Let's look at one of my favorite stories from this collection, "Jesus Christ's Half-Brother is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation." Just the title alone is a poem. Set in urban areas and on the reservation, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a brilliant, gritty collection of short stories that was originally based on a dream of Alexie's, during a time in his early twenties when he was a heavy, heavy drinker. But there are stories that you can't get over, that are exploding with beauty, stories that haunt me and have for twenty years. Lone Ranger doesn't have the crisp brutality and poetry of Diaz's Drown (1996) (yet another writer whose behavior has come to light), nor the impeccable polish of Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies (1999). My history, and it is the history of so many female writers, is intertwined with his. Even though the book had been so fundamental to my development as a writer, I decided I would not teach his book again, not until he is gone-he was not allowed to take that beauty from me. When I decided to write this, I had fully come to understand the import of what the author had given to me. Though it will come as a surprise to many, my favorite short story collection after all this time is still Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |