the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven

With those sparse hints, the reader is expected to perform a number of jobs that are generally assumed by the writer. Little human conflict is witnessed in present time almost no attention is paid to whatever visible world surrounds the vocal line of narration, though there are frequent generic references to HUD housing, crowded saloons and powwows enriched by the omnipresent Indian fry bread. There is very little plot in any of them - plot in the sense of consecutive action with emotional outcome. Each part is named promisingly - the title piece is a good example - yet a majority of the pieces quickly dispense with the common reader's expectations of short narrative. 'The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven' is entirely in prose, its tales ranging in length from fewer than five pages to more than 10. The present volume is his first full-length work of fiction, but last year he published 'The Business of Fancydancing,' a widely praised collection of poems and sketches, and there are earlier collections of poetry, 'Old Shirts & New Skins,' 'I Would Steal Horses' and 'First Indian on the Moon.' Though the themes, the tones of voice and the names of characters are often identical in the two most recent volumes, 'The Business of Fancydancing' consists mostly of verse - laconic and grim but often humorous free-verse responses to the same world that underlies all Mr. There are three stories here that could stand in any collection of excellence - 'The Trial of Thomas Builds-the-Fire,' 'Jesus Christ's Half-Brother Is Alive and Well on the Spokane Indian Reservation' and 'Witnesses, Secret and Not.' But where Victor has no diversions more effective than alcohol from the bleakness of his reservation life, Sherman Alexie has a striking lyric power to lament and praise that same crucial strain of modern American life - the oldest and most unendingly punished strain, the Native American, as it's been transformed for many Indians through a long five centuries of brutal reduction to powerlessness and its lethal companions: alcoholism, malnutrition and suicidal self-loathing.

Alexie, Victor is a member of the Spokane Indian tribe and continues to live in the state of Washington. Victor, the central character and sometime narrator of at least half of these 22 short stories, is the same age. THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVENBy Sherman Alexie.223 pp.

The lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven