Sherman's 2007 Flight Book Tour Blog Entries


June 1
May 30
May 10
May 8
April 18
April 17
April 15

---

June1
I'm in NYC for Book Expo and I am dejected. Not by my book [which is selling very well and has received a curious and binary critical response (all of the reviews east of the Mississippi are positive; all of the reviews west of the big river are negative)], but by the fact that I am missing the NBA playoffs.

I was on the airplane from San Francisco to New York yesterday when LeBron James had an epic game, 48 points, 9 rebounds, 7 assists, including the last 25 points for Cleveland in a double-overtime classic win over Detroit. I got to see the highlights, and will eventually see the game on ESPN Classic, but I didn't get to see it live, didn't get to celebrate and curse and shout and dance as LeBron went crazy. (Here, I remember a Larry Bird game in which he was making such incredible shots and completely destroying his opponents, the Atlanta Hawks, that they were laughing and cursing and pushing one another and falling out of their seats on the bench).

I never got the chance to hear Nirvana do "Smells like Teen Spirit" live, either. And I never got to see Dylan Thomas read in person, either. I've got Nirvana AND Dylan Thomas recorded live on my IPod, but it's not the same. I've got the replicas, the audio nostalgia, the assumed memory. And now I'll just have the replays of LeBron's game. Beautiful replays, to be sure, but I won't be able to say, "I watched it live." Double bummer.

back to top

---

May 30
Last night, I walked to my gig on Valencia St., happy and secure in the knowledge that I always get a big and appreciative and rowdy audience in the Bay Area. However, as I arrived, I noticed that a very small crowd of folks was milling about. I walked into the building and looked for somebody official (of course, since I was reading for Modern Times, one of the last great commie bookstores, official could be represented by any manner of dress), and only saw what appeared to be the teacher of a college class.

"Hey," she said. "You're Sherman Alexie. What are you doing here?"

On the short list of things you don't want to hear when you walk into your performance venue, that's somewhere in the top three, not as terrible as "This baby is yours, you irresponsible whore," but damn close.

And so I, being one of the so-called major lyric voices of our time, said, "Er, um, ah, er, um, ah, er, I think I, um, er, ah, am supposed to be reading here tonight. It, er, um, ah, says so on my schedule right now."

"Oh," the teacher said. "I didn't hear about that. You must be in the auditorium."

So she walks over to a door, swings it open, and reveals a dark and empty little theatre.

"Ah," I, being the loyal sidekick of Captain Obvious, said. "That's a dark and empty theatre."

The teacher and I were silent.

One of her colleagues walked by and she said, "Hey, this is Sherman Alexie, he's a writer, have you ever heard of him?" The other teacher regarded me for a moment, said "No," and walked on.

I was humiliated, convinced that:

1. My career was suddenly over, that I would never draw a single audience member to one of my readings ever again.
2. That one should not trust the organizational skills of commie bookstore operators.
3. That one of the loneliest places in the world is a dark and empty theatre on Valencia Street in San Francisco.
4. Writers have an intense form of post-traumatic stress syndrome in which we remember, at the slightest provocation, our most humiliating performance experience.
5. Which hurtled me back to 1992 and the six person audience at Snow Goose Books in Camano Island, Washington:
two that I brought, two that just happened to be in the book store, one that thought I was an entirely other Native writer, and one that came to see me.
6. Which made me think, "Wow, I don't even have one for this reading, in the book-crazy Bay Area, in 2007."

So I shambled out of the building, and stood on the street, wondering if perhaps I should just start reading my book like a weird busker, and try to raise change for the taxi ride back to my hotel, when a black guy walked up and said, "Hey, you're Sherman Alexie, aren't you? What are you doing here?"

"Yes," I said, confused by the fact that I'd been recognized ON THE STREET LIKE A FRIGGIN' ROCK STAR by two different people but yet had no audience for my reading.

"I'm supposed to be doing a reading from my new book," I said to the black guy.

"Oh, yeah, that's right," he said. "I'm teaching a class over here, but I remember now, you're supposed to be at the Roxie, aren't you?"

"I have no idea," I said.

"Oh, okay, well, I'll walk you over there," he said, and being a kind and polite and wonderful gentleman, walked me to the Roxie where I discovered that a few hundred people were patiently waiting for me to appear.

I realized that commie book store owners can be highly organized and efficient, but perhaps can forget to send an email to a publisher that would inform them of a venue change. Or perhaps my publisher forgot to tell me of the venue change. In any case, I was back in love with commies, publishers, and readers of all shapes and sizes.

I got up onstage and said, "You have no idea how happy I am to see all of you."

And I was joyous. Of course, the theatre was hot and humid, and my lefty San Francisco fans had been waiting for a while, so the smell was, well, it was very human.

"First of all," I said. "Thanks for coming. I'm honored. And second of all, I just need to let you lefty organic folks know that your Tom's Deodorant does not work in general and is failing horribly at the moment. And so I'm going to have a read a sex scene now and get us all excited so we all have a much different relationship with the funk that's lingering in the air."

And so I told a few stories (some about sex and most about the wondrous kindness of strangers) and folks had fun, I think.

And I fell in love with the crazy owner-employees of Modern Times, who were indeed a random bunch of bald lesbians, dyed-hair radicals, militant vegans, dedicated progressives, and nerdy bookworms disguised as lovely alternative fashion models.

After the reading, I signed a bunch of books, and then went next door to the liquor store to use their ATM (struck by the hilarious notion of an Indian using an liquor store ATM w/o intending to purchase alcohol), got my cab fare, and made it back to my beautiful hotel room with its view of the city lights and the Golden Gate Bridge.

An excellent day.

back to top

---

May 10
The reading in Minneapolis was great. I had a packed house (a Lutheran Church!) who were enthusiastic (signed a couple hundred books, I think).

Louise Erdrich introduced me. I'm always honored by her words. And I was happy to be reading for her store, Birchbark Books.

During the reading, I cracked wise about the Nez Perce Indians (It's an old tribal tradition to playfully (and sometimes not so playfully) mock other tribes.) I told the story of the time back in college when a few of us Indians grabbed the list of our fellow students who'd self-identified as Indians and went a-calling on their dorm rooms and apartments.

We took along a few of the grungiest Nez Perce dudes we could find to put a scare into the box-checker Indians (as in 'Hey, if I check this book that says I'm Indian, maybe I'll get scholarship money'). And then I remarked that grungy and Nez Perce might be redundant (eliciting laughs and groans from the crowd).

Then a guy from the back row shouted out something unintelligible. "What?" I asked. He shouted that same unintelligible something. "What?" I asked again. And he said, in a normal speaking voice, that "Horace Axtell is probably one of the greatest tribal elders ever. And he's Nez Perce and he's not grungy."

I started laughing and said, "Wow, did they remove your sense of humor at birth? Or did you lose it in an accident?" He mumbled something back and I said, "Oh, no, you're one of them serious people. You're one of those folks who think Indians are serious. You revere us, don't you? Oh, my, that just shows me that you don't know any Indians. You know who'd be laughing hardest right now? Horace! I know Horace. Have known him for years. He's a hilarious dude. If he was here, he'd probably be telling dirty jokes backstage."

The guy shut up. But I've been wondering about that weird reverence that certain white folks have for us Indians. And that extra-weird reverence for the concept of elders.

Imagine saying something like, "Mr. X is one of the greatest tribal elders ever." Really, who voted for that? Was there a tribal elder decathlon. The 100-meter dash while holding up your Levis because your Indian ass is so flat, the freestyle sage smoke smudging ('hey, look, that smoke cloud looks like a coyote!'), the hey-I-was-a-big-time-drunk-but-now-I'm-a-sacred-dude storytelling slam ('and then I projectile vomited in Marlon Brando's limo!'), the clan animal video game contest ('hey, my bear can beat up your Donkey Kong'). Yeesh, it still surprises me that, after all of this years, people still show up expecting me to be "that" kind of Indian.

back to top

---

May 8

2:45 P.M. CDT
I just returned from an interview at the Grand Poobah NPR station in St. Paul. I arrived early, was escorted to the green room by some skinny white guy (wearing the mandatory skinny white guy cargo pants and Penguin polo shirt), and was then promptly forgotten.

I was reading an incredible novel (MVP, by James Boice, the story of a Kobe Bryant-esquqe guy who ends up in a murder-rape controversy) and just lost track of time. Next thing I know, my silenced cell phone has 5 messages from my publicist and the NPR folks wondering where I am. "Um," I call back and say, "I've been sitting in your green room for, well, an hour now." Very funny.

I briefly wondered how much fun it would be to throw a tantrum and storm out, or maybe shatter a few of those complimentary NRP coffee mugs against the wall, but it takes so much energy to be an asshole. And I've always liked the local NPR guy, Euan Kerr, and he asked smart questions and I dumbly answered them. And all was good with the world.

I am, however, wondering who the hell that skinny white dude was, and why he never told anybody I was waiting in the green room. Perhaps he knew I was silently mocking his cargo pants and Penguin polo, and decided to take revenge on me.

And hey, the station is newly remodeled and is crazy-modern-gorgeous, and I thought, "Okay, public radio is not underfunded. At least, this particular station is not underfunded. Wow. They should call the building, 'What Happens When Rich Liberals Read Too Many Issues of Dwell Magazine.'" The building is so beautiful that it made me feel ugly, styleless, and poor. It's the Prom Queen of NPR stations.

10:45 A.M. CDT
I'm in the Eastern Iowa Airport this morning. My gig at the University of Iowa last night was good. It's one of the more structured environments because they tape it for broadcast later, so we have to stop every 20 minutes or so for station identification. Those pauses allow one just enough time to think, "I am Willie Loman. Attention must be paid."

The crowd was great (they laughed in all the right places and some of the wrong ones) but there was a group of elderly women who would not react at all. I couldn't get them to respond to anything. That's one of the more pathetic things about performing. I won't remember the hundreds of people who laughed; I'll obsess about the 7 gray-haired women who didn't. "I am Willie Loman.
Attention must be paid."

I had the greatest driver this morning from the hotel to the airport. That's one of the best parts of touring, meeting eccentric strangers. This guy was retired and loved to talk. So in his honor, I've written a sonnet based on things he said during the ride:

Driver Sonnet

I'm retired from working, but I'm not done yet.
I-80 goes all the way from California to New York.
My favorite books are Louis Lamour's Sacketts.
If I wasn't driving, I'd be an old man and bored.

You see that public art? Well, if that's art
then I'm a cowboy, and I've never been on a horse.
I'm sixty-five but I've got a teenage heart.
People sometimes think this town car is a hearse,

but I say three dollars a gallon is asinine,
forgive the word, but the rich stay rich
because they carry a bucket of sin and crime.
This is my oldest suit, but it still fits.

I love music so that's why I hate the radio,
and I once drove a doctor into a tornado

.back to top

---

April 18

I'm in the Detroit Airport, waiting for my flight to Indianpolis. Very sleepy and under-coffeed, with my laptop plugged into the wall like any other Willie Loman, I'm having one of the mornings when I feel like I have a very silly job.

In reading Flight last night, a book about a kid who goes on a shooting spree, I felt trivial.The crowd was good, maybe 200 people, and they were friendly and receptive and laughed in the right places, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I should be saying something more important than what is contained inside my book. I tried, probably failed, but it's always good to share my stories with a crowd, however failed I feel.I bantered with two elderly woman sitting in the front row. I'd mentioned that I find it ironic that so many liberal Americans demonize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and one of the elderly woman shouted out, "What about Turkey?"And I reminded her that Turkey pressed charges against Orhan Pamuk for publicly stating that the Turks committed genocide against Kurds and Armenians in WWI. Yes, the Nobel Prize Winner in Literature was threatened with prison time for "insulting Turkish identity." Yes, there is a law against insulting Turkish identity. I told the crowd I refuse to morally equivocate when it comes to freedom of speech. If a country doesn't have freedom of speech then it is a fucked country. So I said, "Fuck Turkey!" And then I pointed out that if I were Turk, I could be put on trial for saying such a thing.But just watch how freedom of speech works in the United States: "Fuck President Bush, fuck Dick Cheney, fuck Condeleeza Rice, and fuck the earlier genocidal incarnations of this country and fuck their evil attempts to eradicate Indians from the face of the earth."I am a public figure, a writer, and I will not be punished in any form for writing or saying those things. I'll be mostly ignored. In this country, when artists speak of being oppressed or censored, what they're really saying is they're being ignored. There's an epic difference between being oppressed and being ignored.

Welcome to the United States, Land of the Free, Home of the Ignored!

back to top

---

April 17

4:50 P.M. CDT
I'm in my hotel room, feeling nervous about my first public reading of Flight tonight. And I'm also worried about the size of the venue. The crowds for my last book tour were so huge that we often had to turn people away (and I gave back-to-back readings in a few cities to accomodate folks). That's a great problem to have, of course, but I'm not sure how much energy I have tonight.

And no matter how successful I am, I can never get rid of the terrifying feeling that nobody will show up. My wife, ever the necessary pragmatist always says, "You should be honored when anybody shows up ever." And I am always honored, but still, I like to be exponentially honored. Ha, my sad, sad ego.I paid a surprise visit to a friend's poetry workshop at the University of Michigan, and talked briefly about my poetic process, and that was okay. The best part of class is that my friend always has the students answer a peculiar question at the beginning of class. She let me ask the question, so I asked the students what song they want to play at their funerals.One young woman picked Otis Redding's "That's How Strong My Love Is," and that made "my heart soar like a hawk," as Chief Dan George said in the "Outlaw Josie Wales." I think I have just written the first sentence that contains Otis Redding and Chief Dan George.Another woman picked Nena's "99 Red Balloons," and that made me happy in a different way. It's certainly not a classic work of art like most any Redding song, but it's still a wonderful pop ditty, easy to dance to, and who wouldn't want folks dancing at their funerals?I picked Loretta Lynn and Jack White's "Portland, Oregon," a hot song about a drunken one-night stand. Don't ask me why. That just felt like the right song. I might change my mind tomorrow.

7:00 A.M. EDT
I gave my first official reading from Flight last night (though I didn't read a word from the book) at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, VA. The Virginia Tech shootings definitely changed the atmosphere (as many of the faculty, students, and community members had friends and family who attended VTU). We observed a moment of silence in memory of the victims. I'd been angry all day, not only because of the deaths, but because of the talking heads who were all too eager to blame either Hollywood and rap music or the easy availability of guns (though one guy was bipartisan and blamed both Hollywood and the 2nd Amendment "Yeah," I thought, "fuck Quentin Tarantino and Thomas Jefferson."). A Tidewater Community College official told me that he'd spent his day answering phone calls from worried parents, who kept asking him what his college was going to do to prevent a similar crime from happening. He said there was nothing that could be done to stop a crazy man from going on such a rampage. "We can't lock every door," he said. Five important and frightening words: We can't lock every door. Of course, the talking heads, in the effort to advance their particular political cause, try to convince us that they know how to lock every door (or lock a greater percentage of those doors than their opponents). That's utopian thinking. This is not a fault of Hollywood, the 2nd Amendment, or campus security. It's the horrible crime of a crazed young man.But I'm just another talking head, of course, who has no answers for any of these important questions. Last night, after my reading, a woman asked me a two part question: "Do you believe in time travel and can you tell us about your writing process?" That is one of the oddest questions I'd ever been asked (though the all-time winner is the woman in Madison, Wisconsin, who pulled my hands onto her breasts and asked me to heal her). I wasn't sure how to answer the question holistically (Junior, I said to myself, if you figure out a way to answer both questions with one answer, then you deserve a big hug). All I could do was laugh and comment on the odd juxtaposition of topics. "That's the weirdest question," I said. "You might as well have asked me, 'Hey, Sherman, can you cure cancer and how do you feel about the semi-colon?'" And just now, as I typed this, I realize that I could have answered all four of these questions with four words:Q: Do you believe in time travel?
A: The thought terrifies me.Q: What is your writing process?
A: The thought terrifies me.Q: Can you cure cancer?
A: The thought terrifies me.Q: How do you feel about the semi-colon?
A: the thought terrifies me.

back to top

---

April 15

On the flight from Detroit to Norfolk, VA, today, I sat
beside a woman who pulled out a portable DVD player, hit
play, and watched an episode of Johnny Depp's old TV
series "21 Jump Street." This made me strangely happy. She
was too young to have watched the show during its original
run, so I figure she was a Johnny Depp completist (or one
of those rare and highly endangered Dustin Nguyen fans).
She didn't get to finish watching the episode, however, as
we flew into serious turbulence. It was one of the top
five worst flights of my life. I could only close my eyes,
and hope I wouldn't die in a plane crash while promoting a
novel called "Flight." At one point, after the plane
dropped hard, I looked across the aisle at another woman.
She was terrified. She tried to smile. I tried to smile. I
felt somehow better, knowing that I had share a small
moment of empathy with a stranger. The other night, while
I was wandering my local 24-hour Seattle supermarket,
nervous about my book tour (and the very mixed reviews of
my new novel) and feeling preemptive loneliness for my
wife and kids, I reached for a loaf of French bread and
bumped the hand of an old black guy reaching for the same
loaf.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said.
"I love this bread," he said. "Even when I put just
baloney on it, it makes me feel special."

I love these tender, odd, and funny moments with
strangers. That's the best thing about these book tours
(other than room service breakfast).

back to top