Last Mountain Dancer: Hard-Earned Lessons in Love, Loss, and Honky-Tonk Outlaw Life

by Chuck Kinder

On sabbatical from his professorship at the University of Pittsburgh, native West Virginian Chuck Kinder (portrayed as Grady Tripp in Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys and played by Michael Douglas in the film) makes a midlife pilgrimage to his homeland to re-imagine and reconnect with that fabled, fantastic country. Confronting the regrets and heartaches of his past, present, and future, Kinder seeks solace in the funny and raunchy family stories, lies, legends, and history that reside in West Virginia's haunted hills and the hollows of his memory. But more than anything, Kinder wants to live it up hillbilly style. Immersing himself among the lives of mountaineer characters, both the quick and the dead, the bad-boy author bears holy witness to the triumphs and misdeeds of the loafers and misfits, winos and oddball characters of his homeland. Readers will be astonished by tales of bloody mine wars, outlaws on the run, roadhouse romance, barroom brawlers, beer-joint ballerinas, and a man who calls himself the last mountain dancer. With mothmen, moonshiners, and family feudists, it's Planet West Virginia. Chuck Kinder's wild-ride rediscovery of his West Virginian roots is sure to quicken all of our hillbilly hearts.

Genres: Fiction

480 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2004

About the author

Chuck Kinder was an American novelist. Kinder was a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught from 1980 until his retirement in 2014.

Reviews

[Julie G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading Road Trip 2020

Current location: West Virginia

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain mama
Take me home, country roads

Hey, West Virginia, great song, and I owe you a big fat apology and a reread at some point. There isn't a chance in hell that I'm going to finish this bloated, inaccurate collection of essays by wannabe famous guy, Chuck Kinder.

Enough with the typos, inaccuracies (that I looked up and confirmed), and segments that felt like flat-out plagiarism to me.

There were moments here when some particularly readable passage would give me hope that I could make it through 10 more pages without feeling like I wanted to vomit or die of boredom, but then I'd head right back to the passages that made me crunch up my face in suspicion and incredulity.

I'm going outside now to pour some moonshine on this 453 page “metamemoir,” strike a match and see if she can light up the night. I haven't burned a book since Jaws, so this is kind of exciting.

I know you're dead, Mr. Kinder, so no disrespect, but I'm not dead yet, and if there's one thing a pandemic has taught me, it's that my life is too short to spend it on liars or lies.

I'm going to go whip me up my own bonfire of the vanities now, y'all!

P.S. A man with undescended testicles and a self-proclaimed small penis should know better than to remember a woman in terms of her "pussy." You're a reminder to all women that the men who disrespect us the most are the ones who have the least to offer.

[PJ Who Once Was Peejay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chuck Kinder may be a metafictional wonder boy, but this book often tried my patience. I didn’t give up on it, though many times I wanted to. I would put it down, sometimes for weeks at a time, but I’d always circle back because I couldn’t quite give up on it. And these days, when I’m notorious for abandoning books because “life is too short” that’s something of a backhanded compliment.

You see, this book is what Chuck Kinder calls “faction”—that is, a memoir that’s even more loose with the facts than most memoirs. Mr. Kinder states repeatedly that he’s a storyteller above all else and never lets the facts of his life get in the way of a good story. Born and raised in West Virginia, he pays loving and cynical attention to his quirky home state, speaking of its history and its legends, everything from Matewan to Mothman. As fast and loose as he plays with the facts of his own life, when he’s talking about history and legends (as far as I can tell) he plays it fairly straight. Oh, he may insert himself into the headspace of the historical actors —which makes the narrative come alive in quite wondrous ways sometimes, if I’m honest—but he does tell the story down to its bones. In these days of the internet, it’s easy to call his bluff there, and some of these oddball characters have presences you can even look up on YouTube (Jessico White, for one).

I was good with all of that. Enjoyed that part of the ride. What Mr. Kinder had to say in these passages was often beautiful and heart-wrenching; or oddly, spookily, legendarily interesting; or downright funny. A lot of funny. When he talked about the history and legends of West Virginia (“Planet West Virginia” as he referred to it), you could feel his love for the place and its people and the craziness he grew up with.

Unfortunately, he frequently interspersed these bits with references to his own bad boy past and present, and those passages smelled of stale testosterone. I am so over reading about bad boys and posing tough guys, whether they are teenagers or fifty-somethings. He often doesn’t name the people in his life, or only by pseudonyms and nicknames—either to protect their innocence or to turn them into characters he can fudge facts about. Again, I wouldn’t have minded the faction about his relatives, but his wrenching everything back to stories about his bad boy status got tiresome, and interrupted the flow of the rest of the narrative. And that, as the saying goes, got on my last nerve.

But I did finish Last Mountain Dancer, so there is that.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably would have loved this book 10 years ago.

Kinder's an excellent writer. When he's got some good material, he makes it sing. The portions of this book where he tackles West Virginia history are delightful. When turns inward and sits and ruminates on his own life decisions, as he does for most of the book,it's not nearly as interesting.

[John Tipper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Except for Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," this is the funniest book I've read. Both have drug use in them, particularly Thompson's, and I don't endorse that, yet they do seem to enhance a few scenes. Kinder, a native of West Virginia, and a Prof. at the University of Pittsburgh, set out to write a book capturing the essence of the state, the quintessential Appalachian one. It a strange work in that it is a mock memoir, or as he refers to it, a fictionalized autobiography, and one has a hard time discerning what is exaggeration, the truth and downright lies. A gifted student as a youngster in Huntington, with a bent for science, Kinder gets into a redneck crowd at high school, fistfights a lot, refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag and is expelled. He has a vicarious love affair with Dagmar, one of the sex symbols of the time, who "notices" him at Dreamland Pool, an occurrence that means a lot to him. After that, and spending time as a doper college student, Kinder's central purpose then is to become the epitome of redneckism, something the state is known for. He's fan of country music, especially Elvis, and travels to a remote region to meet Jessco White, a hillbilly dancer bearing a resemblance to The King, and a young man who appears on the TV show "Roseanne." He is the last mountain dancer and this is apparently where the title of the book originates. The author displays a remarkable depth and wide-ranging knowledge of the history and lore of the state: The Mothman and Silver Bridge tragedy, the many ghost tales and extra-terrestrial ones in the state. The Matewan Massacre and other union/labor strife. Yet most of all the emphasis is humor and it is the funniest West Virginia book ever, with Lee Maynard's "Crum" coming in second. Entirely two different works, "Crum" focused on one small village while "Dancer" is disjointed, improvisational and far-ranging.

[Jodi Golis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recently saw an article with the most poignant books, by state. I’d never heard of the book from my home state, West Virginia, so I decided I had to read it. When I found out a character from the book/movie Wonder Boys was based on Last Mountain Dancer’s author, I was doubly intrigued. Kinder was also a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Since I currently live in Pittsburgh, I thought this book was a perfect fit for me.

I grew up in the northern panhandle of WV, which is often left off of maps. Seriously! It’s a thing. That little section of land sandwiched between Ohio and Pennsylvania is often nonexistent on maps. Much like any mention of the northern panhandle was nonexistent in this book. How can a book mainly about a small area of a state (6 hours south of where I grew up) be deemed to represent the state? It can’t. And this doesn’t.

To say that my experience with WV was the polar opposite is an understatement - most of Kinder’s stories ended with grown men brawling in some way, often with guns. Incidentally, you could hear similar stories if you talked to anyone who grew up in rural areas of America during the 1950s. This “factional” (some fact, some fiction... maybe) was wordy in a way that made my mind wander and vulgar to the point of disgust. I would NOT recommend this book to anyone, especially a woman. I do not think this book reflects upon the state of WV in any way.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a fan of West Virginia's native son, Jesco White, I was immediately intrigued when I saw this title in an antique/junk store. Even though only a portion of this behemoth of a book is dedicated to the Last Mountain Dancer, I found it an enjoyable read overall. Kinder's writing style is engaging and possesses a unique wit and pace that keeps the reader interested in some mundane occurrences during his sabbatical. Normally, I could care less about what an old redneck scholar is doing with a young beauty and her children, but Kinder makes it interesting. He also visits other parts of West Virginia lore to include Mothmen, the missing Sodder children (which I wish he'd covered more) and the area's rich coal mining legacy. While this book is very long, I never found my interest waning and Kinder takes the reader to many interesting nooks and crannies of his home state.

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kinder, volente o no, è un personaggio già a partire dal suo aspetto fisico. Se questo non bastasse anche la sua storia, quella della sua famiglia e della sua terra lo sono. Forse un po’ troppo però, se li si pressa tutti assieme nelle 500 e rotti pagine che compongono questo romanzo. Alla lunga stanca e un po’ annoia, soprattutto nelle parti più leggendarie, e arrivare fino in fondo è una piccola impresa. Decisamente migliori, molto più centrati ed asciutti, gli altri suoi due libri precedentemente pubblicati da Fazi: “Luna di miele” e “Silver ghost”.

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found myself reading through this entire book, in spite of myself. Kinder is a true storyteller who seemingly unearthed all kinds of West Virginia tales interwoven with his own personal drama. Kinder used this book to try to "solve even the simplest of mysteries about my home state".

[Colleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to support a West Virginia king, but what I got was a misogynist, racist man-child who I'm sure grossly over-embellished his life story.

There were points that I didn't think I'd get through this one

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chuck Kinder's a hoot. This is a guy that'll tell you a hellacious story and then come back a week later and confess that he lied for the sake of your entertainment, and if you like Twain's humor, you'll probably enjoy Last Mountain Dancer. I laughed myself breathless after reading couple passages in this book, and the rest is charming.

[Jon Carroll Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my new all-time favorites. Written on sabbatical from his university in Pittsburgh, Kinder returns to his native West Virginia. It made me fantasically homesick and I moved back east before I was done reading it. Excellent.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice read. Kind of something you can pick up and put down a lot without taking away from the enjoyment.

[Steve Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a displaced West Virginian, reading Last Mountain Dancer was like going home.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great summer read. Wandering memoir, a lively cartography of the West Virginia psyche.

[Steev · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one mother of a book.