Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
TOTW 15/07: Short story or movie, which one do you prefer?
brokebackjack:
I agree---the film fleshed out the characters drawn by Annie in her short story.
Heath WAS Ennis DelMar, while Jake really DID bring Jack Twist to vividly brilliant life.
Yet the laconic characterisations of both men in the SS hit me like a ton of bricks. Could this be linked to a possible difference in the way men and women view things? a man/woman sort of thing? A possible gay/straight divergence as well? I honestly do believe men and women, naturally or through acculturation, generally have a way of looking at such things from a different--- at times a widely divergent--viewpoint. I've noticed this in regard to gay/straight men as well.
My straight male friends do not care for extreme detail when it comes to characterisations. My gay male friends tend to want a much more detailed literary description then their hetero co-sexualists <sp???lol>. At the same time, very many of my female friends generally want ALL those details spelled out.
I'm bi, and along with the rest of my bi friends I tend to want something in the middle---but leaning very much on the spare side. The imagination fills the rest in. AP's spare and laconic pictures of Jack and Ennis are damned near perfect so far as I'm concerned; to repeat, they hit me like a ton of bricks.
What I DO know is that as a man, there are both real life and literary occasions when fewer words, a starker portrait, tell me more then a detailed description. I have Margaret Mitchell's long and extremely detailed characterisation of Scarlett O'Hara from the first page of Gone With the Wind in mind as I write this. She left NOTHING to the reader's imagination, told us everything, right down to the blush of Scarlett's cheeks. TOO detailed, for me at least. ...yet most of the women I know just loved that word picture.
Any comments on this?
Not for nothing, I hope no one has convinced themselves that we are being 'anti-gay' on this thread. That whole business is just too much, IMO very off-base. To think such a thing is not fair. We do not deserve to be called anti-gay.
Front-Ranger:
Faulkner, who was straight, was the very definition of verbosity. Joyce, ditto. While Hemingway, whose orientation was undoubtedly mixed, was very terse. Proulx (she's been married three times to men!) is terse, Tennessee Williams (gay) verbose. The only conclusions I can gather from all this is that people are all different and defy generalization! Me, I love Proulx but also Foer, Joyce, and Faulkner. Margaret Mitchell doesn't ring my bells, but perhaps would've if she'd written more books. I love short stories, but I have a great deal of difficulty reading poetry.
I'm just now reading about William Styron. Did you ever read Sophie's Choice? Or see the movie? That was very powerful.
I guess I would say that the number of words is less important than what they add up to. Some writers are better with less or more. Some readers are better with less or more.
serious crayons:
Jack, I don't know that I agree with the gay/straight difference, but I do think that men and women react differently to the story BBM, and in general men tend to be more powerfully affected by it. Obviously, there are exceptions, since Front-Ranger still has the magazine on her bedside table 10 years later. And nakymaton, who started a whole thread about the short story, was a woman also blown away by it. I also know men who liked the movie better, at least at first.
But there's something to this male/female divide in literary taste, and I'm not just talking about Tom Clancy vs. Danielle Steele. I had just been thinking about this recently, because I read something short by David Foster Wallace, and although I really love his prose style in small doses, I don't think I could read a whole book by him, let alone the 1088-page "Infinite Jest." (Yet I read the 1037-page "Gone With the Wind" a dozen times in grade school and junior high.) Thomas Pynchon is another writer who seems to appeal much more to men. As is Don DeLillo. And Cormac McCarthy.
I'm not saying no woman would ever love these books -- only that fewer do.
I can't think offhand of good, literary books (not romance novels or bodice-rippers) that appeal primarily to women, but I'm sure there are many. Probably the majority are a) written by women and b) have female protagonists.
I don't know how much any of this has to do with wordy description. As I said, I read GWTW a dozen times between fifth grade and maybe 8th grade, and at that time that kind of physical description was fine. (GWTW was my favorite book at the time -- I no longer love it; though I think it's powerful and well-done in many ways, it is just too offensively racist.)
Wordy description is less in style now. Lots of times whole books go by without the reader ever knowing what the main characters look like. I tend to like spare prose myself, and to get impatient with wordiness. I saw "Sophie's Choice" the movie before trying to read the book, and I found myself just wanting to skip ahead to the good parts. I never finished reading it.
Uh-oh, I'm getting pretty wordy myself now! Hope you men can make it through this post! :laugh:
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on December 08, 2007, 11:44:39 am ---Uh-oh, I'm getting pretty wordy myself now! Hope you men can make it through this post! :laugh:
--- End quote ---
Friend, that's the most you've spoke in two weeks!!
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on December 08, 2007, 11:44:39 am ---Front-Ranger still has the magazine on her bedside table 10 years later.
--- End quote ---
Actually I carry copies of it around in my briefcase now, and the magazine pages are hidden away where housecleaners cannot find and toss them!
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on December 08, 2007, 11:44:39 am ---Thomas Pynchon is another writer who seems to appeal much more to men. As is Don DeLillo. And Cormac McCarthy.
--- End quote ---
Pynchon and McCarthy are two of my favourite authors! Do you like them too? The Crying of Lot 49 is awesome, and it has a female protagonist. I have read nearly all of McCarthy's books, except for No Country for Old Men, which I'm just starting. I love the way he does dialogue.
--- Quote from: ineedcrayons on December 08, 2007, 11:44:39 am ---I can't think offhand of good, literary books (not romance novels or bodice-rippers) that appeal primarily to women, but I'm sure there are many. Probably the majority are a) written by women and b) have female protagonists.
--- End quote ---
Salmon Rushdie said that his primary audience is women. In fact, women read more serious fiction than men do. Altho neither read much. I don't really understand who's buying all these books these days!! I read the book Shame by Rushdie and it was very very good. Very good insights about Pakistan too.
There's also J. K. Rowling, of course. She seems to appeal to women and men equally. And kids. And seniors. And Brits as well as other English-speakers.
The first novel ever written was authored by a woman. It was The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki. Written in the 800s, about a prince in the Japanese court. He was certainly a Jack of his time. The book is very wordy, but it has the Japanese conciseness of prose. Hey, we're veering off topic here, but I love it!
Brown Eyes:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on December 08, 2007, 11:18:54 am ---Faulkner, who was straight, was the very definition of verbosity. Joyce, ditto. While Hemingway, whose orientation was undoubtedly mixed, was very terse. Proulx (she's been married three times to men!) is terse, Tennessee Williams (gay) verbose. The only conclusions I can gather from all this is that people are all different and defy generalization!
--- End quote ---
Hey Sister-Mod,
I 100% agree with this. I think generalization along gender lines (or lines of sexuality... or based on any large social group characterization, actually) is pretty futile since there are often immediately multiple examples of exceptions to any theorized rule. I also think the urge to generalize can be a slippery slope.
I think remembering that the story of BBM was written by a straight woman is important here to this specific discussion of preferences regarding the story.
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