Porter Shreve

Sherman Alexie came to Purdue this past Thursday on tour with his first novel in ten years, Flight. I was eager to hear him read from the book, which he admits is something of a more open-hearted take on his 1996 novel, Indian Killer. Over the course of a full day that included a question and answer session, an awards banquet and an evening "reading," the 40 year old author of 18 books barely discussed his new novel. But no one was disappointed. In fact, Alexie proved to be the most entertaining writer/performer I've ever seen take the stage. Combining standup comedy with brilliant storytelling he let pretty much everyone have it: privileged liberals, holier-than-thou vegans, fundamentalists of every stripe, conservative zealots, gays and straights, anyone who perpetuates the Native American myth of the land and most of all, himself ("I'm a bad Indian. I can't stand nature. For me, the outdoors is a long hallway between buildings.")

At the heart of the performance was a story about Alexie's appearance a couple years ago on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where Oprah presented him with some long-lost medals his grandfather had earned in World War II. As with all of Alexie's work, the layers of irony in this moment are almost infinite: before a televised audience and a studio of mostly white housewives a descendant of slaves presents government-issued medals to a descendant of an Indian warrior who fought under the flag that conquered his own people.

In a 1998 interview with Cineaste, Alexie said, "I think humor is the most effective political tool out there, because people will listen to anything if they're laughing. The reason why someone like Rush Limbaugh is so popular is because he's damn funny. Even I - a dedicated liberal/communist/socialist kind of guy - listen to him once in a while, because you gotta know what the enemy's up to, but he makes me laugh in spite of myself. He'll be spouting this racist, homophobic, sexist, neanderthal stuff, and I'll be laughing, and thinking, "Oh God!" It's because he's funny that people respond to him. I think one thing that liberals have a decided lack of is a sense of humor. There's nothing worse than earnest emotion and I never want to be earnest. I always want to be on the edge of offending somebody, of challenging one notion or another, and never being comfortable not only with myself, or with my own politics or my character's politics, or their lives, but with everybody else's. Humor is really just about questioning the status quo, that's all it is."

For Alexie's tour blog, click here. And to see if he's coming to a city near you, click here.