fever and flight
Just as the weather turns wondrously warm, the nasty cold that has been skulking around the edges all week pounces at last: I am sick, and holed up at home drinking lime-and-gingery whiskey things and reciting Dunbar (I that in heill wes and gladnes/Am trublit now with gret seiknes,/And feblit with infermite....) in a self-pitying fashion. But I am somewhat cheered by the news (via Laila Lalami) that Sherman Alexie has a new book coming out this month--a novel called Flight. While I am more partial to his short stories, any new fiction from Alexie is cause for celebration. I loaned two volumes of the former to Anand over the holidays and have been meaning to indulge in some rereading ever since I got them back. If you're new to Alexie, though, you might start with The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which I still think is the best title for a short story collection ever.
Update: aha! praise to the blessed mystery of the New Yorker archive (sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't)--here is "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" online, for free.
Update: aha! praise to the blessed mystery of the New Yorker archive (sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't)--here is "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" online, for free.
posted by kitabet at 7:45 PM
3 Comments:
i met alexie years ago at the Seattle DMV. we were both getting our licenses renewed. the sole thought on my mind was what book i'd brought with me, since i didn't want to be judged badly (it was a friend's play manuscript, so not too bad). he's very friendly.
a close friend and i disagree about which is better lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven or (my favorite) toughest indian in the world. two stories in particular always amaze me: the hilarious "south by southwest" and the last story about the son and father. have you read those?
and all this time i'd thought that a trip to the Wash. state DMV was an unenviable thing! He seems like someone who would be friendly. I've never met him, but I was born in Spokane, in a hospital named in the pages of his books.
--and that's a bloody hard question: forced, i'd say i'm with your friend, but because Lone Ranger was the first of Alexie's books I found and loved, and the only one I've carried with me across years & oceans. Some lines from "Imagining the Reservation" are personal scripture by now, committed to memory. But "Toughest Indian" is brilliant also, and yes, the story of the diabetic father, especially. And I know it's more uneven, but I still love "Ten Little Indians" too--the one about the marriage, in particular, simply leaves me undone.
Jesus, he's good, no?
he's really amazing. once i start reading again (i'm in a strong writing mode, so it's impossible to be open to other stories when i'm engaged with my own) i hope to look at his poetry.
ugh...so much excellent literature out there to read and never enough time.
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