Poetry with a liberal dose of political commentary
Published 5:26 pm Thursday, October 9, 2003
By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Dowagiac can brace itself for a liberal dose of political commentary along with Sherman Alexie's poetry, "improv" and discussion of his award-winning fiction and films.
Alexie, who will be lecturing at Central Middle School Oct. 22 on the topic, "An Urban Indian's Comic, Poetic and Highly Irreverent Look at the World," didn't see anything unusual glancing down the West Coast Wednesday in the wake of the recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in favor of Hollywood Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A strong believer in the notion that a democracy gets the government it deserves, Alexie said his political passion has been "liberal since I can remember, but I hate everybody. I'm not polite onstage. Offstage I am."
Of future liberal leaders, Alexie said, "Somewhere right now a black man or woman or Chicanos are 7 or 8 (years old). They're coming and they'll talk to white people as easy as to brown people and reinvent the country again. They'll talk more about class than race. Our brown leaders haven't figured that out yet."
Alexie harbors no aspirations for public office himself.
Of the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, Alexie said, "Nobody wins in the Middle East. They've had 2,000 years to shape up and they haven't. They're not going to start now."
He said he was "polarized" early as a poor Native American standing in line for food on the Spokane Indian reservation where he grew up a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene in Wellpinit, Wash.
He was the third child, with three sisters and two brothers.
He considers Schwarzenegger's win a "novelty vote, the same angry males who elected Jesse Ventura (governor) in Minnesota."
In 2000 politicians chased "soccer moms," affluent suburban women. "NASCAR dads," small-town, blue-collar guys who love family, God, country and fast cars, could hold the key to victory in 2004 for Democratic presidential contenders.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake coined the term last year to describe rural and small-town voters, especially Southern white men who once were solidly Democratic, but who have been voting Republican in presidential politics as social issues such as race, gays and guns divided parties.
California's much-hyped balloting merely proves the power of celebrity over politics. Alexie said it might have meant a different outcome if the aging actor whose career starring in action movies is waning had to contend with a charismatic Tinseltown Democrat, say Brad Pitt instead of Davis.
In an afternoon interview from his Seattle office, Alexie, 37, laughed when apprised of the story Jim Harrison told on him in May at Dowagiac Dogwood Fine Arts Festival about him mooning an audience at Harvard University. "It must be a metaphor," Alexie said.
The four-time world heavyweight poetry champion (1998-2001), whom The New Yorker in June 1999 called one of the top writers for the 21st century, said he planned to become a doctor when he attended Washington State University.
While he always loved books, reading and storytelling -- "my culture is oriented towards myth, metaphor and storytelling" -- a college poetry class set his life on another path.
And when he exposed himself to something as powerful as "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg, it opened up language avenues he never knew existed.
Alexie said he was strongly influenced by his first and only writing teacher, such as the cadence found in his first collection of stories and poems, "The Business of Fancydancing." Its film version, which he wrote and directed, was selected for the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
Unlike another Dowagiac visiting author, Michael Collins, who writes with the movies in mind, Alexie considers himself strictly "a writer at heart. Films are tertiary."
He said as a Native American, it would be "funny" for him to look at it any other way because he writes about Indians, and "no one makes movies about Indians."
His next book, which will be published next fall, will be non-fiction, a memoir about his family's relationship with war since an ancestor died on Okinawa during World War II.
Alexie's first collection of short stories, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," published in 1994, was the basis for his first screenplay, "Smoke Signals."
It became the first feature film produced, written and directed by American Indians when it premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy.
Call Visiting Authors Chairman Rich Frantz at 269/782-8070 for ticket information.