John Hawkes, Second Skin

Rita Ferrari (Independent Scholar - North America)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1964

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

John Hawkes's novel Second Skin (1964) is narrated by a fifty-nine-year-old ex-naval lieutenant named Skipper who tells his story, writes his “naked history”, in order to counteract and redeem a violent and death-ridden world that victimized him in innumerable ways, large and small, and that robbed him of nearly everyone he loved. In the short chapter “Naming Names” that serves as prologue, Skipper ticks off a litany of the dead: his murdered son-in-law, Fernandez; his father, a mortician who committed suicide when Skipper was a boy; his wife Gertrude, who committed suicide in a cheap motel; and his daughter, Cassandra, who committed suicide in spite of all his efforts to keep her alive. He ends the chapter by describing h…

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2505 words

Citation: Ferrari, Rita. "Second Skin". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 January 2001 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2215, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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