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We could read 200 books about Trump and his tricks, about Kissinger and his foreign policy, about the racism and violence of the cities of North America, about the ññería of its universities and the waste of its urbanism ... And it would not matter everything bad that we learn because we could always find a new story that renews the promise of innocence and freedom that we associate with the United States.

The idiot wind (Today's Topics), memory of youth of the debutante writer Peter Kaldheim (1949), is a new example of such sweet and essentially American literature.

A summary: we are in New York in 1987 and Kaldheim is a failed writer who consumes and sells cocaine . In recent years he has lost and buried a couple of couples, has quarreled with his parents and has been dismissed from work in an embarrassing manner. On the weekend of the Super Bowl (he wins his team but he doesn't care) he ends his camel race: he promises to sell seven grams of cocaine but sniffs 14 in two days and discovers that he can't pay his supplier. So you spend your last 30 dollars on a bus that takes you out of the city, as far as you can. A friend offers shelter in San Francisco, so Kaldheim, who has studied letters at a good university, feels a little Sal Paradise on the road .

The following months, full of nights in the open, hitchhiking trips, wise wanderers, beautiful landscapes and generous people who cross their path, confirm that omen. "During that time, talking about Kerouac with the people I was talking to was a way to remind me of what I really liked living," Kaldheim explains. «Do you know what I like today on the road? All the jazz that comes out ».

What was going wrong in your life? "I wanted to be a writer, but in 10 years I had not made more than 100 pages and had left all the stories I started," explains the author. « I went to the bars of the literary environment to feel that I was part of that world and drank and drugged myself to forget my failure. My self-esteem was collapsing. And there might have been something learned: all the writers I looked at had self-destructive lives. I suppose I planned to imitate them in order to fulfill my mission as a writer ».

Thus, until reaching the dramatic point in which Kaldheim embarked on the very American journey of redemption, in the style of Springsteen's songs . Why are Americans always leaving home in their books? «We are a country of immigrants. We are all children of someone who left and we have that internalized way of life. And I suppose that families in the United States are a bit problematic and that is why people have fragile roots.

Kaldheim's trip was full of sordid and lonely moments. It was the journey of a wanderer, not that of a backpacker . However, his story is cheerful. «I didn't feel depression when I ran away. Depression had it before, my addictions expressed that anguish. As soon as I got on the bus I felt free of the responsibilities that gripped me, glad to start a new life ».

On good days, the idiot wind traveler slept and ate the charity of the Salvation Army; On very good days, I had a public library in which to spend the afternoon and read. «Libraries admit homeless people, nobody asks you anything. I read Joyce ».

And weren't the 80s an era of conservative and rather selfish values? «Among the homeless, no. The same does not happen now. What conservatism can be among those who have nothing? There are people who doubt that such a trip is possible today. Well, I think sneaking into a freight train is not as easy as before. But people are the same . You will find more good people than bad wherever you go ».

An example: Gino, the owner of an Audi that crossed the country from south to north and recruited Kaldheim to give him the wheel. At first, Gino was a coiled uncle who wanted to talk; later, he became his irritating bad conscience : “He physically resembled my father. He was a very straight man who had lost his family to his wife's cocaine addiction. It was the mirror that reflected the damage I had done, the one that told me that growing up was taking responsibility. An addict is above all, that, someone who lives in a perpetual present and who tries to believe that his actions have no consequences.

The idiot wind needed a vital teaching of that kind to be a round text. That and a happy ending like the ones America still promises.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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