The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

From the Publisher

About the Author

SHERMAN ALEXIE has been described as "one of the major lyric voices of our time" by the New York Times Book Review, which selected his The Business of Fancydancing as a "1992 Notable Book of the Year." Alexie's several books of poetry include Old Shirts & New Skins, The Summer of Black Widows, and the recently published One Stick Song. Named one of "20 Writers for the 21st Century" by The New Yorker, Alexie competed in and won the World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout at the Taos Poetry Circus in 1998, 1999 and 2000, becoming the first poet in the history of the Bout to hold the title for three years.

Alexie's first screenplay, Smoke Signals, based on his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, became the first feature film produced, written, and directed by American Indians. It premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy. In 1999 Smoke Signals received a Christopher Award, an award given for works of art "which affirm the highest values of the human spirit."

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, published in 1994, was a citation winner for the PEN/Hemmingway Award for Best First Fiction. Other works of fiction include Reservation Blues, selected as a Booklist Editor's Choice Award for Fiction; Indian Killer, a New York Times Notable Book and one of People magazine's "Best of Pages" choices; and his most recent short story collection, The Toughest Indian in The World, published by Atlantic Monthly press in May 2000.

Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian from Wellpinit, Washington-a town on the Spokane Indian reservation. He currently resides in Seattle, WA, with his wife and son, and is working on new poems and stories.

New York Times Book Review

These spare, disturbing stories trace with stark, lyric power the experience of American Indians in the modern world.

New York Times Book Review

These spare, disturbing stories trace with stark, lyric power the experience of American Indians in the modern world.

Bloomsbury Review

Alexie blends an almost despairing social realism with jolting flashes of visionary fantasy and a quirky sense of gallows humor.

Washington Times

A compelling and impressive collection.

Chicago Tribune

Poetic [and] unremittingly honest...The Long Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is for the American Indian what Richard Wright's Native Son was for the black American in 1940.

New York Times Book Review

These spare, disturbing stories trace with stark, lyric power the experience of American Indians in the modern world.

Talk of the Town Washington

Stunning and compelling. Alexie is a visionary and by far the best writer I've seen published in recent years.

The New York Times Book Review - Reynolds Price

There is very little plot in any of {the stories}--plot in the sense of consecutive action with emotional outcome. Little human conflict is witnessed in present time; almost no attention is paid to whatever visible world surrounds the vocal line of narration. . . . The great surprise is that given such narrow bounds, Mr. Alexie's strength proves sufficient to compel clear attentionthrough sizable lengths of first-person voice. . . . Above all, he lures us with a live and unremitting lyric energy in the fast-moving, occasionally surreal and surprisingly comic language of his progress.

World Literature Today - Alan R. Velie

{The author's} latest work, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist-fight in Heaven, somewhere between a novel and a collection of short stories, a la Louise Erdrich's {book} Love Medicine {BRD 1985}, establishes him not only as one of the best of the Indian writers but as one of the most promising of the new generation of American writers.

Library Journal

This work chronicles modern life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Victor, through whose eyes we view the community, is strongly aware of Native American traditions but wonders whether his ancestors view today's Indians--mired in alcohol, violence, and an almost palpable sense of despair--with sympathy or disgust. In spite of the bleakness of reservation life, the text brims with humor and passion as it juxtaposes ancient customs with such contemporary artifacts as electric guitars and diet Pepsi. The author of two previous poetry collections, Alexie writes with grit and lyricism that perfectly capture the absurdity of a proud, dignified people living in the squalor, struggling to survive in a society they disdain. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.-- Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.

Kirkus Reviews

With wrenching pain and wry humor, the talented Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian-and previously a small-press author (The Business of Fancydancing, a collection of poetry and prose-not reviewed-etc.)-presents contemporary life on the Spokane Indian Reservation through 22 linked stories. Here, people treat each other (and life) with amused tolerance-although anger can easily erupt in this environment of endemic alcoholism and despair. The history of defeat is ever- present; every attempt to hold onto cultural tradition aches with poignancy: Thomas-Builds-the-Fire is the storyteller everyone mocks and no one listens to; Aunt Nezzy, who sews a traditional full- length beaded dress that turns out to be too heavy to wear, believes that the woman "who can carry the weight of this dress on her back...will save us all." Meanwhile, young men dream of escape-going to college, being a basketball star-but failure seems preordained. These tales, though sad and at times plain- spokenly didactic, are often lyrically beautiful and almost always very funny. Chapters focus on and are narrated by several different characters, but voices and perspectives often become somewhat indistinguishable-confusing until you stop worrying about who is speaking and choose to listen to the voice of the book itself and enter into its particular sensibility. Irony, grim humor, and forgiveness help characters transcend pain, anger and loss while the same qualities make it possible to read Alexie's fiction without succumbing to hopelessness. Forgiveness seems to be the last moral/ethical value left standing: the ability both to judge and to love gives the book itssearing yet affectionate honesty. (First printing of 25,000; First serial rights to Esquire and Story)

Publishers Weekly

Known primarily as a poet, Alexie ( Old Shirts and New Skins ), a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, here offers 22 extremely fine short stories, all set on or around the Spokane reservation in Washington state. Characters flow from one tale to the next; many involve Victor, who grows from a small child watching relatives fight during a New Year's Eve party (``Every Little Hurricane'') to a dissolute man sitting on his broken-down porch with a friend, watching life pass him by (``The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore''). The author depicts with fierce determination all the elements of modern Native American life, from basketball and alcoholism to powwows and the unexplained deaths of insignificant people. Humor and tragedy exist side by side, and stories often jump back and forth in time and space, recounting two narratives that ultimately prove to be skeins of the same tale. Alexie writes with simplicity and forthrightness, allowing the power in his stories to creep up slowly on the reader. He captures the reservation's strong sense of community and attitude of hope tinged with realism as its inhabitants determine to persevere despite the odds. In ``Imagining the Reservation'' (a title that evokes John Lennon's song ``Imagine'') he writes, ``Survival = Anger Imagination. Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation''--a weapon this author wields with potent authority. First serial to Esquire. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Known primarily as a poet, Alexie ( Old Shirts and New Skins ), a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, here offers 22 extremely fine short stories, all set on or around the Spokane reservation in Washington state. Characters flow from one tale to the next; many involve Victor, who grows from a small child watching relatives fight during a New Year's Eve party (``Every Little Hurricane'') to a dissolute man sitting on his broken-down porch with a friend, watching life pass him by (``The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore''). The author depicts with fierce determination all the elements of modern Native American life, from basketball and alcoholism to powwows and the unexplained deaths of insignificant people. Humor and tragedy exist side by side, and stories often jump back and forth in time and space, recounting two narratives that ultimately prove to be skeins of the same tale. Alexie writes with simplicity and forthrightness, allowing the power in his stories to creep up slowly on the reader. He captures the reservation's strong sense of community and attitude of hope tinged with realism as its inhabitants determine to persevere despite the odds. In ``Imagining the Reservation'' (a title that evokes John Lennon's song ``Imagine'') he writes, ``Survival = Anger Imagination. Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation''--a weapon this author wields with potent authority. First serial to Esquire. (Sept.)

Library Journal

This work chronicles modern life on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Victor, through whose eyes we view the community, is strongly aware of Native American traditions but wonders whether his ancestors view today's Indians--mired in alcohol, violence, and an almost palpable sense of despair--with sympathy or disgust. In spite of the bleakness of reservation life, the text brims with humor and passion as it juxtaposes ancient customs with such contemporary artifacts as electric guitars and diet Pepsi. The author of two previous poetry collections, Alexie writes with grit and lyricism that perfectly capture the absurdity of a proud, dignified people living in the squalor, struggling to survive in a society they disdain. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/93.-- Dan Bogey, Clearfield Cty. P.L. Federation, Curwensville, Pa.

BookList

Alexie confronts as much as he depicts modern Native American life in these stories set in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. The narrative voice that relates and links these stories is powerful because of its directness. For example, in "A Drug Called Tradition," the narrator explains that Native Americans can sometimes hear their ancestors laughing in the trees, "but we never can tell whether they're laughing at the Indians or the whites. I think they're laughing at pretty much everybody." The narrator's diagnosis is equally direct, and cultural assumptions about the influence of the past on the present and future are clear, but they are not beyond the narrator's scrutiny as he wonders "how each of us constructs our past to justify what we feel now." Both the narrator and the stories he tells offer insights that are well worth reading.

Kirkus Reviews

With wrenching pain and wry humor, the talented Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian—and previously a small-press author (The Business of Fancydancing, a collection of poetry and prose—not reviewed—etc.)—presents contemporary life on the Spokane Indian Reservation through 22 linked stories. Here, people treat each other (and life) with amused tolerance—although anger can easily erupt in this environment of endemic alcoholism and despair. The history of defeat is ever- present; every attempt to hold onto cultural tradition aches with poignancy: Thomas-Builds-the-Fire is the storyteller everyone mocks and no one listens to; Aunt Nezzy, who sews a traditional full- length beaded dress that turns out to be too heavy to wear, believes that the woman "who can carry the weight of this dress on her back...will save us all." Meanwhile, young men dream of escape—going to college, being a basketball star—but failure seems preordained. These tales, though sad and at times plain- spokenly didactic, are often lyrically beautiful and almost always very funny. Chapters focus on and are narrated by several different characters, but voices and perspectives often become somewhat indistinguishable—confusing until you stop worrying about who is speaking and choose to listen to the voice of the book itself and enter into its particular sensibility. Irony, grim humor, and forgiveness help characters transcend pain, anger and loss while the same qualities make it possible to read Alexie's fiction without succumbing to hopelessness. Forgiveness seems to be the last moral/ethical value left standing: the ability both to judge and to love gives the book itssearing yet affectionate honesty. (First printing of 25,000; First serial rights to Esquire and Story)

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