Sherman Alexie spoke here Tuesday evening, a rare chance to witness a master storyteller mixing a stand-up comic's timing, a mime's expressiveness, holding us so spellbound that the packed theater gave him a standing ovation – and the line for getting him to sign books still extended out the door a half-hour after he'd finished.
I'd read some of his novels, and liked them. In person, he was great fun. He delivered his insightful tales and observations informally, with a master's compelling mix of the natural and the practiced.
His stories were full of human stuff we recognize. We know people like that. We know parts of ourselves are like that. He spun bittersweet love stories that put us back in touch with intense moments from our own pasts, with ghosts we all carry with us.
Rarely does an audience laugh as hard or feel as wide a range of emotions as this audience did. I was laughing my tail off. So were my wife and our friends.
A few people sat stone-faced in our midst. I guessed they were people who took themselves too seriously, or had wanted an academic lecture on “New Developments in American Indian Poetry.” This wasn't that. It was personal, but compelling – and the theater, with folks occasionally tossing up a comment or answering a question he'd asked, was as lively as a southern church.
With plenty of hilarious digressions, he told us a “mostly-true” love story. Shy, smart Indian, 15, goes to school outside the Rez and falls in love with an 18-year-old girl in calculus. But her boyfriend is a gigantic defensive end. Not surprisingly, he didn't get the girl; but the story jumped between poignancy and hilarity with a speed that would have been dizzying if your life hadn't yet taught you that joy and pain are next-door neighbors.
Echoing “his” story was a tale of his son, a nerdy but gutsy kid who asked the head cheerleader to the prom – in front of the whole school. Though she's sweet about it, she declines (later, in private). He's heartbroken.
“Is love always like this?” he asks his father. Alexie paused. From the cheap seats some other fellow said “Yes.” Alexie nodded, and shrugged, palms upward, to indicate he couldn't have put it better; but then added a few more details to remind us we survive, somehow, all the stronger for our disappointments.
You could say Sherman Alexie is an American Indian writer. But it'd be like saying Shakespeare was an Elizabethan playwright, or Bergman was a Swedish director. Though some of his material might resonate with Indian readers in a special way, his words speaks to all of us – and about all of us. His fiction covers the full range of human experience and emotion.
I can't close without mentioning Tim, the American Sign Language expert who interpreted. Usually he's the invisible man, signing in plain sight but ignored by most hearing persons.
He was wonderfully expressive. He'd also interpreted when Alexie spoke here twelve years ago.
Sherman not only made him part of the show, but enhanced some of his more fun moments by saying something just to see how Tim would interpret it or, at key points, looking sideways at Tim as if to say, “Okay, interpret that!”
In short, it was a hell of an evening. We'd worried that he wouldn't get the audience he deserved. Instead, the place was packed with folks who immediately felt comfortable and were fully engaged with what Alexie was saying – and they stayed that way.
Rare, that.
[ Meanwhile, if I didn't include enough "facts" about Sherman Alexie, he's written a lot of good novels and short stories, and made the 1998 film Smoke Signals. He's a 48-year-old writer. He's also a poet. A couple of basic observations about his writing applied to his talk too: a great mix of frequently sad, poignant, painful subject-matter treated with lightness and humor. Which to me is how life is. And his own early life provided plenty to struggle through, although I think he's enjoying life now, as a family man and writer. As a writer and a man who loves his family more deeply than a lot of us do, I got the sense.]
Peter Goodman is a local writer, photographer, and sometime lawyer. He initially moved to Las Cruces in 1969, holds two degrees from NMSU, and moved back here in 2011 with his wonderful wife. This is his most recent Sunday column in the Las Cruces Sun-News. His blog Views from Soledad Canyon contains further information on this subject, as well as other comments and photographs, and past newspaper columns.