Annotation #17

Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press,
1993.

   Often I'm driven to wonder how much my opinion of a particular work is affected by whatever else I've read from the author, or what motion picture adaptations I've seen of the work, or what interviews with the author I've read. Or worse yet, what other literary criticism has had to say. In this particular case, somehow I've found myself not enjoying Alexie's fiction as much as I remember I did the first time I read it, and I wonder if that is due in part to Alexie's own film adaptation, Smoke Signals, or perhaps to his caustic interviews. The book is a collection of stories, told from multiple viewpoints and in different styles, of a group of characters living mostly on an Indian reservation in Washington state. The stories aren't necessarily meant to make a narrative whole, particularly since some seem to place characters in different times and/or places than what was established earlier in the book. Instead of there being a linear (or even non-linear) narrative, the stories are connected by the characters, places, and moods running through them. This might be considered a more contemporary version of Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio or Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. The varied pieces together make a picture of the desperation of reservation life, carefully including the kind of gallows humor and guarded optimism that is necessary for survival. And it's here that my second reading was less enjoyable than the first.

     Someway, somehow, the book didn't seem as fun the second time through. I seemed to find less humor in it, after having seen the film Smoke Signals, which adapted elements from the book into a more linear form and seemed a little warmer and friendlier in its storytelling. My best guess as to why would be the actors' voices having given extra personality to Alexie's words, while the book remains spare. Probably I used less of my imagination on reading it the second time, and suffered as a consequence. In any case, it's an excellent look at loneliness and fear of failure in contemporary life.

     Not merely a political work, Alexie's Lone Ranger and Tonto brings to life a number of characters who struggle in their own words to make some sense of their lives, and to keep some small measure of hope burning. The majority of the stories come from various periods of his character Victor's life, sometimes including his father. Here, his father tries to defend his favorite music, as the only way he knows to express himself:

    "Hank Williams and Jimi Hendrix don't have much in common," I said.
     "Hell, yes, they do. They knew all about broken hearts," my father said.
     "You sound like a bad movie."
     "Yeah, well, that's how it is. You kids today don't know shit about romance. Don't know shit about music either. Especially you Indian kids. You all have been spoiled by those drums. Been hearing them beat so long, you think that's all you need. Hell, son, even an Indian needs a piano or guitar or saxophone now and again" (30).

Throughout the book, Alexie imbues the characters with their own voices, struggling in their own ways to share their pain, but also their hopes. Most are inarticulate and struggle, though Thomas Builds-the-Fire is eloquent.

From the time he's a boy, Thomas closes his eyes and conjures up stories, wonderful ones in fact, but after the first telling he loses his audience. Everyone on the reservation has heard his stories so many times that they avoid him, so as not to hear the stories again, as though he were a lunatic to be avoided. Thomas becomes a kind of metaphor, representing the shared experience the book's characters are neglecting, afraid as they are of failure, of being swallowed by the rest of the world. Trouble is, in trying to hide and find comfort, they neglect the thing most essential to their health. Like so many others, they dismiss the challenge of their heritage and creativity, especially if it involves understanding their place in the world. The fear of finding that place not to one's liking is simply too great to even try; better to resign oneself to fate. Thomas knows better, and when Victor owes him a favor, he asks:

    "Just one time when I'm telling a story somewhere, why don't you stop and listen?" Thomas asked.
     "Just once?"
     "Just once" (75).

Looking at what others have had to say about Alexie's writing, and about Native American literature in general, the phrase "magic realism" comes up quite frequently. It's a tempting phrase but ultimately unsatisfactory. There's nothing really magical about the events as seen by the characters in the story. If anything, they feel more proficient at explaining themselves in terms of poetry and fantastical figures. This is simply their way of relating their experience. To try and get in their head to find out what's "real" would be missing the point. In the first story of the book, young Victor experiences his parents' party as a hurricane. To try and verify that there was no hurricane but in fact a drunken and violent party altogether misses Victor's point, that something wild and destructive passed through his house on that night. Victor may simply tell the story that way, with poetic license, or he may firmly believe that was what happened, but in any case the reader has to take his word for it and not try to find any other meanings or to slap some label on it. And I think most readers do take his word for it. It's just those silly people who write "literary criticism" who need to quit trying so hard to classify everything.

Victor thinks hard about his own, subjective world, realizing that much of life is simply how we choose to perceive it:

My father's mind always worked that way. If you don't like the things you remember, then all you have to do is change the memories. Instead of remembering the bad things, remember what happened immediately before. That's what I learned from my father. For me, I remember how good the first drink of that Diet Pepsi tasted instead of how my mouth felt when I swallowed a wasp with the second drink.
Because of all that, my father always remembered the second before my mother left him for good and took me with her. No. I remembered the second before my father left my mother and me. No. My mother remembered the second before my father left her to finish raising me all by herself (33-34).

It's because of moments of clarity like this that I believe the variation between two people's versions of "reality" are at least as disparate as any critic's explaining of the difference between "realism" and "magic realism." This is storytelling, not chemistry or biology. There are some things classification simply should not be applied to.

There's a lot Alexie's writing has in common with the blues; there's a lot of lamenting past mistakes going on here. A lot of looking back, a lot of regret, a kind of slow-burning resolve to keep on living regardless, and an occasional laugh, despite everything. Here is a typical lonely moment, after Victor's girlfriend has left him:

When dawn finally arrived, he lay awake for a few minutes, ran his tongue over his teeth. He reached out and touched the other half of his bed. No one was supposed to be there; he just stretched his arms. Then he rose quickly, showered, shaved, and sat at the kitchen table with his coffee and newspaper. He read headlines, a few Help Wanted ads, and circled one with a pencil.
"Good morning," he said aloud, then louder. "Good morning" (85).

(On a side note: if you happen to see Smoke Signals, pay attention to the song lyrics and you'll see the parallels especially clear. I happened to watch it with the captioned text on and was shocked to realize I was watching a movie where the song lyrics actually mattered.) Also like the blues, the book isn't necessarily a downer. Instead, it's as moving and as therapeutic as listening to an old blues record can be.

All contents, except where otherwise noted, are copyright Andrew Lee Hunn.

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