6-27-07, 9:32 am

Flight By Sherman Alexie New York, Black Cat, 2007.


With its ironic play on Herman Melville's classic opening line and its big nod to magical realism, Sherman Alexie's latest novel, Flight, walks the fine line between the nightmare of history and the possibility of hope.

Zits has been abandoned. He is a 15 year old Native American youth who has moved from foster home to foster home. He has been in and out of juvenile detention facilities, and has been drinking on the streets with homeless people since he was eleven. When greeted one morning by his newest foster family at breakfast, he says nothing except 'whatever.' Needless to say, he has trouble with authority, and he is about to become a mass murderer.

Zits is plagued by the absent father who abandoned his mother at his birth. His loss is further deepened upon his mother's death at a young age. But recently he has met a new friend who fills the void. Justice is the name of the beautiful white boy who seems to understand his pain, anger, and loss. Justice seems to understand both the historical experience of racism and conquest experienced by American Indian nations and the means for overcoming: violence.

Justice gives Zits his first taste of power; power that comes from seeing fear and terror on the faces of those to whom he is about to do violence. Perhaps guns and killing can redeem Zits from the life into which he has been abandoned.

But before Zits can go through with the horrendous act of mowing down the random customers in a bank he happens to walk into, he is transported through time and space into the lives and experiences of different individuals. First, he awakens in the body of a white FBI agent investigating the alleged activities of American Indian rebels in the 1970s. He participates in the killing of one activist – in the name of a different kind of justice – and quickly discovers his own repulsion at killing.

Zits learns that both the FBI's and Justice's violent means of attaining 'justice' are indistinguishable in practice and outcome. 'How can you tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys when they say the same things?'

Transported into the bodies and experiences of a 19th century US calvary scout on the trail of Crazy Horse, a white pilot, and his own father, Zits learns that 'revenge is a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle.' Betrayal is commonplace in the human condition, and even trust itself is little more than the first step to more betrayal.

Maybe the lesson Zits learns is simple. Don't kill people because 'all life is sacred.' Don't betray. Don't hate. Don't leave your babies alone. Where does this cycle end?

In some ways, Flight is a tale of the search for identity. At one point, Zits wishes he could be a 'real Indian.' But what, after all, is that? And who is there to teach him? He also learns that, despite his personal horrible experiences with white people and the historical experience of Native Americans with white people, there must be a difference between being white and 'whiteness.' But is it possible for Zits to survive or thrive in these two worlds?

Alexie's novel is extraordinary in its sweet simplicity. It locates the personal and internal human life within the framework of history and a system of racial supremacy that produces a cycle of division, devaluing, and violence in order to perpetuate itself. But because human beings have made this system, they also have the ability to short circuit that cycle for their own and, perhaps, the entire species' survival.

Bravo to Alexie for another brilliant work!