Trout Fishing and Red Herring: The Meaning of Going Wild in Percival Everett’sDamned If I Do

Abstract

The article explores the complex notion of wildness that characterizes the twelve stories of Percival Everett’s Damned If I Do and examines the palindromic nature of meaning that sheds light on the coherence of the collection. Everett’s stories belong to a literary tradition, dating back to the nineteenth century, that celebrates life in an almost Edenic Western landscape. The violence, the humour, and the flights of creative fancy that characterize Damned If I Do point to an understanding of the wilderness that informs both the diegetic world and the textual nature of that world.