The Toughest Indian in the World

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Summary: ALEXIE MOVES UP TO HEAVYWEIGHT (WRITING) CLASS
Review: "Writin' is fightin'!" poet/novelist/essayist Ishmael Reed has declared. No doubt. Saying the pen (or the word processor) is mightier than the sword recognizes that literacy and literature are heavy weapons. Writers I respect and cherish wield words effectively to combat ignorance, bias, prejudice, limited expectations, all sorts of social and intellectual short-sightedness. A writer throws down a gauntlet to the reader-"Deal with this!" A really good writer will likewise challenge himself.

Sherman Alexie steps up with his second collection of short stories. Here are only about half as many stories as THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN, but they're longer, fuller. They evidence his growth, maturity, in craft and imagination. Though he's not above old tricks like narrative sleight-of-hand - his ironic sense of humor is, if anything, even wryer - his style, while still lean, is now not quite so spare.

THE TOUGHEST INDIAN IN THE WORLD reflects Alexie's and his characters' journeys in "the adult world." They must make choices about who they are, where they live and what they do, and especially, who they're with. Then again, just as journalist Louis Lomax noted, every writer ("like every preacher") has "one great theme" that he returns to over and again. Alexie's is (to borrow from James Baldwin) "the price of the ticket," that two-way cost of modern Indian assimilation - forward and outward into "American" society, while yet attempting to bridge the disconnection from tradition and heritage.

These stories range in emotional resonance from resigned sigh to primal scream. They depict, often, people at personal crossroads. In fact, love and choice (with "love," particularly, in the sense of M. Scott Peck's landmark THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED - the expression of a will and commitment to enable spiritual growth and respect uniqueness - not to be confused with "romance") are the source of their drama - and the elusive solution.

There are the Coeur d'Alene woman high-tech executive and the city-bred Spokane corporate lawyer, each living "the American dream" life while harboring inner rage at the choices they've made, their self-reflective rage literally finding stereotypic Indian figures to help shatter their "civilized" boundaries. There's the feckless poet looking for love in all the wrong people. The pudgy teenager willing to be the hostage of an inept, alienated holdup man. Most harrowing (and deliberately so, since it's a literal nightmare) is the protracted horror of a young boy swept along in the cascading events of "the final solution of the Indian problem."

There's some wistfulness also: The recollections of the woman loved by John Wayne on the set of "The Searchers." The adult son who extends himself to ease the last days of his diabetic amputee father. And my favorite, "Saint Junior," where the recognition that a married couple achieves strikes me as being, really, about anything you truly hold dear in life: Affection is helpful, maybe essential, but will and commitment get the job done...

"He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing. Other people claimed that you can't choose who you love--it just happens!--but Grace and Roman knew that was a bunch... Of course you chose who you loved. If you didn't choose, you ended up with what was left--the drunks and abusers, the debtors and vacuums, the ones who ate their food too fast or had never read a novel. Damn, marriage was hard work, was manual labor, and unpaid manual labor at that. Yet, year after year, Grace and Roman had pressed their shoulders against the stone and rolled it up the hill together."

The best thing I can say about this book (keeping in mind it was like "dessert," the third Alexie book I read in one week - yes, that taken by his work!) is that a year later, I can still feel the stories. Know what I mean? They "live" with me! Like someone's children you've grown fond of, you may forget the names but you don't forget the shape of the faces, the outline and texture of their personalities, your emotional response to them. And you're sure that you'll carry the memory with you for the rest of your life.

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Summary: The Toughest Indian in the world
Review: *****Sherman Alexie is funny, and can he write!

�The Toughest Indian in the World� is a good book. If you enjoy laughing and crying well, this is your type of book. This book is about a guy named Jeremiah, and a girl named Marylyn. It deals with boyfriend and girlfriend type problems and with prostitution. It starts off with a white man and his Indian wife. The wife kind of has this feeling that she should have married a Indian guy. Then the guy goes out and gets drunk, and takes off. It�s hilarious, but there are some sad parts in the book, and some real nasty, sick, and terrible scenes that you almost can�t even imagine.

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Summary: very, very good work
Review: Alexie's latest book is very good. The longest story, The Sin Eaters, didn't quite come together for me, but most everything else is extremely readable. These works have a strong sense of the Northwest in them, especially the Spokane Indian reservation Alexie grew up on. They're hardly provincial, though, embracing varieties of character, place, and theme.

The characters are usually Indian, often from the Spokane tribe, but also from many other tribes. Sometimes, one wishes Alexie didn't feel it necessary to repeat phrases so often, but his skills are too superior for that to be anything but a minor hitch. There's a great deal of imagination, and an awful lot of strength, behind his best stories: One Good Man, for example, is an elegant, blunt and elegaic image of a Spokane and his dying father. The wonder is at his ability to, in about a decade, produce so many books at a consistently high quality. He's gone from his roots as a very personal chronicler of his native people to, in this collection, an analysis of a failing marriage involving a Microsoft plebian, without hesitation. His writing could use some improvements, but he's still just in his early 30s, and already at the highest literary levels.

With impressive consistency, this book gathers up deeply interesting characters, puts them on the page, and demands that we pay attention to them. And indeed, it is the vigorous, blemished, unheroic and occasionally violent characters of Alexie's work who represent his greatest skill. His sparse and blunt style concentrates on character and plot: Metaphor and imagery are secondary concerns. In summary: buy this book, buy his other books, and plan on buying the books he'll write in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Lacks polish and vision
Review: I can't believe this - nor can I imagine anyone actually finish reading this drivel after getting past the first couple of chapters. I just wish that Amazon had a rating of "0" as that is what this book deserves. If Sherman Alexie's motive for writing this anthology was to entertain, educate, or let people know that Indian are a part of mainstream society, then he has utterly failed. All this book suceeds at doing is insulting Indians. I know, I am a Wobanaki American Indian. I can easily imagine someone who is inclined towards prejudice reading this book and thinking to themselves, "See this just proves what I have been saying all along - this was written by an Indian, so it must be true." Sherman will go down in history as a "One Hit Wonder" for "Smoke Signal" (and perhaps for "Lone Ranger and Tonto"). But now he has sunk to the ultimate low of writing for the sole purpose of "shock for profit."

Do yourself a favor and avoid this book. If you want to read a great book about contemporary American Indian life than try either "Lame Deer Seeker of Visions" by John Lame Deer, and Richard Erdoes or "Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance" by Leonard Peltier.

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Summary: have bought over and over
Review: I have purchased this book at least 4 times now. I love it, and all of Alexie's work, so much that I keep wanting to share it with others. The stories are political, emotional, and real. As such, they provide an important and provocative perspective into modern Indian life.

Rating:
Summary: have bought over and over
Review: I never used to like compilations of short stories, but Sherman Alexie has changed that. This is the second book I've read by him, and I'm infatuated with his writing. The Toughest Indian in the World is about Indians from all walks of life. A woman who is unhappy with her interracial marriage, a man who is madly in love with his wife, people who feel like they have to prove that they are Indian. Even though these stories are about Indian people, anybody of any race can relate to the characters in them. I would highly reccommend this book to everybody, no matter what you like to read, you will find something to relate to here.

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Summary: Meeting "The Toughest Indian in the World"
Review: I'd been hearing a lot about Sherman Alexie prior to reading this. His work has been talked about frequently, and The New Yorker has selected him as one of the best American fiction writers under 40. As an aspiring writer myself, I decided to pick up one of his books to judge for myself. And I'm glad I did.

In Alexie's collection of short stories, The Toughest Indian in the World, he takes a look at the world from the perspectives of various Native American characters from all walks of life. From Assimilation, the story of an interracial couple, an Indian woman and a white man, trying to wade through societal pressures and cultural differences to rediscover their love for one another, to Dear John Wayne, the amusing and touching story of an elderly Native American woman recounting her alleged, brief love affair with the "real" John Wayne, these stories are about everyday people trying to find their place in this multicultural, yet divided world.

If you have fragile sensibilities, you may find this book a bit overwhelming at times. Many of the stories in this collection deal with controversial subjects such as race and sexuality with a bluntness that can be surprising to say the least. Mr. Alexie writes about these things with such frankness, never treating them with any hint of the shame or stigma often attached to them, that the reader is given the opportunity to explore them from a perspective he or she may not have considered before. Alexie treats them naturally, as normal aspects of our daily lives. And this is how it should be.

I noticed a surrealistic, sometimes tongue-in-cheek quality to Alexie's work. Some stories will leave you with a gentle smile, while others will linger in your mind long after, perhaps causing you to look at the world around you differently. Some of my favorite stories are South By Southwest, which takes us on an odyssey with Seymour, a disillusioned, heterosexual white man desperately searching for excitement and love. In his quest to find them, he holds up a House of Pancakes, demanding one dollar from each of its patrons and a traveling companion who could possibly fall in love with him. Surprisingly, he leaves the restaurant with forty-two dollars and a fat Native American man he dubs "Salmon Boy." The two travel from Spokane, Washington to the state of Arizona on a "non-violent killing spree," all the while exploring the possibility of finding true love with one another.

The very next story, The Sin Eaters, is the powerful story of an Indian boy snatched from his parents by an invading troop of soldiers, and along with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of others, is taken to a secret government facility to be used for experiments that neither the child, or the reader, ever fully understands. But the underlying emotions of despair, confusion, and the overall sense of violation and outrage at the mistreatment of a proud race of people, ring crystal clear.

Finally, perhaps my favorite is One Good Man, about a teacher who returns to the reservation in which he grew up to care for his father, who is dying of cancer. The love between these two is strong, and Alexie paints a beautiful portrait of a man struggling to cope with the impending loss of his father, while trying to understand his role in the world, often posing the question, "What is an Indian?" to himself throughout the piece. This story's poignancy will likely leave you with a smile on your face and tear in your eye. There are nine stories in all in this collection, and every one is a definite must read.

The Toughest Indian in the World is a broad, blunt, yet touching journey into the frustrating yet glorious things that make us human. Sherman Alexie's previous collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (which was the basis for his award-winning screenplay for the film, Smoke Signals), won him much acclaim and millions of fans around the world.

And now that I've read, The Toughest Indian in the World, he has one more.

Rating:
Summary: well written
Review: Sherman Alexie's book brings out many emotions...it's sad and funny and touching....it's a collection of stories about modern day Indians living in and out of the modern world.... Sherman, hats off to you!! Extremely well written book!

More people need to read and understand and stop the racism against American Indians! Maybe Sherman can help people to get a glimpse into their world! They are just like everybody else people!!

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Summary: A fine collection of short stories
Review: Though admittedly inconsistent and often unfocused and needlessly labryrinthine, Alexie's collection of short stories never cease to provide surprise, insight and honest revelation into the search for identity, place and history.

The stories selected here all search for the answer to what makes "the toughest Indian" but also what makes the "toughest human". Alexie provides many possible answers for this universal theme throughout his printed song cycle. As with all of Alexie's work, THE TOUGHEST INDIAN IN THE WORLD resounds with humor, tragedy and tender hope.These stories bodly confront the conflict between tradition, assimilation and duty. With this collection he also adds a strain of homo-eroticism as well as a celebration of education (I find it fascinating that most of his protagonists are educated and literate).

Alexie stands as one of America's finest contemporary writers. While this may not serve as his greatest work (that may be yet to come), it does provide an excellent must read.

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Summary: Half juvenilia / half mature
Review: Though not without charm, the first 5 stories in this collection, from "Assimilation" to "The Sin Eaters", were simple-minded to the point of childishness, possibly written at an earlier stage of the writer's life before he became the mature author of stories as sensitive as some of the later ones in the same book. "The Toughest Indian in the World", the title story, was published in the New Yorker magazine in a slightly different form, and presented a more adult version of Alexie's theme of gender confusion, loneliness, and stereotypical behavior; we ARE surprised by the hitchhiker's opportunism, and although Alexie's depiction of events seems (maybe intentionally) distant and cold, the protagonist's reaction strikes a genuine note of reality. However, "The Sin Eaters" was incredibly paranoid and sci-fi, like a bad TV movie for teens...and so derivative as to be downright silly. Fortunately, 4 out of the 9 stories were at least grown-up enough to be well worth reading, and I'm glad I didn't just toss the book aside in favor of something with a little more substance, because I would have missed the pleasure of reading "Saint Junior" and "One Good Man", two stories which showed the author's wonderful ability to go straight to the heart of ordinary lives. "Dear John Wayne" is also especially tongue-in-cheek and clever, poking fun at everybody, as well as being a pleasure for the feminists amongst us! All in all, definitely a mixed-breed of a book; Mr. Alexie might do better to determine in a more careful manner which of his stories are really worth publishing, and stick to those which have really developed from child to adult fare. He has a genuinely gifted sense of irony and tenderness, along with a barely-veiled anger that gives many of his stories a great deal of power, and a light-hearted touch that breezes gently as well through many of our prejudices and preconceptions. It's really too bad, though, that he can't quite get past his disdain of the "white man" to a fuller sense of humanity. We can all understand his current battle and the despicable history to which "Indios de Norte Americanos" have been subjected, which he expresses so well, but not only are they not anywhere near alone in their sense of injustice, there are of course both good and bad Indians, whites, blacks, and every other conceivable race or mixture thereof, and there will be no true "family of man" until we ALL give up our sense of injury, arrogance and illusions of superiority, no matter which one we belong to. It's time to stop stereotyping and begin to enjoy the incredible diversity we have, and Mr. Alexie, with his many talents and perceptions, has the opportunity to help bring us together instead of letting his own racial bias keep us apart.