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Summary: Mr. Jacobs Please Read!!
Review: The Book The Lone Ranger and Tanto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie was very well written and enjoyable. It is a collection of inter connecting short stories that share similar themes and characters as well. It revolves around a few main characters including Victor the main character, and Thomas Builds-The-Fire an obsessive story teller. The characters are very well developed, in each story he builds on each character until you really feel as if you know them. The flaws to this are sometimes there are contradicting traits in different stories, but that is understandable with a collection of short stories. He seems to develop the settings enough but not to great detail, which is sometimes effective and at other times leaves you waiting for more. For short stories his plot development was excellent, as well as the way in which he compiled his stories, theses two elements combined kept me engrained in the book and were very effective in portraying theme. His overall writing style is very blunt, honest, and real, he also uses some elements of realistic satire to keep you interested and shocked simultaneously. I also saw hints of budding surrealism in some stories, but not enough to create an overall surrealistic effect; I think his usage of it is appropriate but as well developed as it could be. I enjoyed his style of writing because it gave me the raw and bitter truth behind life on an Indian reservation. He spoke so realistically and honestly, like he had been there first hand, which makes this book very good and effective with its portrayal. The themes are very apparent, and do not involve much reading between the lines, but are there and do leave an impact on you. The themes of differences and discrimination are very effective as well as the theme of the difference between modern and past Indians. Overall I really enjoyed his work, despite his minor flaws in development of character, and setting. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in Native American life, or someone willing to read an entertaining and powerful book.
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Summary: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Review: This book was amazing. The book grabs your attention on the first page and doesn't let go even as you finish that last page. The book leaves you looking for the next story. The stories show you so many sides of Reservation life. After reading this book I feel like I understand Reservation life a lot more then I did before reading this book. I think it takes you inside of the Indian culture, their family life, and into the lives of the people. It surpasses all the superficial, sugarcoated crap that they teach you in school and shows you what really goes on behind "closed doors".
This novel has very strong voice, you feel as if you are there, always being given a little more and a little more to keep you reading. It takes you into the world and lives of the characters, it makes you understand their lives and see a lot of different sides and aspects of reservations life. It gives you details that most books wouldn't dare deal with. It brings reservation literature to a new level of understanding. When I put down the book, I felt as if I had known the characters in the book for years. I felt like I was in the book. The characters speech fit the story, they didn't try and sugar coat things, and the author gave it to you like it is. I think knowing the characters gave to book so much more meaning. And with getting to know the characters, you got a feel for there surroundings. You feel as if you can see their homes and the land on the reservation. I could visualize in my head the places that they went to through out the book. All and all I think this is a wonderful book, I think that if you are interested in Native American literature you should check this book out. It is written very well and well keep you reading and wanting more.
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Summary: broken hearts and bent darts
Review: Winner of two Sundance Film Festival awards, writer of the screenplay for Smoke Signals, along with a few other books and collections of poetry, Sherman Alexie authored The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
Victor, a nine-year-old Spokane Indian boy, awoke on New Year's Eve of 1976 to the sound of his parents having a party. Not only did he awake to a party, soon after he heard his uncles fighting. Not that this was a surprise to young Victor, but every time they fought it made him angry because he knew there was more pain than could ever be spoken. Remembering back to earlier days, Victor remembers that around this same time when he was five he saw his father look into his wallet and reach for money that wasn't there. Alexie uses such vivid details in explaining the pain Victor endured seeing his father cry, one of my favorites is how he describes Victor seeing his father's tears as "... millions of icy knives through the air, each specific and beautiful. Each dangerous and random." It is symbolism such as this that keeps the reader engaged and interested throughout the book. Alexie continues on using different characters such as Thomas-Builds-the-Fire who never gives up on his storytelling, and Jimmy Many Horses who is dying of cancer.
Although this is an engaging book and gives the reader a different perspective on what it's really like to live and grow up on a reservation, Alexie can be slow at times. He reminds me a little of one of those sob stories you hear on a bad small claims court case on TV. Maybe it sounds a little harsh, but you know when an argument is clearly over yet the defendant just keeps on going? There are a few times in this book where I just had to put it down and ignore it for a while because I couldn't handle Alexie's humor of basketball and drunken dancing. Overall, I would have to give Alexie props for this book because he does use some incredible sensory descriptions. Hopefully for his next novel though he can get past some of his shattered dreams and stick to a story.
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Summary: Interesting Mix
Review: Alexie has an interesting mix of short stories in this collection. they all deal with life on the reservation and what it's like growing up as a Native-American today. Alexie is very good at describing places and experiences. However, I was annoyed by the seeming lack of consistancy in the stories, they seemed to be a hodgepodge, even though they were all supposed to be related.
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Summary: humorous and poignant -- just like life
Review: Sherman Alexie writes in a dry, wry style as he paints different aspects of modern-day Native Americans and the trials they face in everyday life. Racism, poverty and family issues spring up time and again for his diverse characters, who handle them as best they can and with humor. The dialogue is especially good, it makes the stories flow and the reader appreciates the characters much more for it. Alexie is one of those rare authors who somes along only once in a while. I recommend any and all of his books with much more than just 5 stars.
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Summary: my thoughts from young native
Review: This book is true about what happens on the rez in a young natives life and I think most natives would agree with me the drunk fights the parties the drugs thats what I like about the book its not non of that dumb harry potter [stuff] its based on indian life and if your looking for somthing real not non of that hockas pokas [stuff] then read this book thats all I got to say about this book
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Summary: Should've won the Pulitzer
Review: 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.
The protagonist, Victor, ostensibly shuns his childhood friend, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, because he tells stories no one wants to listen to. Adolph and Arnold, Victor's mother's brothers, fight it out in the yard, "his uncles slugging each other with such force that they had to be in love. Stangers would never want to hurt each other that badly." Then there's Julius Windmaker, the reservation basketball wizard, who'd scored sixty-seven points against a white team in Seattle. Another time, Julius had walked off the floor right in the middle of a game because there wasn't enough competition. The next year Julius is drinking Sterno, a has-been at age fifteen.
An example of Alexis's dry humor: Victor and his friend Adrian have quit drinking and Adrian asks Victor for Pepsi. Victor reminds him that he's already had a case of Pepsi that day. Adrian says, "Yeah, yeah, f--k these substitute addictions."
Fantasy sequences are interspersed with real life incidents, and sometimes you can't tell the difference. Victor stealing a horse, Victor sick from smallpox. Thomas Builds-the-Fire can fly, the other boys looking for trick wires or mirrors. But Thomas falls and breaks his arm in two places.
Lyrical language abounds. Just two examples: "These days I live in Spokane; I wish I lived near the river where ghosts of salmon jump," and "Maybe my hair is so black it collects all the available light."
THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN has been made into a movie, SMOKE SIGNALS, winner of two Sundance awards. Can't be as good of the book, which should've won a Pulitzer.
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Summary: a good first collection
Review: alexie's first collection is a pretty good one. the stories are generally short and all are interrelated. it's the strongest work he's done, and likely always will be.
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Summary: Passion, despair, and government cheese
Review: Reviewing a book of short stories can be a hazardous endeavour. Some stories inevitably affect the reader more than others, while some may fall short. However, THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN, like the W.P. Kinsella collections set on the Cree Indiana reservation in Hobbema, Alberta, neatly avoids this pitfall. Unlike most collections that have no central theme, Sherman Alexie has set his fine assortment in and around a Spokane, Washington Indian Reservation. Characters and themes re-emerge throughout the disparate narratives, but Alexie has also imbued the book in its entirety with an emotion that one would feel to be in short supply on a reservation: Hope. FISTFIGHT is a collection of stories alternately gripping, funny, and deeply moving. Alexie, with a minimalist prose that continually surprises with its depth, creates a world that everyone should visit. He does not spare the reader with his descriptions of the seemingly hopeless nature of life on a reservation, but he does not lose sight of the humanity that lies within every one of his characters. Alexie despairs with the same amount of pain and rage as his characters, but he also understands that humour can co-exist with such poverty. Of all the stories (everyone will have a favourite), "The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor" is my personal preferred choice. It tells the story of Jimmy Many-Horses, who has just revealed the presence of cancer in his body to his wife Norma. The problem is (and why I find myself sympathizing so easily with Jimmy's plight), Jimmy cannot talk about it without joking, which drives Norma to leave him. As he says, "I told her the doctor showed me my X-rays and my favourite tumor was just about the size of a baseball, shaped like one, too. Even had stitch marks . . . I told her to call me Babe Ruth. Or Roger Maris. Maybe even Hank Aaron 'cause they must have been about 755 damn tumors inside me." Jimmy deals with his impending death, but on his terms alone. He finds he can't play the victim, even though he desperately needs help. He relates his entire relationship with Norma, how he often used humour to defuse the ache of racism they faced every day. Alexie deals with the insanity of cancer in the same manner as he deals with the horrible conditions the reservation inflicts on its inhabitants; he refuses to allow it to crush the spirit of the characters, even when it feels most bleak. Another story, "Distances", is perhaps Alexie's most poetic moment. In the space of seven pages, Alexie creates a vision of a post-apocalyptic future so incisive and breath-taking that it stays with the reader for days. In emotion and clarity, it reminds me of nothing so much as Octavia E. Butler's remarkable science-fiction collection BLOODCHILD: AND OTHER STORIES. There really are no weak points to speak of. "Every Little Hurricane" is a child's view of marital discourse that every feuding spouse should read. "Indian Education" follows the steady rise of an Indian youth through school that is almost unbearable sardonic. And "Jesus Christ's Half-Brother is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian reservation" is astonishing in its tender portrait of an adoptive parent and his damaged son. Some critics have complained that Alexie's writings are racist, in that they show the aboriginal population in its worst light, full of alcoholism and violence. But how can describing life on a reservation be racist? It is the conditions which led to the reservations which are racist, not Alexie's commentary on it. Describing life as it exists may not be pleasant, but the urge to ignore it, or discourage its presentation, is far more upsetting. Alexie is a major talent with a viewpoint sorely lacking in today's world.
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Summary: Some Things Can't Be Changed
Review: Sherman Alexie magnificently depicts the lives of people on the Spokane Indian Reservation through the short stories in his book "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven". Each story is a piece of the big picture that Alexie is trying to make which simply is to show the hardship and struggle of the lives of the people on the Reservation. This book is fascinating to read because each story is as intriguing as the one which it has just past and the one which proceeds. The lives of the people are filled with anger, pain, hurt, heartbreak, bitterness, love, and the loss of it. It also shows the relationships and how they vary between whites and within their own reservation, and how their lives and the way they view life is completely different than those outside of the Reservation. In "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven", Alexie's usage of flashbacks help the reader understand the theme of the book: there are many things in life we can't change, even if we want things to turn out differently or have an outcome which we desire. In each story in "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven", at least one flashback occurs. A typical story in this novel will start off with a story, and then tell another story by flashing back to the past in order to help explain the present story, and then it finishes by going back to the present story. Alexie efficiently uses this technique in order to relate to the theme of endings sometimes don't end up how we wish them to be because many of the traits and stories of the people in the flashbacks didn't really change in the present. People try to change bad habits inherited by their ancestors, but they never seem to be able to. There were times when two people love each other, but one has to leave. These are just a couple of examples of the stories told in this book. Each goes from present to past and then finishes off with the present with leaving the reader with some conclusion or a direction as to how the story would finish. These examples are things that some people can't change, even if they had wanted things to work out, they simply wouldn't. It isn't just love they can't change, often it is basketball, the future, drinking problems, or family. The use of flashbacks enables the reader to really grasp the theme of some things in life cannot be changed, because it shows how things were and how things are now and how many times even though change is wanted, it doesn't always happen.
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