Wyoming

by Barry Gifford

"[Gifford's] new novel, Wyoming, is a tender and understated story."-Jonathan Miles in The New York Times Book Review

A woman and her young son travel by car through the southern and Midwestern United States in this heartbreakingly spare novel-in-dialogue. As the mother drives, she and the boy, Roy, trade impressions of the landscape and of life, approaching an understanding of how the two interrelate. "Everybody needs Wyoming," she tells him.

Genres: Fiction

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Barry Gifford is an American author, poet, and screenwriter known for his distinctive mix of American landscapes and film noir- and Beat Generation-influenced literary madness.

He is described by Patrick Beach as being "like if John Updike had an evil twin that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and wrote funny..."He is best known for his series of novels about Sailor and Lula, two sex-driven, star-crossed protagonists on the road. The first of the series, Wild at Heart, was adapted by director David Lynch for the 1990 film of the same title. Gifford went on to write the screenplay for Lost Highway with Lynch. Much of Gifford's work is nonfiction.

Reviews

[piperitapitta · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5 ***

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a fan of Gifford’s The Roy Stories which are a sort of fictionalised memoir based on his own childhood. They are (very) short stories, more like anecdotes, that take place in the boy’s formative years, between 8 and 15. During this time, the post war boom years of the early 1950s, his father, an immigrant and ex-mobster, dies, while Roy and his mother, an ex-model, travel America by car unable to settle in any one town.

This short novel is told entirely in dialogue, between mother and son as they drive, usually question after question from Roy. Whereas there is an innocence to Roy, his short experience of life is having its effect.

I don’t think it works as well as the short stories, which give Gifford more scope for variety. Gifford based several books around young Roy, and in the US has been compared to Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, and Hemingway’s Nick Adams. In the UK he is much less known for this work, more so perhaps for Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula.
Gifford was also an aficionado of film noir, and in 2000, wrote an excellent book on the history of the genre, Out of the Past: Adventures in Film Noir, which I would thoroughly recommend.

Here’s a clip..

”I liked Winky, too. Your dad said he was a terrible gambler, threw everything he had away on craps and the horses."
"Why don't we ever see Winky anymore, Mom?"
"Oh, baby, Winky's someplace nobody can find him. He owed a pile of dough to some wrong guys and couldn't pay it back."
"Maybe he's in the old country. Winky always said how when he got set he would go back to the old country and not do anything but eat and drink and forget.”
"Honey, Winky's in a country even older than the one he was talking about."
"Maybe he was showing the woman his tattoos. Winky could make the girl's titties jump when he made a muscle."
"Remind me to call your dad tonight when we get to Tampa. You haven't spoken to him for a while."

[Elia Sgarbi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro composto da capitoli molto corti, ognuno dei quali contiene un dialogo tra madre e figlio durante i loro continui spostamenti in macchina negli USA. La scrittura è scorrevole ma il libro non mi ha conquistato pienamente. Voto 6,5

[Matteo Mazzoli · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5: avevo letto vari articoli e, amando particolarmente la Jimenez, mi son detto che gli si poteva dare una chance. Intanto, la scelta narrativa è chiaramente molto particolare. Strutturato in un lungo dialogo tra madre e figlio, ogni capitolo segue la rotta dei due in un viaggio che procede al ritmo delle loro parole e dei loro scambi di battute. È interessante la caratterizzazione dei personaggi, specie Roy, il bambino, la cui curiosità si percepisce e in qualche modo comunica col lettore. La madre rimane a mio avviso su binari un po' più battuti, senza particolari guizzi. La lettura è piacevole, ma forse non ho trovato quello che cercavo e mi aspettavo.

[William Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everybody needs Wyoming.

[Veronica Palazzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Troppo breve! Un bambino viaggia con la madre per l’America, in auto. Il viaggio documenta i paesaggi che incontrano, i quali spesso portano a riflettere il piccolo che parla serenamente alla mamma.
Non si sa perché facciano questo viaggio.

[Keren Verna · Rating 3 out of 5]

La novela es un extracto de un diálogo durante un largo viaje de una madre con su hijo.
El inicio y el final no están, y hay que recomponer lo que falta.
Me pareció interesante como experimentación, pero a costa de perder su potencial.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wyoming è il primo di una serie di libri con protagonista Roy, che qui seguiamo in viaggio con la madre lungo le strade polverose dell’America degli anni Cinquanta, tra campagne infinite e motel dimessi. Ogni capitolo è un frammento breve, costruito unicamente sui dialoghi tra i due protagonisti. È un romanzo diretto ed essenziale, capace di evocare spazi sconfinati e intimità sottili. Delizioso.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Consists entirely of dialogue between Mother and son while driving across America, and one small vignette written by the mother in a hotel room. Oh, and a few sketches.

Not a novel. And not a play either. It is something else.

The son is imaginative and curious about many things. The mother is very generous and kind.

A little too sweet and precious in parts. It always throws me when parent characters treat their children like unimpeachable princes of wonder, but that's because I was capable of saying ugly things as a child and my mother didn't hesitate to put me in my place. Here Gifford just gives us the most touching moments, and so it seems a little incomplete.

Still good though.

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel told almost entirely in dialogue, which is fine because dialogue is what Gifford does best. This is like a companion piece to The Cuban Club (Roy stories), so readers of that or Gifford's memoir about his father will probably understand more than what's directly on the page here. Either way, it's a strong though slender work.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this - love Gifford's poetry and prose and screenplays. Gritty and real.

[Knut André Dale · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars.

[Abril · Rating 2 out of 5]

Creo que hay algo en este libro que no logré captar, pero la estructura narrativa está interesante

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

un dialogo dolcissimo lungo tutto un viaggio on the road tra una mamma e il suo bimbo.
È un libro brevissimo ma che sa regalare tenerezza.

[DrCrower Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

En su sencillez radica su belleza.

[Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scarrozzando con mamma

Anni Cinquanta. Un bambino con sua madre. Un auto in viaggio sulle strade Americane. E dialoghi, solo dialoghi, sulle piccole e grandi cose della vita.

Piacevole, ma a dir la verità ricordo veramente poco nonostante l'abbia letto un mese fa.

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boo. Dumb. This was about as deep as it was long. Told almost all in dialogue, it mostly avoids overtly expositional speech, except that almost every chapter starts with "Where are we now?" "We're in Biloxi, baby. Remember the time your dad had an affair in Biloxi?" "I remember the time we saw the albino alligator at the zoo." "I remember that too, baby. You were seven at the time and your dad and I weren't getting along very well." etc. etc. etc. The kid's voice doesn't give any insight into what it means to be a kid, it practically doesn't even sound like a kid. Saccharine throughout. All dialogue, and neither voice is even interesting. Plotwise, the story is stagnant until a surprise comes completely out of left field; it's so surprising I flipped back to see if I'd completely skipped a chapter, which wouldn't be surprising, considering most are about two pages long. Soon thereafter comes the one chapter that isn't in dialogue, which also comes out of left field. At the end of the chapter we learn it was a little story written by "Roy's mom," so we can maintain the namelessness of the mother, "in a hotel." Okay, so, who found this note? Anyway, no need to get into questions of narrator in a dialogue-only book. The chapter just came out of nowhere and didn't add anything. Overall just really disappointing. Completely unfair to compare this to JR, but JR does exist, and if you're going to write an almost-all-dialogue novel, with most or half of the dialogue coming from a kid . . . well . . .

[Cecilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is told through the conversations of a young boy and his mother as they travel across the country. This is an interesting technique that works well. Gifford also wrote Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, the novel that is the basis for David Lynch's cult film classic Wild at Heart.

[Nate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, what a bore fest. The entire book is just a fictional conversation between a mother and an obnoxious kid; it starts no where, and it goes no where-and the random conversations that they have aren't even good.

The book feels unfinished and should have remained unpublished. It's extremely short, but still an incredible waste of time.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable - but slight - novel told almost entirely in dialogue and very short scenes. Not Gifford's best work, but it's charming and at times profound, evoking a wonderful one-hand-clapping feeling.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is amazing, all the action is implied, sort of out the frame. it's basically a long conversation between a mother and son. i want to make into a movie.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is told entirely in dialogue. It's actually kind of interesting, not much like Gifford's other work.

[Joe Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short novel, or novella, entirely dialogue, between a son and his mother as they drive. I loved this book when I first read it seven or eight years ago, and it holds up.