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quietprofanity Aug. 29th, 2007 08:51 pm)
quietprofanity Aug. 29th, 2007 08:51 pm)... Nah, I'll give you a break. I'll talk about a book, instead: Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx. Yeah, I can hear the "What?" ... It's the book that Proulx first published the famous "Brokeback Mountain".
I read this book out of order, mostly because I didn't feel I had to read based on Proulx's (or her editor's) choices. Sure, you might get certain emotional cues by reading a short story book in order, much like you may get a different feeling from how songs are placed a certain way on an album. Plus, I'm kinda lazy and sometimes just wanted to read a story that was 10 pages long as opposed to 40 pages.
Overall, I liked the stories, even though Annie Proulx's prose is ... different. Some critics have accused her of pretending to be deep through prose that's difficult to decipher. And it is, but I like the evocative details of it. I like the mood. I like that it gave me some insight into a world that I'll never be able to know as intimately as she does, and I'm grateful that she wanted to share it with us. Although I can't defend the really, really stupid names she insists on giving nearly all of her characters. ("Aladdin" was pretty special, but doesn't quite match up to the brothers named "Car" and "Train". My favorite part in some of the stories is when a character with a stupid name makes fun of someone with an equally stupid name without any irony whatsoever ... I think that happened twice.)
To have read Brokeback Mountain first is interesting, because you can usually see what most people have criticized as the typical slash story elements ... but then when you read about all the straight people she writes about, the story seems more like typical Proulx story elements. ... Except it doesn't have any of the magical realism stuff like the talking pick-up truck and the zombie cow.
You can say that Brokeback is a typical "queers are the victim of society" story, but in Close Range, the straight people can't break out of their roles either. Granted, a few of them are pretty much assholes who reap what they sow, like the rapist bull-rider and the pedophile who gets roped into low-level eco-terrorism. (I can already hear a few of you going, "I can't believe she's saying this shit ..." Stay with me.) But a lot of them are people who run into bad luck, people with crappy parents, and people who just have trouble eking out a living in a place that's governed by monetary factors far removed from them. A lot of people who had to sell their cattle farms for souvenir shops ... a lot of people who fate just kicked in the face. Society seems to suck for everyone out in Proulx's Wyoming.
Still, she paints some good portraits ... and a couple of vignettes that are just weird and insane ... one in particular that seems to be one of those "shock fics" I heard about once. There are also a few colorful characters, like the Amazonian ranch hand and the fundamentalist Christian bull rider with the also-fundamentalist geologist sister.
That might not be enough to get you guys to read a book with depressing themes and only one story of gay, though. Still, I think if you liked "Brokeback", you owe it to yourself to check this out. A man on a road trip facing a demon at the end of his life, a rapist bullrider whose deeds catch up with him, and the sad fate of two families when one tries vigilante justice against the other (or does it?) may not be as sexy, but it's good work and worth your time ... just be prepared to face a lot of words you won't know if you're a ranching-moron like me. You learn a lot more from the whole than you do from just "Brokeback".
I'm not sure if I'll get her second collection. I'm contemplating it ...
I read this book out of order, mostly because I didn't feel I had to read based on Proulx's (or her editor's) choices. Sure, you might get certain emotional cues by reading a short story book in order, much like you may get a different feeling from how songs are placed a certain way on an album. Plus, I'm kinda lazy and sometimes just wanted to read a story that was 10 pages long as opposed to 40 pages.
Overall, I liked the stories, even though Annie Proulx's prose is ... different. Some critics have accused her of pretending to be deep through prose that's difficult to decipher. And it is, but I like the evocative details of it. I like the mood. I like that it gave me some insight into a world that I'll never be able to know as intimately as she does, and I'm grateful that she wanted to share it with us. Although I can't defend the really, really stupid names she insists on giving nearly all of her characters. ("Aladdin" was pretty special, but doesn't quite match up to the brothers named "Car" and "Train". My favorite part in some of the stories is when a character with a stupid name makes fun of someone with an equally stupid name without any irony whatsoever ... I think that happened twice.)
To have read Brokeback Mountain first is interesting, because you can usually see what most people have criticized as the typical slash story elements ... but then when you read about all the straight people she writes about, the story seems more like typical Proulx story elements. ... Except it doesn't have any of the magical realism stuff like the talking pick-up truck and the zombie cow.
You can say that Brokeback is a typical "queers are the victim of society" story, but in Close Range, the straight people can't break out of their roles either. Granted, a few of them are pretty much assholes who reap what they sow, like the rapist bull-rider and the pedophile who gets roped into low-level eco-terrorism. (I can already hear a few of you going, "I can't believe she's saying this shit ..." Stay with me.) But a lot of them are people who run into bad luck, people with crappy parents, and people who just have trouble eking out a living in a place that's governed by monetary factors far removed from them. A lot of people who had to sell their cattle farms for souvenir shops ... a lot of people who fate just kicked in the face. Society seems to suck for everyone out in Proulx's Wyoming.
Still, she paints some good portraits ... and a couple of vignettes that are just weird and insane ... one in particular that seems to be one of those "shock fics" I heard about once. There are also a few colorful characters, like the Amazonian ranch hand and the fundamentalist Christian bull rider with the also-fundamentalist geologist sister.
That might not be enough to get you guys to read a book with depressing themes and only one story of gay, though. Still, I think if you liked "Brokeback", you owe it to yourself to check this out. A man on a road trip facing a demon at the end of his life, a rapist bullrider whose deeds catch up with him, and the sad fate of two families when one tries vigilante justice against the other (or does it?) may not be as sexy, but it's good work and worth your time ... just be prepared to face a lot of words you won't know if you're a ranching-moron like me. You learn a lot more from the whole than you do from just "Brokeback".
I'm not sure if I'll get her second collection. I'm contemplating it ...
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