THE AUDIOBOOK
Commute audiobook. Criteria: 1) simple enough that I can divide my attention with driving and not miss too much; 2) interesting enough to keep me awake on long drives; optionally 3) a great reader

1. Check. 2. Check. 3. Quadruple infinity check because it's read by Sherman Alexie himself and he's one of my very favorite human beings.

THE BOOK
No really, I'm serious about that. I love Sherman Alexie. I mean I love his books but it's more complex than that, I feel like I know him and he's talking just to me and if he showed up for dinner tomorrow evening it wouldn't be weird. It's not how I feel about other writers and cultural figures, for example I love Margaret Atwood's books which affect me deeply and have a lot of respect for her, but the love is for the books, not her. Whereas I love Sherman Alexie the person, and it's tied up a lot in how I feel about his books but it's not JUST the books.

I realized this evening that this must be what Christians mean when they describe a personal relationship with god. I have an advantage here as Sherman Alexie is attestably real (I've seen him, in the flesh, give a lecture which was one of the great highlights of my life), but I think the feeling must be similar, and it's kind of weird to suddenly have insight into a behavior that has always been entirely foreign. At the same time that "personal relationship with god" is even less understandable now that I can compare it to something familiar considering that I FEEL FUCKING INSANE FEELING THIS WAY ABOUT SOMEONE I DONT ACTUALLY KNOW and I have a hard time seeing why people would willingly feel this way about something that ISNT attestably real.

I worry that in feeling this way I am one of the crazy white people Sherman Alexie objects to in his books, a white weirdo who fetishizes Indian culture. I don't think I am but who am I to say for sure? I'm just a middle class suburban white person with a mountain of white privilege and maybe my feelings for Sherman Alexie ARE fetishistic but I really, really hope I'm not that shitty. Then I wonder, is even wondering about all this in the first place fetishistic? Again I really really hope not.

This is why I probably won't be writing him any letters. Though I've thought about it. I like to think that if I were a writer, I'd want to hear from people who felt like they'd connected with me through my work. Isn't that sort of the whole point of making art?

Anyway, the book is wonderful. It's about friendship, family, community, alcoholism, poverty, Indianness, cultural identity, independence, racism, kindness, growing up. If you've read anything by Sherman Alexie before this will feel familiar as a warm blanket. If you haven't it's a short sweet introduction to everything else he's written. Highly recommended.