Sherman Alexie: Going Paperback Is Not a Crime

Sherman Alexie will read Thursday, June 7, at 6:00 PM at the Brattle Theatre. Tickets are $2 and available at Porter Square Books. Now - this event is sold out - but do what you gotta do.

Novelist, poet, blogger, and serious NBA fan Sherman Alexie's latest book went straight to paperback. That's not a big deal, but it became a big deal to Alexie when Jenny Shank, a reviewer, wondered if the book went to paperback instead of hardcover because the publisher was underwhelmed with his work.

And Alexie retaliated, lest anyone judge a book not by the appearance of the cover but by the thickness of the cover. Of Shank, he said her inexperience in publishing showed, and her "arrogance was astonishing." Time did say the guy was "septic with his own unappeasable anger."

Alexie's reaction was touchy, and the author of the review said that she would have been underwhelmed by the book whether it were paperback or hardcover. Shank, who said "Flight is the only work by Alexie that I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed," also admitted that she didn't know that "straight to paperback" wasn't always bad news for a book. That's fair enough.

So, how about the pages inside Alexie's latest work? The subject matter is pertinent in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech. The plot follows a troubled half-Native American/half-white teenager named Zits who can't get on the right path. But his problems go way beyond garden-variety teen angst.

After suffering in the foster system, Zits is on the verge of becoming a killer, but fate intervenes and transports him back in time for a series of lessons about his past and violence in general. He skips from body to body to experience violence from the perspective of white and Native American people during critical moments, such as during Little Big Horn and after 9/11.