Flight

By: Sherman Alexie / Narrated By: Adam Beach

Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins

Categorized as Contemporary Fiction, this one goes down better if you think of it as Young Adult

Full disclosure? I fell in love with Sherman Alexie after the movie “Smoke Signals” moved me to tears.

Then I promptly fell out of love and into a deep and abiding loathing afterwards when in every interview I saw him, he sneered at positive reviews that said his work was moving and touched upon universal themes of loneliness, alcoholism, etc. etc. He’d laugh bitterly in the interviews, saying NObody knew ANYthing about pain: Only Indians did. And the world was to blame.

But I looooved the danged movie, read the book it was based upon and, wouldn’t ya know it? Turns out the movie wasn’t like the book. The book was bitter, sneering, vindictive. There was no pride, no motivation to do better, make a choice here or there, only the choice to do nothing and rail at history.

So I went into Flight with a danged huuuuge chip on my shoulder. And Adam Beach voices our hero “Zits” (Only rich kids can treat their acne) as a pugnacious toad. So things weren’t looking good. Plus, when angst is soooo unrelenting? I doze off. A defense mechanism, perhaps.

15-year old Zits, part Irish, part Indian, has been living in foster homes for several years. He’s had enough, and runs away yet again. Hooking up with another disaffected youth, he commits a horrific act of violence and feels himself shot dead. When he comes to life again, he finds himself time-traveling throughout some of America’s most wicked and violent moments: An FBI agent set against Indian Rights activists, at the battle of Little Bighorn, an Indian tracker, an airplane pilot during the modern terror-filled skies, and finally as his angry and hopeless and drunken father. Through it all, Zits is confused, dismissive, angry, alarmed, but somehow he begins to find his true humanity. When we get to the end, we find hope and redemption.

Blah blah blah

Major reviews found Alexie’s prose to be powerful and swiftly fierce. I think it’s just swift, and that’s why I think it’s waaaay more enjoyable if you read it like Young Adult fiction. Alexie doesn’t follow the Show Don’t Tell rule here; he only Tells. Young adults (And even younger) like to be told things; they don’t seem too fond of nuances or metaphors. They like black and white. And Flight is only black and white. We’re told exactly what horrors we’re to learn from, exactly how to weigh and judge them, and exactly how to view them going forward, how we’re supposed to change our lives.

Still, I applaud Alexie for making one of the most positive characters white and not a total A-hole. And I applaud him for showing that there are heroes and jerks of all races, creeds, colors. That’s quite an engaging stretch for him. Though the stories were fraught, and though victims abounded, I felt myself relaxing as each incarnation was less harsh, more thoughtful.

Strongly encouraged for youngsters who have had a smattering of American history lessons, or who are a bit self-aware.

And ya know what? When I googled him, the photos of Sherman Alexie showed him SMILING!!!