DUELLO AL SOLE
Manuel Marsol
Orecchio Acerbo, 2020
Under the scorching sun of the Far West, a cowboy and an Indian are ready to kill each other: gun and bow in hand, face to face on opposite sides of a river.
But beyond their angry faces, they don’t seem determined to go through with it, if a cloud and some other noise on the horizon are enough to distract them. The first western – non-violent and almost wordless – in a hundred pages, complete with moonlit end credits, where the boundaries between good and bad, smart and stupid, man and animal, courage and fear, serious and ridiculous, real and imaginary constantly oscillate with great irony.
Reviews
DILETTA COLOMBO
“Attention span and a mind sensitive to external elements: that is the secret of seeing things. Can you direct all your faculties from the inside to the outside, like a house with many faces peering through windows and doors?” asks John Burroughs in The Art of Seeing Things (PianoB 2021). The Indian and the cowboy seem to be capable of this: open senses and curiosity about everything that happens around them easily shift their attention from conflict to complicity, transforming war into a game where one is free to express anger and frustration without hurting anyone.
DEVORAH BLOCK
Manuel Marsol recreates the cinematic language of the classic Western in this innovative book which turns the iconic duel on its head. While the representations are those of the stereotypical – and stereotyped – Cowboy and Indian, their interactions are anything but, overlaying a whimsical relationship embedded in its natural surrounds on top of the expected narrative. Marsol uses our expectations to comic effect, substituting closeups of birds and horses when we expect to see the two adversaries, and friendship where we expect to find animosity. This is a wonderful read for all lovers of Westerns, but also a lovely reminder that things are not always what they seem and that paying attention to the details can reap rewards.
