I wrote a piece in last week’s issue (the one with the skier on the cover, not the garden of pot leaves) about National Book Award Winner Sherman Alexie and how I would love nothing more than for the Native American author to give up fiction and poetry and write solely about basketball.
Well, that’s probably not going to happen.
But here are a few other things you should know about Alexie. 1) He’s appearing tonight at the Tower Theatre to read as part of The Nature of Words. 2) Tomorrow morning (9-11am) at COCC, he’ll be holding an event called “Sherman Alexie Unplugged” and I’m not precisely sure what the hell will go on there (I doubt he’ll play an acoustic medley, which is often what happens at events labeled “Unplugged"), but it’s worth checking out for Alexie fans. And 3) Sherman Alexie is hilarious.
Check out the video below for a bit from his recent appearance in Oakland. You’ll quickly see that a Sherman Alexie reading is more stand-up comedy show than it is high-brow literary event. Here, he talks about conspiracy theories, his brief political career and how he could easily swat one of President Obama’s layups.
