Snakehunter

by Chuck Kinder, Nicola Manuppelli (Translator)

Stati Uniti, il Midwest rurale, gli anni Quaranta del Novecento. È qui che vive Speer Whitfield: un bambino ossessionato dai serpenti, dalle tartarughe, dall’acqua e dai pesci. E dal suo pene, visibilmente difettoso. L’infanzia di Speer è costellata di episodi disastrosi dai risvolti tragicomici, soprattutto quando hanno a che fare con chi lo ha cresciuto, una famiglia matriarcale, bizzarramente assortita e perseguitata dai fantasmi del passato: una zia zitella, brillante e mezzo alcolizzata, l’unica a saper interpretarne desideri e paure; un padre morto in guerra che si chiamava come lui; una madre bella come Lauren Bacall e una sorella col volto devastato dal cancro vittima di sguardi ostili. E poi il nonno, burbero e scostante con tutti ma incredibilmente premuroso verso il nipote, quel nonno proprietario della vecchia e invincibile Snakehunter, “la barca più bella di sempre”. Insieme a loro una brulicante schiera di personaggi destinati a rimanere indimenticabili nella mente di Speer e in quella del lettore.
Pubblicato nel 1973, Snakehunter è il primo romanzo di Chuck Kinder, che lo ha portato subito al successo per il modo in cui dosa perfettamente asciutto realismo e profondo simbolismo. Scritto quando l’autore aveva da poco superato i venti anni, ha la freschezza della gioventù e la saggezza della maturità. Un toccante romanzo di formazione – a volte struggente, a volte spassoso – in cui l’autore attinge a ricordi personali ma anche al mito per ricreare un passato sempre presente, dolce e triste come i paesaggi del West Virginia che descrive.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

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

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took the author's class at the University of Pittsburgh. I got so much out of the class and book. His storytelling is both bad-ass (I can think of no other way to describe it) and lyrical and completely original. A poetic, bad-boy's voice. I couldn't put it down.

[Stefano Solventi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un romanzo di de-formazione dark, in bilico tra l’anarchia selvatica di Mark Twain e l’asciutta crudeltà di Cormac McCarthy.

La mia recensione qui:

https://pensierosecondario.wordpress....

[John Tipper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kinder navigates themes of love, loss, and the human condition in this coming of age novel, which impresses me as autobiography. It's a blend of humor and touching moments. Speer, the main character, lives in the small town of Century, West Virginia. A cousin of his, Herk, is a bully and beats up Speer on a regular basis. His mother is divorced, and sister Cynthia is often ailing. Speer is close to his older cousin, Catherine, an intellectual who reads a lot and writes a novel. No publishing houses pick it up, however. She drinks a lot and gets tipsy from couch syrup. This experimental novel has an odd structure. Told in the first person, sometimes in the present tense, other times in the past. And it jumps around in time. Also the plot is broken up by musings on tribal people, like the Maori, the Cherokees and Australian indigenous folks. In some respects, the story is about story construction itself. In any event, the prose is poetic and will resonate with readers. Kinder explores the message of the search for identity in this work on a boy in Appalachia.

[Eli C · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique book of Appalachian Gothic recommended by a friend.

Snakehunter is a painful look of masculinity and the ways death through violence is present and swept under the rug. Some people can ignore it and normalize death; others normalize the dying, even when they cause it.

[Massi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2

[Randy Costanza]

All I can say is that this guy knows how to throw down.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chuck Kinder's beautiful coming of age in West Virginia. Beautiful work.

[Lila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely amazing. Speer grows up in rural Virginia and writes about his life with a detached clarity. Often times funny and sad. The characters of this book will stick with me for a long time.