertainig book that is easy to read and very seldom put down. I definitely believe it could be the Bible for modern day Native Americans in this country.
|
