Having just finished The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, I thought it would be appropriate to devote the entirety of this week's blog post to it. Although I certainly can't say that I even came close to enjoying the book, it did make me wonder about several things in the American Indian community.
For starters, would most Indians consider Sherman Alexie's version of them true? I don't doubt that many of the events depicted in the book are accurate to his childhood, adolescence, and adult life, but I'm not so sure about the ideas he fuses into the stories. There seems to be a definite current of inherited defeat that is presented so literally that it's like a genetic disorder. Many of the characters seem to be born with their spirits stepped on. While I look at this and consider it to be the overall cultural effect of various forms of suppression, oppression, and repression, I wonder why Alexie didn't choose to have a single character that led a happy, successful, and fulfilling existence. While the Spokane Indian reservation does seem like a depressing place to live, he takes great pains to describe how Indians can always laugh. They laugh at themselves, they laugh at their physical injuries, and they laugh at their diseases. So why is it so hard for them to find rays of hope? To me it seemed like Alexie was trying to say that Indians live a more 'in the moment' kind of life, but that life style seems to lose its validity when most of the moments are either seen through a drunken haze or spent toiling under the judgmental nose of whitey. That seems like something that would foster a united, sober, and maybe slightly xenophobic attitude. Instead, the Indians seem to regard other Indians not as brothers and sisters but as rivals and drinking buddies.
I imagine a large part of my confusion comes from the 'well you didn't live it' factor but I don't believe for a second that there wasn't one Indian from that reservation that lived a happy existence. I'm willing to bet there was more than a handful of them that never had alcohol problems and actually had hobbies separate from dancing, storytelling, playing basketball, and making fry bread. (Coincidentally, fry bread seems to be just about the only pleasant image in the book)
Another thing I would like to point out is the similarity between Sherman Alexie's 'stories' told by his characters, and the trickster tales that we read. They share the same kind of logic that I just can't wrap my head around. For instance, when several Indian boys tell Thomas Builds-the-fire to incorporate the surrounding elements into a story, the story makes very little sense. it involves an Indian stealing a hot dog and drowning and a hot dog vendor who turns himself into a duck. The other boys deem Thomas's story to be so good that they give him twenty dollars and some change. Just like with Coyote and rabbit though, I don't get where the 'quality' of the story comes from. How are we supposed to tell if one trickster tale or Indian story is better than another when none of them establish an internal logic?
That leads me to my biggest issue with Alexie's writing. He uses so many contradictory statements that I lose track of what he may or may not be trying to say. He describes victory as defeat, lovers as people who hurt you, and friends as the ones who used to beat you bloody in the schoolyard. While one of these on their own could be used to shine a light on the complex and admittedly contradictory nature of human relationships, taking them all together just creates a puddle of a world where no one ever achieves anything. All they ever seem to get is a good laugh, hung over, or some cognitive dissonance.
Is this how Alexie sees life? Or is it how he sees the life of an Indian? Either way it presents a world view of constant struggle and an absence of progress. It's like watching someone run in place, give up, turn around, and then run in place in the opposite direction. It makes me wonder why he really wrote this book. Was it intended just as a window into that reservation at the time he grew up? If it was you could probably call it a success. if it was meant to show the richness of American Indian thought, soul, and culture... well I can't say it failed because it doesn't even seem to have tried.
What I'm hoping to get in one of the other books we read this semester is a point of view that is Anti-Alexie. I want to hear from an American Indian that seems defiant rather than defeated. Maybe that's just me playing into another bias or stereotype. I honestly don't know. I turn to books for education, hope, wit, and thrills... none of which seem to come from Sherman Alexie.
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