Where are we going to go?
To Montana, Wyoming, Oregon. To the wilds of Utah, Texas, Kansas. Towards any frontier the pioneers and their heirs deemed worthy of the name, not so much to duel each other or to hunt the Indians or, again, to pass on stories of sheriffs and outlaws, but rather to confront the elements of nature, to measure the hardening of one’s spirit (individual and collective) under the biggest skies and the most distant stars, to find the sense of something superior by bringing one’s horse to an uncontaminated land.
Rocks, woods, eagles, plains, prairies, winds, bison, rivers, canyons, inns and passions: this is where we will go, breathing deeply stories of unforgettable journeys and perilous existences.
# We will begin by examining the American myth of the West and the wilderness through Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams (the author of Stoner), a story of bison hunting which is nothing more than the story of a founding relationship: that between man, society and nature .
# Once the boundaries of the myth and of our journey have been outlined, we will continue the exploration of that relationship and of the concept of freedom through two great masterpieces of western fiction: The Big Sky and The Path of the West by A.B. Guthrie.
# Annie Proulx’s Wyoming will be the great protagonist of the third stage: we will leave the great novels to explore the great stories, of which the author was a teacher. Among these is the famous Brokeback Mountain.
# The heart of our journey will coincide with the great epic of Lonesome Dove as well as the exploration of an entire language of American myth and soul: the one made famous by Larry McMurtry, the most important interpreter of the spirit of the West of the modern era.
# The journey will end with some contemporary and oblique stories, in which that relationship between man, society and nature – as well as the whole myth of the great West – will acquire more critical and experimental literary forms: Hinterland by Téa Obreht, Children of the Dust by Colin Winette and God’s Country by Percival Everett.
