Books: Straight shooter

I vividly remember the impact of reading J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" when I was a boy. There was something in the voice of narrator Holden Caulfield that spoke directly to me -- how true and funny it was, equal to my own teen confusions and anxieties, which is why that book still remains an anthem of American male adolescence 46 years after its publication.

Well, here's another such voice: Arnold (Junior) Spirit, the 14-year-old narrator of Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian," an absolutely honest, scary and very funny bright light among the lost.

Alexie's setting could not be more different from Salinger's upper-middle-class New York -- the dirt-poor, abandoned-to-despair Spokane Indian Reservation in western Washington. And Junior is much more deeply at risk, not by the alienation of the well-off, but by the nearly constant pummeling of his body and spirit by a forgotten people. Junior is not a dreamer about hope as is Holden Caufield, but a risk-taker toward hope's distant promise -- shining 23 long miles away in the all-white high school in the town of Reardan. A distance no one had ever attempted to bridge before, not to mention survive.

But here is an utterly authentic voice, speaking directly and honestly and uproariously to me and you and your kids.

Which is why I worry about this book, as does writer Neil Gaiman, who speculates that "no doubt in a year or so it'll both be winning awards and being banned." Alexie portrays the reality of Junior's world in full color and colorful language, in the bathroom and out. Young people entering high school who need this book -- who will see their anxieties mirrored no matter rich or poor, but the poor even more so -- may well be the ones school administrators attempt to shield, just as "Catcher in the Rye" is banned in some schools to this day.

Here's why that would be so wrong. I recently hosted a poetry reading for a Michigan high school teacher and his students. The students' poetry was some of the most startling and moving I have heard in a long time. The reason, the students told me, was that the teacher allowed absolute honesty, and he meant it. What resulted from that freedom was lyrical mastery.

Alexie is a similarly fearless lyrical master, of poetry (11 collections), short stories (three collections), screenplays (two) and novels (now four, including his first for young adults). Everything he publishes is an exciting, high-speed read (and if you get a chance, don't miss him in person hilariously retelling the shaggy dog stories behind his writing).

There's also an uplifting theme nowhere mentioned in the book but worthy of notice by readers and teachers alike: Junior is breaking away from today's powerful gravitational field of identity politics. Born and raised an Indian victimized by biology, history, poverty, community, family and fate, he finds the courage to give himself a chance wherever it lies, even in a world he believed was mostly hostile.

When he makes his move to Reardan High for his freshman year as the only Indian student, and double dirt poor to boot (he often hitchhikes or walks the 23 miles), he encounters hostility but also generosity and inclusion. Junior becomes a "part-time" Indian because he casts his lot wherever hope is an available commodity, not hopelessness.

Junior's story follows Sherman Alexie's own arc -- from reservation birth as a doomed hydrocephalic to dazzling basketball player and writer -- and is about as encouraging a male character as one encounters these days. "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" is, in the end, a sweet read, like the "sweet" arc of Junior's 3-pointer over the heads of even his most determined foes.

Jim Lenfestey is a former Star Tribune editorial writer and author of the upcoming "A Cartload of Scrolls: 100 Poems in the Manner of T'ang Dynasty Poet Han-Shan" (Holy Cow! October).