My own private Wyoming.

Bell, Christopher

Wounded

by Percival Everett

Graywolf Press. 242 pages, $23.

WOUNDED IS ostensibly about a gay bashing in contemporary Wyoming. The action of the novel begins with a gay bashing that occurs at the same time of year as that of Matthew Shepard. The victim is Jerry Tuttle, described by the protagonist as "a small man, a gentle man, and like most murdered people, not deserving of what happened to him." There are clear shades here of Matthew Shepard, whose diminutive stature was a major focus of the media's coverage of his murder. The unmitigated brutality of Tuttle's assault is also reminiscent of Shepard's, with the murder being described in this way: "They found this college kid dead at the mouth of Damon Falls Canyon ... he was strung up like an elk with his throat slit."

As a protagonist, John Hunt is part art historian, part Dr. Phil, and part Hercule Poirot. More than anything, Hunt is a contradiction. When summoned by a Native American friend who's just had some of his livestock killed--with the words "Red Nigger" pointedly scrawled in cow's blood in the snow--Hunt, a black man, stoically intones, "I don't suppose you're the one who wrote that." And yet, what an odd response, given that a few pages earlier Hunt himself had cold-cocked a man who dared to call him "nigger" to his face. The basis for his skepticism is unclear, with the result that Hunt comes off as a no-nonsense tough guy when he himself is threatened but as something else entirely when it's a friend who's in trouble.

The novel also suffers from a problem of genre. While it has elements of drama, mystery, love story, and Western, they don't finally add up to anything like a unified whole. In the end, the narrative has the feel of a soap opera: life-altering event is piled on top of life-altering event with little discussion or analysis of what's going on. Thus, for example, in short order a college friend's son comes to live with Hunt and immediately becomes attracted to him; the relationship-wary Hunt grows closer to his (female) neighbor; his elderly uncle, a former inmate, grows more crotchety and unpredictable each day; and on and on. The fact that Hunt is a black man is more a plot device than cause for reflection. As such, he's an endless source of either attraction or fascination, depending upon the circumstance.

In the end, the various and often contradictory aspects of Hunt don't make for a believable character. I found it troubling that the novel's action is precipitated by a gay bashing but that this event is quickly relegated to a plot device with little importance in and of itself. Given the ever-present risk of physical violence that haunts the narrative, one would expect the protagonist and his cast of supporting characters to be more interested in the outcome of this bashing, which is "solved" only summarily, and quite unsatisfactorily, at the book's conclusion.

Christopher Bell lives in Poland, where he is writing his PhD thesis for a British university.