The fall of the village hero

Thirty-five years have passed since this novel – The Ballad of Holt – was published, at an important moment in Kent Haruf's career, as it was his second narrative work. It was the confirmation of a voice that had emerged in 1984, through The Strongest Bond , a story centered on the past of an eighty-year-old woman accused of murder and confined to a hospital in Holt County, Colorado (not to be confused with the real counties located in the states of Nebraska and Missouri), a reflection of the town where the author himself lived, called Salida.

This literary toponymy, in the style of William Faulkner's equally fictional Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi, accompanied Haruf throughout his entire career—he died in 2014, aged seventy-one, from a lung disease—as did the traits that distinguish his literature: small-town America and the secrets of an entire community, which ultimately lend tension to each of his plots. This was also the case in the novel that brought the author international acclaim after its film adaptation by Indian author Ristesh Batra, Our Souls at Night , starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford. The circumstances surrounding the creation of this short novel, about a romance between two neighbors who have been widowed for several years in a small town, and about the gossip surrounding it and the lack of empathy of their own children, were truly special.

Haruf undertook his task already knowing that he had little time left to live, and he produced an intimate work that was far removed from the harshness of his other narratives.

Without going any further, on this occasion, with The Ballad of Holt , we already had the situation of bitter conflict served up from the very first line: "In the end, Jack Burdette eventually returned to Holt. None of us expected him to. He had been gone for eight years, and no one in Holt had heard from him in that time. Even the police had stopped looking for him." It's a plural point of view, as if the town were speaking, as a compact entity that, in its day, was marked by the departure of that individual.

In this way, Haruf draws the reader into the plot with a detective-like bait, using a stylistic register filled with dry and forceful dialogue worthy of the best Western (the word "sheriff" appears immediately). This guy Burdette shows up at the wheel of a red Cadillac, which speaks volumes about him, as the narrator takes pains to explain what kind of man would drive such a car. Thus, a sociological, but also literary, answer is given: "There was all that red paint—the color, let's say, of an open wound, or the intense stain left by a woman's lipstick on a Saturday night—and it all shone, glittered in the sun, as if he'd been polishing it for us all day."

⁄ Haruf introduces the reader to the plot with a detective bait and a stylistic register full of dry dialogues

This is the key to Haruf's writing: a subtle poetry of the everyday hidden in harsh stories, the same ones that shaped his Plain Trilogy , composed of The Song of the Plain , At the End of the Afternoon , and Blessing . As in these, in The Ballad of Holt the interest lies in the relationships of the characters, always eager to reproach each other for past episodes.

The original title of the work was Where You Once Belonged , and such is the novel's premise: the rootedness, as rewarding as it is treacherous, of human beings in an environment where they have become relevant, as if disappointment in coexistence were inevitable. This is exemplified by Burdette's visit, after which a first antagonist emerges, a neighbor named Ralph, who has a grudge against her for something the reader will discover.

The story is actually told by the local newspaper editor, a former schoolmate of Burdette's, who would go on to become a great athlete. However, from an admirable person, he becomes hated by everyone for his arrogance and greed. We are, therefore, witnessing the classic fall of the hero, for which the protagonist is equally responsible for the crimes committed, as are those who erected an idol and repented of it.

Kent Haruf The Ballad of Holt / The Ballad of Holt Translated into Spanish by Julio Germán Trujillo / Into Catalan by Marta Pera Cucurell Random House / Periscopi. 184 / 216 pages. 19.90 euros