Walking Wounded: The Horse by Willy Vlautin

The plot  is basic enough: a sixty-plus year old mentally precarious alcoholic,  ex-country musician/songwriter who lives alone in the mountains with barely anything to sustain him, finds a blind horse standing alone in the snow and only a bottle of tequila to accompany him, walks thirty miles to get help. Unlike the protagonist in Vlautin's boy-and-horse novel Lean On Pete, Al, seemingly at the low end of an  increasingly chaotic life, knows nothing about such animals nor  much of anything  other than playing the guitar and writing heart-wrenching songs.      

Of course, as we have come to expect with Vlautin,  it's not the plot so much as  the tone and the empathetic quality of the fiction, that matters.   In The Horse,  Al  is as fragile and vulnerable as anyone Vlautin has portrayed. But, then, this is an author who has a particular  affinity for, and vested interest in, broken people. As well as the ability to place them into a supremely readable narratives that plucks  at the heartstrings, while producing sentences and sentiments soaked in honesty, human foible, misfortune and, ultimately, grace.  

Admittedly, I came late to Vlautin's downbeat yet invigorating fiction. At first I couldn't believe anyone could write like that, with their heart so plainly on their sleeve, without a place to hide or mask to hide behind. And to accomplish all that without, it seems, any formal literary education (no doubt to Vlautin's advantage).  It didn't me  long to appreciate Vlautin's  not only his novels but his music (Richmond Fontaine, The Delines), the latter being  every bit  as moving as his fiction, and, at times, almost indistinguishable.   

The Horse is the first time Vlautin has  incorporated the world of music into his fiction. Naturally,  it's a hard luck story, with characters that fail or fall, and mistreat others no more than they mistreat themselves. Yet it never becomes maudlin nor revels in  self-pity or mock-Bukowski braggadocio. That's because Vlautin's broken people are simply trying to do their best to get through life in a world that, thanks to the various economic and political currents, has grown  increasingly harsh. Beyond what, to me, is most impressive is that  Vlautin can accomplish all that without any  trace of cynicism or bad faith.

But Vlautin's novels, for me,  exist in a kind of blur.  I can't honestly say that I remember the plots to any of them in any detail,  just their broad outlines. But, then, perhaps that goes without saying, because, for Vlautin, plots only exist as a kind of wrapping in which he enfolds his characters. Which might be why my favourite Vlautin novel is always the one I'm currently reading. Yet The Horse could well be my all-time favourite. Maybe because it stands as a paean to working musicians, and a glimpse into what might go into  the writing of a song- the experiences, the pain as well as the pleasures. Though some might cite the various lists of Al's song titles- sometimes spread over an entire page if not more-  as unnecessary,  I found the titles more like lines of poems that comprise Al's life, a summary that explains a lot without explaining anything at all.  

At the end of the novel, in  the acknowledgements, Vlautin gives a nod to his brother, and the musical education he received from him. Just more evidence that there is barely  any distance or difference between Vlautin the writer, Vlautin the musician and Vlautin the person. A rare quality in what has become an increasingly distorted and pre-packaged world.