This is what it means to say and Phoenix, Arizona and Greasy Lake.

Compare and contrast (Research criticism)

“This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona,” which some years after it was written supplied most of the contrive underpinnings of Alexie's first video, Smoke pointers, presages some of the later anxieties of Alexie's novel Reservation Blues (1995), in which Victor and Thomas and several other “skins” create an all-Indian blues band renowned as Coyote Springs, and they go on the road. This story, although, is neatly organized round report of Victor's father's death in Arizona and the task of retrieving his ashes, vintage pickup motor truck, and unassuming savings and returning north. (Caldwell P.45)

“Greasy Lake,” the name article of Boyle's best-received assemblage of tales, takes its name and its epigraph—“It's about a mile down on the dark side of Route 88”—from Bruce Springsteen's recital “Spirit in the Night.” The story focuses on three nineteen-year-old men dwelling in a time (probably the 1960's) when, the narrator states, it was good to be awful, when young persons cultivated decadence like a taste. Driving the narrator's family station wagon, they search for some escape from their suburban shopping-center lives at Greasy Lake, where, on the banks of festering murk, they can drink beer, smoke marijuana, listen to rock and roll, and howl at the moon. (Brill P.16)

Thomas is perhaps Alexie's most compelling character in terms of being deeply ensconced within his tribal traditions yet still willing and able to critique those traditions and articulate various ironies. As Thomas greets Victor at the tribal swapping mail and expresses condolences for his decrease, Victor inquires how Thomas learned of Victor's father's passing. Thomas, the tribal storyteller, states: “I perceived it on the wind. I perceived it from the birds. I sensed it in the sunlight. Also, your mother was just in here crying.” Thomas continues all through the story as both an avatar of traditional practice and an ironic commentator on it. (Kilpatrick P.25)

On the particular occasion of this story, however, at 2:00 a.m., these extremely “bad” characters meet someone more “dangerous” than they are. When they try to embarrass a friend in a parked car, they find out too late that it is instead a “bad, greasy” stranger, who begins beating them up. Things go from bad to worse when the narrator loses the key to the station wagon and cracks the greasy stranger on the ...