Joe Landsdale, "A Fine Dark Line"

Many, speaking of Joe R. Lansdale’s “A Fine Dark Line”, immediately cite the Bildungsroman, the coming- of- age novel such as “Stand by me”, with the classic loss of innocence.

Stanley Mitchell, the thirteen-year-old protagonist, in a long hot Texan summer, discovers that the world is not as he believed it, that people have sex with each other, kill, get drunk, beat their wives, brutalize their children. Above all, he discovers that blacks are not the same as whites, they are not given the same place in the order of things.

“Those are people who have nothing better to do than to move the gravestones of black people or to cut them into a thousand pieces by throwing them into the stream. Who are cowards too, son, because they know that black people will never react, like this in front of everyone, with the risk of seeing those of the Klan arrive, other people like that”.

He discovers that rights are not for everyone, that women, especially if they are coloured, are always victims; that prejudices poison social relationships, friendships, the neighbourhood; that there are those who make money on the skin of others; that not everything is as it appears.

I, however, will not dwell on this obvious aspect, but I will touch the main merit of a novel that, if it does not mark, does not upset, does not penetrate, however enthuses, at least for the limited time of reading: it is not the inner growth of the protagonist as I have said, neither the improbable and yet unresolved plot, but rather the very successful atmosphere of America in the late fifties.

Therefore, I do not follow Stanley’s investigation about the two girls who died in obscure circumstances many years before, the discovery of the letters, the buried casket, the scary house on the hill. In the end, the discoveries made by Stanley leave us indifferent, the protagonist seems even not to feel horror as he unearths corpses that should freeze him. We are not interested in unraveling the mystery of the headless ghost that wanders along the railway, but rather in following Stanley in his movements, pedaling with him up the hill while the air cools before the storm, slipping into the cage of the always drunk negro projectionist.

“In the summer it took a long time before it got dark, and the sun — which still had no obstacle in skyscrapers or popular barracks — plunged into the trees of eastern Texas like a shooting star. As it set, it gave the impression of putting entire woods on fire.”

Stanley manages a drive in with his family, in a town in Texas masterfully recreated by the author and which we have seen many times in films, made of wooden houses, meadows, kids on bicycles, young people with tufts and the lapel on the trousers, of cafeterias capable of bringing to mind those evoked in the thirties by Mc Cain in “The postman always rings twice”.

“Rockabilly, or rock and roll, passed on the radio, as it ended up being called, but the air of our parts was certainly not saturated with these rock and roll atmospheres. We were just a bunch of kids who gathered in the afternoon and evening in front of the Dairy Queen, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. Some of us, like Chester White, wore duck hair and turned on super lowriders. Most of them had short hair, and a conspicuous banana on the front, held in place by a good deal of glitter. They wore well-ironed breeches, starched white shirts, beautiful shiny brown shoes and drove the family car the times they could get their hands on it.”

It looks like a scene from “Grease” or “Happy Days”, but here the protagonists have crossed the thin dark line that “separates the mysteries of darkness from reality”, that brings to light the corpses, the rotten, the putrefied, the hidden, and where a boy who has just stopped believing in Santa Claus discovers the bestiality of men. During his investigation, Stanley collides with the anger hatched by the Blacks for their subordinate condition, anger which, in turn, the males (not only blacks) vent on their children and women to reassert their existence, their place in the world.

Stanley, however, is saved, his inner light remains intact thanks to the family example, the righteousness of the father, the love of the mother, the complicity of the older sister, the dignity of his dog, the friendship of the projectionist Buster and the friend Richard. But something has cracked, life will never be as carefree as it once was, a sort of widespread melancholy accompanies the whole novel from the first to the last page.