E Johnny prese il fucile: Prefazione di Goffredo Fofi (Tascabili Narrativa)

by Dalton Trumbo, Dalton Trumbo

Considerato il romanzo più sconvolgente sugli orrori della Prima guerra mondiale, E Johnny prese il fucile descrive, quasi materializza, la condizione di grande mutilato del soldato un uomo né morto né vivo, un sopravvissuto grazie ai progressi della chirurgia. Privo di arti e della possibilità di parlare, Joe sente che la mente è l’unico retaggio di umanità: e così nelle lunghissime ore di un tempo senza tempo rievoca il passato, le prime esperienze, l’amore, l’amicizia e la facilità con cui la guerra trascina gli uomini in una spirale di sofferenza e di morte. Pubblicato negli Stati Uniti nel 1939, alla vigilia del secondo conflitto mondiale, e insignito del National Book Award, E Johnny prese il fucile è un romanzo di pacifismo integrale diventato nel 1971 un film diretto dallo stesso Trumbo, tra i preferiti di François Truffaut. La voce di Joe, tutt’ora cristallina nella denuncia dell’inutilità della guerra – come scrive Goffredo Fofi nella Prefazione – è quella di un Lazzaro indomito e “Cantate cantate forte per me i vostri alleluia tutti i vostri alleluia per me perché io conosco la verità e voi no sciocchi. Sciocchi sciocchi sciocchi...” Un grande classico della letteratura anti-militarista americana, di grande attualità contro la stupidità della guerra dalla quale tutti, vincitori e vinti, escono sconfitti.

238 pages, Paperback

Published July 6, 2022

About the author

Dalton Trumbo worked as a cub reporter for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, covering courts, the high school, the mortuary and civic organizations. He attended the University of Colorado for two years working as a reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera and contributing to the campus humor magazine, the yearbook and the campus newspaper. He got his start working for Vogue magazine. His first published novel, Eclipse, was about a town and its people, written in the social realist style, and drew on his years in Grand Junction. He started writing for movies in 1937; by the 1940s, he was one of Hollywood's highest paid writers for work on such films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945), and Kitty Foyle (1940), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay.

Trumbo's 1939 anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun, won a National Book Award (then known as an American Book Sellers Award) that year. The novel was inspired by an article Trumbo read about a soldier who was horribly disfigured during World War I.

In 1947, Trumbo, along with nine other writers and directors, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee as an unfriendly witness to testify on the presence of communist influence in Hollywood. Trumbo refused to give information. After conviction for contempt of Congress, he was blacklisted, and in 1950, spent 11 months in prison in the federal penitentiary in Ashland, KY. Once released, he moved to Mexico.

In 1993, Trumbo was awarded the Academy Award posthumously for writing Roman Holiday (1953). The screen credit and award were previously given to Ian McLellan Hunter, who had been acting as a "front" for Trumbo since he had been blacklisted by Hollywood.