Source of Lit - Percival Everett - Wounded

The following was written and distributed to the EWN in August 2005, a preview of the title if you will.  This book marks Percival Everett’s continued return to Graywolf Press for his fiction.  He’d published his short story collection, Damned If I Do, with them the previous fall and these two titles have been the first of four consecutive fictional efforts (the two poetry titles since then have been with other houses), and the first since back in 1999 (Glyph).  It truly seems to be an excellent match, with Fiona McCrae editing Percival’s work.

I also have to say, I LOVE this cover.  Graywolf must have too as it was their catalog cover that fall.

Wounded

October 2005 by Graywolf Press 207 pages

With Wounded, Percival Everett’s fourteenth novel, and nineteenth book, he continues to create a unique body of work – one that regularly shows his readers that frequently when one is searching for something specific, they are often searching for something within themselves at the same time.

As a great deal of Everett's stories are, Wounded is set in the west, Wyoming to be specific.  The protagonist, John Hunt, is a horse trainer by profession, and one with a fair amount of land and his own business. He is also black, something that comes up on the third page of the novel, and beyond his works that have been parodies in nature, God’s Country, Erasure, and A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond As Told to Percival Everett and James Kincaid, this announcement of the color of a main character is something new to Everett's work.  

A young man, Wallace Castlebury, who was doing some manual labor on Hunt’s farm, is arrested for the brutal slaying of a young man who happens to be gay. As he had just started with John, and not in any spectacular fashion, Hunt didn’t have much to say to the sheriff, nor did he want to be too involved with the arrested Castlebury. This crime leads to a hate crime rally that draws a college age man, David, to town. He happens to be the son of Howard, an old college roommate of John, who calls and asks Hunt to kind of watch over David if he could.

Everett has rarely seemed satisfied writing about a single topic in the past and Wounded is no different.  Everett has John Hunt dealing with his lack of belief that Wallace murdered the gay man, but not wanting to get involved. He also has him dealing with his own feelings about homosexuality as David ends up working on his farm. Then there are relationships John is in himself, with his Uncle Gus, an ex-con who actually has murdered before (though with a fairly decent excuse), with his old friend Howard, and the burgeoning romance with a younger woman named Maggie, who sees her mother die during the course of the story.

As usual, Everett writes about all of this with great economy. He moves crisply from scene to scene and storyline to storyline without skipping a beat. Through all of his dealings, be they with the sheriff, with Native Americans, homosexuals, Gus, Maggie, Maggie’s mom, and others, John Hunt, while trying to help each and every one, is desperately searching for himself, and for a way to get beyond his own past, during which his wife died, trying to ride a horse they both knew she wasn’t ready for. 

Everett doesn't do all that much in this novel that is new to devout readers of his works, though, as mentioned before, he’s certainly making it as clear as possible that race is an issue this time around. These are issues he’s written about before and one assumes will again, especially the searching to find oneself. The great thing is, even in not really tackling much new this time around, it’s still Everett and as long as he tackles old topics as well as he has in the past, his new works will be well worth your time.

4 stars

Comments

[Roland Kraus]

looking for: Jim Kincaid, US-Army near Stuttgart ( Germany ),writing poems,visits
my studio in Berlin in 65 with his super8 camera and the painter Roland Wesner, back to the states, New Orleans ( after 66 ).
Can you help to reestablish contact ?
Thanks anyway !
[email protected]