“Follow Your Heart” (NBC, 1990): The Mirage of an Adaptation of Percival Everett’s 1985 novel Walk Me to the Distance
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2 juin 2017
- doi: 10.4000/books.pufr.5470
- isbn: 9782869062290
- eisbn: 9782869064416
https://www.openedition.org/12554 , info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
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Percival Everett littérature de langue anglaise littérature États-Unis United States literature English literature Percival Everett Literary Theory & Criticism Literature American LIT004040 DSBSujets proches
Eyesight Seeing Sight World literature Western literature (Western countries) Belles-lettresCiter ce document
Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris, « “Follow Your Heart” (NBC, 1990): The Mirage of an Adaptation of Percival Everett’s 1985 novel Walk Me to the Distance », Presses universitaires François-Rabelais, ID : 10.4000/books.pufr.5470
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The problem with the word adaptation is that it implies —or should imply— some kind of coherent vision or revision (which is most often the case) of an original narrative but Noel Nosseck’s made-for-TV movie adapted from Percival Everett’s Walk Me to the Distance obviously lacks the unicity of structure and vision of the text. Once on screen, there seems to be little trace of the literary hero’s self- imposed imperative “Go West, young man!” when the latter finds out he can no longer call Georgia home upon returning from Vietnam. Nor is there much left of his near-Frontier experience when he gets involved in the backwoods lynching of a rapist in Wyoming —except, maybe, in the rather long introductory “Big Sky country” sequence of the television film and in its rather weak echo of the Frontier Code of its inhabitants. The essay will therefore take a close look at Nosseck’s adaptation choices and show how the protagonist’s original journey through an internalized and phantasmagorical West has been notably altered and thwarted.