Interview
sidebar: Sherman Alexie Speaks!
Alexie will read
from
The Toughest Indian in the World
at Twenty-third Avenue Books,
1015 NW 23rd Ave., 224-6203.
7:30 pm Thursday, May 11.
Free. It's a small store, so get there early!
Alexie mentors
young writers through the Sundance Institute and the Independent
Film Program.
Alexie says he's
too liberal to be a Democrat.
If Alexie weren't
a professional storyteller, he says he'd probably be a high-school
basketball coach.
Alexie's favorite
movie is Midnight Cowboy. "I'm as homoerotic as the
next straight guy," he confesses.
Alexie subscribes
to more than 80 magazines and has four televisions.Alexie
isn't
bothered by Indian casinos, and he doesn't mind if you ask
him about them--everyone else does.
When Sherman Alexie reads his work publicly, anything can
happen. The Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian author may juggle,
sing, do magic tricks or become irrational. At his legendary
1992 debut reading at Elliott Bay Books in his own town
of Seattle, the normally sedate, bespectacled Alexie posed
as a drunken American Indian who had staggered in off the
street, causing the uncomfortable crowd to shift their liberal
white asses on their chairs.
"It's fun to get walked out on," he says. "People don't
know what to do at my readings. I don't fit into anybody's
paradigms." If Alexie's audiences don't know quite what
to expect from him, it may be because they don't understand
who he is. He is a stellar storyteller, entertainer and
prankster, but he is also an ordinary guy who happens to
be an Indian.
In a land where white writers exploit American Indians
to give their own fiction an exotic, metaphysical air, Alexie
delivers the truth about the Indian experience. He writes
about poverty, alcoholism, cancer and government cheese.
But he didn't rise to fame solely on the trendy stilts of
multiculturalism. He would be a revered writer no matter
what; the guy can turn a phrase as smoothly as changing
TV channels with a remote control. His breakthrough 1992
book of dazzling short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven, told hilarious and heartbreaking
tales of reservation life. Though he was already an established
poet, that book pushed him into the mainsteam, and Granta
granted him the coveted Best American Writers Under 40 feather.
In his new book, The Toughest Indian in the World,
he applies his edgy, meta-postmodern, avant-garde style
to the plight of urban Indians throughout the Northwest.
Toss two novels and a movie into his collection of work,
and Alexie has become a voice for his generation and people.
But his Indian-ness creates some freaky circumstances in
his public life among the palefaces.
"One time," he recalls, "a woman grabbed my hands, thrust
them under her breasts, and told me to heal her." Perhaps
she thought that by virtue of being an American Indian,
Alexie secretes some invisible kind of goo that reveals
the mysteries of life and cures the ills of the world. But
he isn't a magical shaman practicing some ancient healing
rituals, he's just a regular dude who battles Indian stereotypes
in his work as well as in person.
Like many successful Seattleites just past 30, Alexie is
immersed in modern, popular American culture. Instead of
gazing into a magic crystal for divine messages, he looks
into his miniature DVD player. He's a computer-carrying
member of the Apple tribe--meaning Macintosh worshipers,
not the derogatory insiders' term for Indians who are red
on the outside but white on the inside. His favorite ceremony
is eating Grape Nuts in the morning. Some people may believe
Alexie channels his cultural insight through a direct line
from the Great Spirit, but it's just as likely a result
of his voracious, lifelong appetite for current movies,
television and publications.
Alexie was born and raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation
in Eastern Washington; back then he never dreamed he would
be where he is today. "I grew up in poverty with a very
uncertain next week, let alone uncertain rest of my life,"
he says. "The life I wanted was basically having a job and
food in the fridge." He survived hydrocephalus and brain
surgery as an infant, which forced him to work hard to strengthen
his mental powers: He learned to read at age 2 and tackled
Steinbeck at 5. After battling classmates' taunts--he had
a huge head and wore geeky glasses--as well as alcoholism
and the culture shock of leaving the reservation for college,
he finally found his voice as a writer.
"Every moment is beyond what I could have ever expected,"
he says about his life. "I'm crossing through so many worlds
now. There's the academic-literary world where I'm treated
with all sorts of respect. And then movies, where there's
a general celebrity thing going on."
Alexie is sailing smoothly into the Hollywood scene, riding
on the accolades of his screenplay for Smoke Signals,
a film based on a story from The Lone Ranger and Tonto
that won critical acclaim as well as two Sundance Film Festival
Awards. Next, he will direct the movie version of his novel
Reservation Blues, which presents new challenges.
"In the book world," he says, "by now they'll publish my
grocery list. I have a lot of power in that, but I have
none in the movie world. I feel like a peon, and I hate
having to wait for people to say yes to get a movie going."
To Alexie, the film industry is a very interpersonal business
based on friendships. "I've discovered that simple politeness
goes a long way," he says. "In the book world, I have a
reputation for arrogance--and I certainly am in a lot of
ways. In the movie world, I'm Prince Valiant; it's amazing
in comparison how polite I am."
As Alexie Eddie Haskells his way through the "meetings
and meetings and meetings and meetings" that will get his
movie beyond pre-pre-production, he continues with his ordinary
life in Seattle, which he claims is quite mundane.
"I'm really introverted and pretty much a loner," he says.
"My peer group are not writers or artists, they're lawyers
and accountants and librarians. I don't go out or hang out
anywhere." Alexie spends time with his family, plays basketball
with his buddies on Tuesday nights, and buries himself in
stories. He sees five or six movies a week and indulges
in a delicious diet of television.
"My favorite TV show is Emergency Vet," he reveals.
"It devastates me. The first one I saw, this really old
man, whose wife had died the month before, brought in his
bassett hound who was also ancient. He had to put the hound
down," he groans, "and you know the old guy wasn't going
to last long without his wife and his dog. He was the loneliest
person on the planet sitting there. I cried for three days."
Alexie relies on stories to inspire him. "When I write,"
he says, "I usually have something going on the CD player,
something playing on the TV, and magazines and books lying
around that I'll pick up and read a little bit from. I'll
have as much stuff in the air as possible."
Bob Maull, owner of Twenty-third Avenue Books in Northwest
Portland, agrees that Alexie has tapped into the universal
storytelling vein. Maull has seen a slew of authors spin
through the revolving door of publishing to read in his
store, including Alexie three or four times. "In terms of
sheer entertainment value," he says, "Sherman is one of
the best. People come to be entertained by him as much as
hear his work. He's very aware of that." But he believes
Alexie has matured since the first time he saw him read
in 1992. "I think he always knows what he's doing, but he
gives more thought to what he says today."
Those attending Alexie's Portland reading of The Toughest
Indian in the World should expect anything from the
enigmatic author. But they probably won't find an exasperated
Indian fed up with white wannabes this time. "It's early
in the tour," he says. "I'll still be nice."
KENNEWICK MAN: Another white guy who got lost.
THE NEW AGE: It has become institutionalized and corporate
now, to the point where people are moving on to goofier
things, like gopher worship or something.
NORTHERN EXPOSURE: I miss it. My wife and I courted
over that show.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER: Who?
HIP-HOP: I'm glad I'm older. It's not meant for me.
Oprah: Thank god for Oprah. Choose me! Choose me!
AMERICAN SPIRIT CIGARETTES: Ridiculous.
EDWARD S. CURTIS: The Indians are only smiling immediately
before and immediately after he snaps the photograph. Nice
photographs, but artificial.
TELETUBBIES: Evil. My son loves them but they kind of scare
me.
NRA: Archaic. Their worship of the Constitution, that has
otherwise been fixed and changed in all ways except for
that one area of it, is amazing to me when it was such an
elitist document. The thing I'm glad about with the NRA
is that they may end up shooting each other.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 26,
2000
|
