/The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
stories
Finalist for the 1994 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for Best First Book of Fiction
(which means that I tied for second place)
---------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT
Sherman Alexie’s critically celebrated first collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven established its author as one of America’s most important and provocative voices. Vividly weaving memory, fantasy, and stark reality to paint a portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian reservation, this book introduces some of Alexie’s most beloved characters who inhabit his distinctive landscape. There is Thomas Builds-the-Fire, the storyteller who no one seems to listen to, and his compatriot—and sometimes not-so-great friend—Victor, the basketball hero who turned into a recovering alcoholic. Now with two new stories and an introduction from Alexie, these twenty-four interlinked tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet filled with passion and affection, myth and charm. Against a backdrop of alcohol, car accidents, laughter, and basketball, Alexie depicts the distances between Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and most poetically, modern Indians and the traditions of the past.
----------------------------------------------------
PRAISE
“Again and again, Alexie’s prose startles and dazzles with unexpected, impossible-to-anticipate moves. These are cultural love stories, and we laugh on every page with fist tight around our hearts. With this stunning collection, Sherman Alexie has become quite clearly an important new voice in American literature.” —The Boston Globe
“Poetic and unremittingly honest . . . The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is for the American Indian what Richard Wright’s Native Son was for the black American in 1940.” —The Chicago Tribune
“Spare, disturbing stories . . . with stark, lyric power.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Forget the usual stereotypes of a downtrodden people going through the slow motions on some Godforsaken land. There is, to be sure, too much booze and too little hope on the reservation in Alexie's work, but also resilient real people—living and loving, and above all, laughing.” —The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Alexie blends an almost despairing social realism with jolting flashes of visionary fantasy and a quirky sense of gallows humor. In Sherman Alexie's voice we hear the voice of a people asking questions we cannot answer or avoid.” —The Bloomsbury Review
“A compelling and impressive collection.” —The Washington Times
“An impressive collection. . . . His tales include all the ingredients of contemporary American Indian life: humor, heartbreak, and humanity.” —Willamette Week
“Stunning and compelling. Alexie is a visionary and by far the best writer I've seen published in recent years.” —Talk of the Town (Washington)
“Extremely fine. . . . Alexie writes with simplicity and forthrightness, allowing the power in his stories to creep up slowly on the reader.” —Publishers Weekly
“Lyrically beautiful and almost always very funny. Irony, grim humor, and forgiveness help characters transcend pain, anger and loss. The ability both to judge and to love gives this book its searing yet affectionate honesty.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Alexie writes with grit and lyricism that perfectly capture the absurdity of a proud, dignified people living in squalor, struggling to survive in a society they disdain. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal
“This collection of 22 short stories based on the Spokane Indian Reservation is often humorous and insightful. It views American Indian lives from a contemporary standpoint and addresses the issues facing reservation life today.” ––Diverse Issues in Higher Eduation
-----------------------------------
"SKELETONS"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
to read quotes from the book, click the logo below:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
to buy the book-made-of-paper click the logos below:
--------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------
