Review of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by S

Sherman Alexie’s debiut The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven gives its readers an insight into the contemporary Native American life. The book contains 22 stories revolving around events on and off the Spokane Indian reservation in the state of Washington. The collection does not seem to have one prominent character, but a bunch of Alexie’s “cousins.” He must have known them well at the time of his growing up as well as at the time of their maturity, as some of the stories change the time perspective, recalling events preceded by gaps of several years. Also there is no coherent story line that would connect them one way or another. Instead, the writer treats the formal aspect of the collection as its characters treat life, with a big dose of amused tolerance. The life depicted in the stories is slow-paced and uneventful according to the standards from outside of the reservation, but through its irony and great sense of humor, Alexie manages to keep us interested.

I will not be tempted to put Alexie’s book into the literary context by comparing it with works by Louise Erdrich and other well known authors from “The ethnic shelf”, as

In "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star Spangled Banner' at Woodstock" Alexie uses the famous song as a symbol of Victor’s connection to his father, who appears to him as an authority knowing the world. Irony and humour is also evident: “I was conceived during one of those drunken nights, half of me formed by my father’s whiskey sperm, the other half by my mother’s vodka egg” . In "The Only Traffic Signal on the Reservation Doesn't Flash Red Anymore," two friends sit on a porch and observe the people passing by and comment on their problems. One of them is a basketball player who could have escape from the reservation through sport, but submerged in the local malaise, lost his chance.

Some of the stories are distracting and inconsistent with the others in the collection, as a reader, I found them difficult to understand, yet some critics look at them quite favourably, saying that it is a masterful manipulation of the conventional, narrative combined with the tradition of Indian story telling(Martin Kich). example: “Crazy horse Dream” or “Witnesses, Secret or Not” What is also very confusing is the number of narrators which makes it hard to follow as they use different perspectives.

Alexie stops his narra

Some topics in this essay:
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