“’OK,’ said Loman, as he stood in the telephone booth. Crazy Horse didn’t need Tums. ‘OK. Think.’ He took a deep breath; he wondered if the world was a cruel place.”
—Sherman Alexie, “Indian Country.”
A successful Native American author cannot plot his own life.
This entire program is devoted to John Lithgow’s powerful reading of Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Country,” in which a celebrated writer confronts his past, his heritage, and his prejudices in one odyssey-like day.
Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane, WA.
Alexie has published 18 books—many complex chronicles, marked by humor and pathos, of the contemporary Native American experience. These include his most recent novel, Flight the novels Reservation Blues and Indian Killer and the short story collections The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Toughest Indian in the World. His numerous awards include the PEN/Hemingway Award and the O. Henry Prize. His stories have been selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories, and he received a1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for the adaptation of his story, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.” He is working on an adaptation of another story that aired on SELECTED SHORTS, “What You Pawn, I Will Redeem” (The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005).
Indian Country, by Sherman Alexie, read by John Lithgow.
For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space
—Sherman Alexie, “Indian Country.”
A successful Native American author cannot plot his own life.
This entire program is devoted to John Lithgow’s powerful reading of Sherman Alexie’s “Indian Country,” in which a celebrated writer confronts his past, his heritage, and his prejudices in one odyssey-like day.
Sherman Alexie is a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, WA, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane, WA.
Alexie has published 18 books—many complex chronicles, marked by humor and pathos, of the contemporary Native American experience. These include his most recent novel, Flight the novels Reservation Blues and Indian Killer and the short story collections The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven and Toughest Indian in the World. His numerous awards include the PEN/Hemingway Award and the O. Henry Prize. His stories have been selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories, and he received a1999 Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for the adaptation of his story, “This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona.” He is working on an adaptation of another story that aired on SELECTED SHORTS, “What You Pawn, I Will Redeem” (The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005).
Indian Country, by Sherman Alexie, read by John Lithgow.
For additional works featured on SELECTED SHORTS, please visit Symphony Space
About Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts features some of the finest artists of the American theater reading contemporary and classic short fiction-the most distinguished works of the early masters such as Chekhov, Maupassant, Malamud and dozens of others.
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