Rick Simonson

Sherman and the NBA

For those who follow such things, the deepening and darkening of fall lead to, among other things, the beginning of basketball season. One who follows such things devotedly is Sherman Alexie. He who writes would also play - does play. You can read in more than a few places in his work, especially his newest novel, the recently released The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian (Little, Brown), that basketball is a passionate concern. Living in Seattle as Sherman does, one of his passionate concerns gets to be the Seattle Sonics of the NBA - a team possibly doomed for exit from Seattle after over forty years, owing to a bad sequence of ownership and the insane world of pro basketball finances. Through thick and thin, over all the years Sherman has lived here after moving from Spokane, he has been a season ticket holder and regular attendee at Sonic games. With the team's Oklahoma owners suing to be able to leave after this next season, interest in the team has fallen away in droves. Not for Sherman, though. He'll be there as long as the team is (and watch out, Portland, if they do move ...).

Whether or not the Sonics have a game come November 14, that night will find Sherman in the ranks of a whole other NBA, very much at center court, as this week's National Book Award final nominations included him and his spirited, powerful, autiobiographical coming-of-age story tabbed in the Young People's Literature category. It was his first such nomination after over fifteen books of fiction and poetry over the past fifteen years.

Sherman was on the road - having just read for Louise Erdrich's bookstore, Birchbark Books, in Minneapolis - when word of the nomination came. Very much on the road now, a Seattle landing still almost feels like the road - except that it is home, family, the known bed. This past Thursday, October 11, his first public night since receiving the NBA nomination, it so happened it was a reading we were involved in, a co-presentation by Elliott Bay and the Seattle Public Library. Again we were there in the Rem Koolhaas cool house of books (while Alan Cheuse was reading from his newest at Elliott Bay), Central Library's steep-rising auditorium packed and beyond. Among those on hand, the revered Upper Skagit tribal elder, teller of stories, and carrier of the local native Lushootseed language Vi Hilbert. She is way up there in years, is frail, clearly, but clearly taking it in. She is the only person I've ever seen get the verbal best of Sherman. Some years ago, after one of Sherman's readings, there was banter between the two, possibly her taking him gently to task for some of his language ('this is your grandmother speaking'). Sherman was sure he got the last word in when he said, 'Ah Vi, I could see from up on stage that you were flirting with me.' To which Vi replied, not missing a beat, 'Oh you know, Sherman, I don't go for men with skinny butts.' The Sherman was speechless.

It's been fifteen years, and most of the fifteen-plus books, since Sherman first staggered onto an Elliott Bay reading stage (the staggering was some bravado theatre, a drunken Indian poet bit of performance) for his first full-length book of stories and poems, The Business of Fancydancing. The one thing in common throughout is that Sherman lays it out there, seems to keep himself from ever getting too set or too comfortable, and definitely will work to keep an audience from getting too sure of itself. Alert is good. Interestingly, another who is very good at that had been in the very same space twenty-four hours before, was Walter Mosley. Six months before - I think there's an unfinished piece on the two of them in sequence - we had another one-two night in sequence of these same two prolific writers. Walter also, as with Sherman, for all the reader-friendliness that's there, will say things to rattle the comfort zone. Somehow they have not yet met.

This night Sherman has with him Seattle graphic novel creator Ellen Forney, herself a popular bright spark. Her sensitive drawings give visual texture to the story Alexie writes - which is the closest thing to true memoir he has yet written. I'm not sure if he had cartoonist aspirations as young Arnold/Junior does in The Absolutely True but it's a nice part of the story, which Forney's work fleshes out with empathy and wit. Part of the evening is the two of them doing a power-point stroll through parts of the book.

While The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian is fiction, those who've known, heard, or read other things Sherman's written or said, know how close this young adult story is to the story of him growing up - the conflicts of living and then leaving, for school, Spokane Indian reservation life, of being in two places, two nations, and yet no place, so it could feel. It's moving work on the page, and in the talk-out on stage, it almost brought Sherman himself to a weepy pause as he described crucial points in his life which the book narrates, especially the part his late father played. On this night, Sherman talks of the life of this book, how proud and happy he is that it's the book it is, where it is, what's happening with it, but also what it is to tell his story, his family's story, over and over as he travels. It clearly has him a bit wobbling with the words, he talks of what it's like to be so far from home, to say and do all of this and then go to some lonely hotel room, and to call home, to find and talk to his wife ... everyone, hundreds are right there waiting for the tender words surely to come, the great insight of loss and love, death and renewal ... but Sherman? ... 'and then, then we have phone sex.' The audience stops for the slightest moment - almost a what? - but then realizing and roaring laughter. This is Sherman, he who shoots and drains the most improbable 3-pointers. It's a shot that doesn't look like it will go, but go it does. Here's hope for his game on November 14.

Posted by Rick Simonson on October 12, 2007 | Comments (2)