Severence Package / The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven

Reviews:

Severance Package – Duane Swierczynski

The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven – Sherman Alexie

Duane Swierczynski… people in the book world will remember him for books like “The Blond”. Comic book readers will remember him as the new force behind the Marvel series Cable and Iron fist.. he also has a couple one offs i have never heard of.

Severance Package was published last year. I had seen it on a number of bookstore shelves but never bothered to pick it up. It looked like manga and i just dont dig on the manga. US comics yes, Japanese comics, rarely. Yes, I remember.? no judging of books based on how they look… bad jason BAAAD jason..

So I am at work one day and a friend of mine, Shannon, caught me downstairs and pressed its glorious rough paperyness into my hands. Its rough cut pages and soft wafflely cover immediately caugth my attention.

The front cover carried some cheesy text, “ever want to kill your boss? well guess what, the feeling is mutual”.. i could have done with out that blurb..

So, enough.. the book, as stated on the back of the cover. The main character gets called into work on a Saturday. There is a big meeting, and he has to drop what he is doing to head in early on a day off. On his arrival, he enters a room with a few people, some Pepperidge farms cookies, and all the makings for a bunch of mimosas.

The boss man tells people that they are a front for a blag bag spy operation and that their funding has been pulled. everyone in the room will die today. The only choice they have is to drink a mimosa and die peacefully by fast acting poison, or get a bullet in the brain.

Sarin gas, explosives, acrobatics, torture, mutilation, humor, firefights…? this book has it all. Everything takes place in about a 1 hour period of time from what I can tell.

There really isn’t much to talk about with this book. it gets your heart racing a little, and you are wide eyed through out the book. it is very enjoyable. This is a fast read, you pick it up and you do not put it down until you are done. you get sucked into the plot and are not given much of an opportunity to get to know any individual. It is the story that matters, less about the individuals and more about the situation they are all in. Who is a “bad guy/good guy” is less important than their interactions.

Severance Package is not by any means a classic. Regardless of the intentions of most authors,? I doubt it will have a huge impact on the written world. What it does have an impact on is your cerebellum and stomach. It hits you where your bruises will not show, and you smile when the aching settles in. Then you tell others to read it :)

~~

If my reading list were all placed into a giant circle around my house, this book would be Diametrically opposed to Severance Package. They are starkly different in nearly all aspects. In truth, I would have to admit that the only similarities between them are that they were both printed on paper and written by entities that share some basic human DNA structure.

Sherman Alexie grew up on the Spoke Indian Reservation in Wellpinit Washington, near Spokane. He has written nearly 20 books of fiction, poetry, short stories, and has had a couple films made based on his work. One of those films, Smoke Signals, was based on this book.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven.. This book is a series of shorts about living on or around the Res he grew up on. Every story is different, with ties linking back to each other. The characters know each other, though each story is told from the perspective of a different person.

The first story in the book, “Every little hurricane”, starts off with the description of a storm coming. You imagine a hurricane touching down in Washington state. The hurricane is not meteorological in nature, instead it is the fast moving storm of drunken violence that a child sees as his uncles fight drunkenly on the front lawn. The coming together of two forces of nature into an explosive and unstoppable swirling mess.

The movie Smoke signals was primarily based off the short story “This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona.” The story’s axis is Thomas Builds-the-Fire. Thomas is known as a story teller. He tells stories from his heart and soul. Everything has a tale to tell. some may not have happened, some are spiritual and will never be seen. Some of his narratives are visions of what he sees in others and how they would be had our world not decimated his.

The story begins when Victor learns that his father has died. His body is in Phoenix AZ and he enlists the help of Thomas to get to AZ to pick up his fathers ashes and belongings. Victor and Thomas have not been friends for many years. and there is tension between them. Victor needs his money to get there, but does not necessarily his company.

The Res is a tight community with everyone’s business hanging out in the open. Thomas was been sidelined from the other boys for most of his life due to his stories, so Victor is surprised to learn that Thomas has memories of his father. Victor asks him what he remembers about his father.

Thomas Builds-the-Fire closed his eyes and told this story: “I remember when I had this dream that told me to go to Spokane, to stand by the Falls in the middle of the city and wait for a sign. I knew I had to go there but I didn’t have a car. Didn’t have a license. I was only thirteen. So I walked all the way, took me all day, and I finally made it to the Falls. I stood there for an hour waiting. Then your dad came walking up. What the hell are you doing here? he asked me. I said, Waiting for a vision. Then your father said, All you’re going to get here is mugged. So he drove me over to Denny’s, bought me dinner, and then drove me home to the reservation. For a long time I was mad because I thought my dreams had lied to me. But they didn’t. Your dad was my vision. Take care of each other is what my dreams were saying. Take care of each other.”

Every story is a piece of a life, fictional, based on reality, or fully factual.. Captured in it’s sorrow and happiness, excitement and dismay.

This book, much as others I have read of Alexie’s makes my heart ache.