Word: offutt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first novel. The same River Twice. Chris Offutt Plungers directly into the sophisticate realm of high fiction. Directly, that is, if you discount his only other published work, Kentucky Straight. In that collection of short fiction. Offutt shamelessly sold out his Kentucky heritage to Random. House. After slogging through the nine stories in the Paw-dun-hung-himself-with-his-belt vein. I was dreading the two hundred pages of memoir that make up. The Same River Twice. But Offutt has tired of Flogging the dead horse of his homeland, and has produced as intelligent and enthralling account...
...Offutt was raised in the hills of Kentucky. "Hillbilly was what the people in town called us," he writes. "Hick, ridgerunner, redneck, inbred ingrate, and my personal favorite, pig-fucker. My mother is my sixth cousin. My brother and sister are also my cousins but nobody in my family ever seduced a hog." Dissatisfied by the prospect of a life lived by moonshine and bluegrass, Offutt sets out for New York City to become an actor. He roams the U.S., never managing to hold down a job or a relationship; we see him dodge an arranged marriage in Minneapolis, grab...
...memoir cleverly intersperses the narrative of Offutt's wife's pregnancy with the sordid anecdotes of his youth. He sets his fifteen years of wandering against the nine months of expectancy, illustrating the transformation from carefree adventurer to father with well-ordered contrast. The father-to-be balks at the notion of parental responsibility, just as his youthful self fled from the restraints of any long-term career or romance...
...Offutt often adopts a dreamlike tone groping towards depicting a more universal experience of ambition and failure. He questions his role in life by means of a close examination of his past follies and future duties...