New Yorker Fiction Review #293: "False Star" by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain

 

Review of the short story from the March 20, 2023 issue of The New Yorker...

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain does not have a novel under his belt yet, or a published collection of short stories, or even (gasp) a Wikipedia page. He will soon, however, because Sterling HolyWhiteMountain is unquestionably one of todays best emerging writers and -- I'm calling it right now -- will eventually be considered one of the greatest writers of our time. 

I get my issues of the The New Yorker in the mail, often a week and a half after the content is published online. Meaning, by the time the issue shows up on my doorstep, the short story has been published for 10 days or more. This rarely bothers me; my reviews have been months old sometimes. However, when I saw that Sterling HolyWhiteMountain had returned to the pages of The New Yorker I read the story online before I got the physical issue. That's how good he is. 

From the little I know about him, Sterling HolyWhiteMountain is in his 30s -- making him still a baby, in literary terms -- and grew up on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana. He is also currently a lecturer at Stanford University. His list of publications includes at least one previous story in The New Yorker titled "Featherweight" back in April 2021 which I gave only a breezy, passing review on this blog (I must have been pressed for time; however, I still rated the story highly), as well as The Paris Review, and Guernica. 

As to the story in question...

"False Star" is a story (part of a novel, says the author) about a young American Indian man living on the Blackfeet reservation, who -- at the age of 18 -- comes into his "claim check" and decides to spend the money on a new car. Claim checks, the narrator explains, were checks were sort of "reparations" style checks issued by the U.S. Government to the members of the Blackfeet reservation at some point prior to the narrator's birth. If you got lucky, your parents or grandparents held onto your claim check for you, until you turned 18. If you were unlucky, they spent it long before you ever had the chance to use it. Luckily for the narrator, his grandfather, named False Star Boy, but whom he endearingly calls "Big Man" put his check in the bank and therefore, the narrator is able to use it to buy a car. 

The story details the trip taken by the narrator, Big Man, and the narrator's friend June, on whom the narrator has an unrequited crush. June is tough, sassy, sexy, and more mature than the narrator, and let's him know it at almost every turn. Nevertheless, she cares for the narrator even if it is in a friendly, big sister type of way. Despite that (or perhaps because of that), the narrator is a little bit in love with her. We get the strong sense, however, that he deeply loves June in a more familiar way, which he will only come to understand much later in life, after June is gone.

"So this is the story about how I got my part of the money, how I spent it, and the people in my life at the time, such as Big Man, who raised me, and of course June, whom I loved before any other, and who has been gone now longer than any of us had the chance to know her while she was alive."

Readers of Louise Erdrich will immediately be struck by the connection to one of her most famous characters: June Kashpaw. The similarities between the June in "False Star" and the June in Erdrich's Love Medicine are simply too much to ignore. Louise Erdrich's June was a tough, sexy woman who loved men but took no shit from them (or from anyone) and who lived large in the minds of all who knew her. We get the same sense about the June in this story, but it sounds like she is doomed to a much shorter life than June Kashpaw. 

It is appropriate, I think, for HolyWhiteMountain to make the bold step of intertextually connecting his story to Erdrich's. They are part of the same tradition, as writers of fiction dealing with modern American Indian life, and -- if I may -- HolyWhiteMountain has the potential to be just as good and just as legendary as Erdrich. From another writer I might find it a bit too cheeky, or even arrogant, but in this case it unequivocally works. In fact, this story almost seems to fit into the same timeline of the same world as some of Erdrich's fiction.

Like all good fiction, "False Star" operates on a few different levels. It's about the narrator's love and respect for his grandfather. It's about the narrator's purchase of his first car. It's about June and, in some ways, our young, stupid, first loves. On a broader level, it is about the modern indigenous, reservation-raised person's complex relationship to the U.S. government. The claim checks are seen as a windfall coming from momentary U.S. guilt, but they are still welcome. In some cases, they change people's lives. In some cases, they allow them to have a few weeks of fun, and then are gone. 

The story is also, on another level, purely just easy and fun to read. Major points to HolyWhiteMountain for nailing -- without being the least-bit cringeworthy -- his narrator's description of fantasizing about women and jerking-off. This segment is entertaining by any stretch, but to anyone who's ever been a teenaged boy, it will be especially poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. 

Points, also, for HolyWhiteMountain's touching description of what it means -- in the narrator's world -- to have one's own car, tying it back to the days when his ancestors used to ride horses. In a very short amount of words, he manages to explain how something that in bourgeois, middle-class, urban and suburban society might not mean very much (simply owning an automobile), is, in his culture, a deeply personal, liberating experience that ties him back to a time when his ancestors were free on their own land. 

"False Star" does not wrap-up neatly, which is a function of it's being part of a larger novel, and we get the sense of the story going on and on after this. But that doesn't matter in this case. HolyWhiteMountain has such a good way of injecting meaning into his characters interactions, that you hang on every sentence, even when his characters are doing something as seemingly mundane as driving around, half-cocked and aimless, killing time and looking for a place to find another six-pack. It is so fun and intriguing to be in this particular narrator's world, that you find yourself along for the ride, regardless if there is a big reveal or revelation at the end. There is revelation in almost every paragraph of HolyWhiteMountain's prose, all along the way.

Title page photograph by Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson)