October 1, 2009
Yesterday I read War Dances by Sherman Alexie, his latest collection of stories, thoughts, and poems. Alexie's works are fresh, open-faced, and straightforward, without irony or subtlety. His stories are like network TV versus cable, sincere enough but without that tinge of ambiguity and surprise that mark real life characters and situations. Not that his characters are fake; his portrayals of alcoholic old men, lost boys, and lonely middle-aged guys ring true but they lack the full nuances of what such characters hold inside: they are flat, as true to life as photographs but without the flesh and blood of real people.
The stories, poems, and dialogues are too often marred by Alexie's facility with language: he is too cute with the word play or too glib -- entertaining but glib -- with observation, as when one character marvels "at the way in which a five-minute relationship can be as gratifying and complete (and sexless!) as a thirteen-year marriage." Under no circumstances that I can possibly imagine, and certainly not under the circumstances of that certain story, could that sentence to be true, or even close to truth. Or when he has a character say "I am opposable as my thumbs." What is that supposed to mean? It is cute, sounds good, but it does not mean anything and adds nothing real to the story. Or when he finishes up a poem about flying on a plane and being asked to give up his seat so a couple can sit together, with the lines, "Whenever I'm asked/To trade seats/For Somebody else's love,/I do, I always do." Those lines do not strike me as profound or even that sincere, just very easy to write and easy to read.
And that is the crux of Alexie's writing: it is easy to read. I have not read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for which he won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, but I can see that his writing style would be good for engaging kids in important questions and issues. Good for him that he covers issues that are interesting, at times provoking, and that his characters are struggling with problems of identity, responsibility, and connection. But even better if Alexie were to find more layers of thought, memories, and reaction within his characters and more possibilities for surprise within his plots, and if he used his great facility with language not to entertain us but to enlarge our view of the world.
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