The Lone Ranger and Tonto...

Sherman Alexie's story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven is a collection of brief glimpses of Indians (his term) living on and off the Spokane reservation. Their lives are tragic, but their view is often to see the humor in what they experience. "Laughter through tears" was a classic description of the works of Sholem Aleichem -- who wrote about Jews on the reservation. I mean in the shtetl. The similarity is odd.

Sometimes the humor is open, sometimes indirect. In one story, a character named James Many Horses is abandoned by his wife because he makes too many jokes about death; another story says "even the other Indians got tired of his joking." (p. 203)

Food and hunger are both repeating themes in Alexie's stories, among the many themes that make the work vivid and poignant. Also beer, vodka, whiskey, and (unexpectedly) Diet Pepsi. One character thinks that "one more beer could save the world. One more beer and every chair would be comfortable. One more beer and the light bulb in the bathroom would never burn out. ... " (p. 88)

A few examples of the foods Alexie mentions: macaroni with commodity cheese, fry bread (of which the best recipe was lost when the older generation died), cheap hamburgers, Green Giant mushrooms (in absence of magic mushrooms), and a creamsicle (one of many items from the 7-11). In the delivery room a new mother has just one question about her baby son: "Will he love to eat potatoes?" (p. 81) Another character says:

... eating potatoes every day of my life, I imagined the potatoes grew larger, filled my stomach, reversed the emptiness. My sisters saved up a few quarters and bought food coloring. For weeks we ate red potatoes, green potatoes, blue potatoes. ...[We told] stories about the food we wanted most. We imagined oranges, Pepsi-Cola, chocolate, deer jerky." (p. 151)

Some of the characters have diabetes, and must politely refuse candy that a policemen offers them. One junior high kid says to a bulimic girl in his school "Give me your lunch if you're just going to throw it up." But the girls "Grow skinny from self-pity." (p. 177) An empty refrigerator begins one story. The narrator of one story is locked in the 7-11 refrigerator by a robber, who "pulled the basketball shoes off my feet, and left me waiting for rescue between the expired milk and broken eggs." (p. 150)

Poverty, hunger, exclusion from education, and being able to see the mainstream without joining it might be common points between Sholem Aleichem's village and Sherman Alexie's reservation, but the real nexus is laugher through tears. And they all ate potatoes.