Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
serious crayons:
If we're reminiscing about our first exposure to the story, here's mine: Three or four years ago, I was in a book club. Laurie, one of the other members and one of my oldest and closest friends, recommended that we read this story about two gay cowboys. She had read it when it came out in the New Yorker and just loved it. Laurie is a big Annie Proulx fan, and she thought this story was particularly great. She knew of an edition that was a whole little book with nothing but Brokeback Mountain in it. So we all bought it and read it and got together over beers and BLTs to discuss.
Everybody liked it and the discussion was OK. I think we said it was sad and the descriptive prose was really beautiful. Maybe we segued into talking about how hard it would be to be gay in that culture, or something. I can't really remember. I can tell you for sure that I learned more about the story from -- to take an excellent example but far from the only one -- Mel's OP on this thread, about Proulx' offhand revelations. Let alone my almost nine months on these boards!
Anyway, you know what the saddest thing is? As far as I know, Laurie has never seen the movie. She's kind of a movie snob and likes to disdain the whole genre and believe that books are vastly superior. She never, ever sees movies in the theater, though she occasionally rents them. But when she rents them she likes to rent films so obscure that I've never even heard of them, and I read a lot about movies. She always sneers at movie remakes of books. I'm pretty sure she would think of a Hollywood version of Brokeback, especially one with two pretty actors playing those gritty roles, would be a ridiculous waste of her intelligence. Even though, of course, I've told her how much I loved it.
Do I sound a little bitter? Sorry. That quality of Laurie's has always highly annoyed me.
But in this case, it's sooooo her loss.
:-\
Front-Ranger:
Just think how she'll feel when she finally sees the movie and realizes what she missed! I'll bet she'll listen more closely to your suggestions after that!
Oftentimes I skip the fiction in my weekly New Yorker because I'm more of a nonfiction person than a novel or short story person. But lately I've been trying to read all the fiction, because I'm looking for a "new" Brokeback Mountain. But, sadly, I haven't read anything that comes close. There was a pretty good story in the September 11 issue called "Black Ice." It is by Cate Kennedy and is set in Australia. Interestingly, the phrase "just an Aussie Sheila" is used in it, which is the first time I have seen that phrase used outside of Katie77's thread in "Our Daily Thoughts." The Sept 11 issue is the one that has a tightrope walker suspended in midair, with an inside cover that shows him with the WTC site in the background.
serious crayons:
I'll look for it, FRiend! I used to read the fiction in the New Yorker before anything else (well, except the movie reviews). But I've really fallen out of the habit in the past few years. They've changed fiction editors, so maybe that's why.
OT, but ... I started to read a story by Joyce Carol Oates in the second-to-latest issue that was so sickening and horrible that I had to quit reading and almost couldn't pick up the rest of the magazine. It's about a frat kid who gets drunk and his frat bros throw him down a garbage chute and he dies. It's become controversial, because it's based on an actual recent case, and apparently the details in Oates' story closely resemble the real details, so people have protested that it's a pretty cruel thing to do to the family. Oates herself says that if she had it to do over again, she'd have changed more of the details.
However, Oates also wrote a short novel called "Black Water" that is closely based on the Chappaquiddick (sp?) episode. It is told from the POV of the character based on Mary Jo Kopechne. It is excellent.
Sorry to stray so OT. I should have posted that in the books thread. Getting back to Brokeback ...
Front-Ranger:
Yes, I read that story by JCO too and it had little to recommend it. It even seemed kind of racist.
Garry_LH:
First off Mel... You ought to take up writing. You got more going than a lot of folks that think they do have it going on.
I'm one of those that read the story a couple of months before I saw the film. Those few short pages reached into me and tore apart decades of seeing the world through Ennis's eyes. It kicked me in the gut, and it never has every fully let up after that. It still amazes me that the film did the justice to the story that it did. That's a real rare thing in any adaptation.
Maybe this is not the place for this, I'm not too sure. If it needs moving, just let me know where it lands.
There's been all kinds of things written about Jack's death. But in one interview with Jake I caught, he said he felt Jack died when he realized there was never going to be a life with Ennis. That one sentence from Jake has been chewing on me for awhile. Cause it sure does shed a light on the change that comes over Jack after he drives that twelve hundred miles for nothing. Where in tears, he drives clear to Mexico to find physical release of a fix for the death of this hope, perhaps his soul, if not his love for one Ennis DelMar.
Part of what attracts me to Mz. Proulx's writing is it is real. Nothing in life is a true perfect moment. Every expression we make, ever action we initiate, all of it flows from what has gone before in our lives. We think we fix one problem in our lives, just to find it has found a different way to express itself. With luck, that new way is healthier, and a bit less destructive. And with luck... not so born again, we think we have all the answers for every body else's lives, while we're still trying to bring balance to our own souls.
Then, here I am ah wandering around the coffee pot again... Not to sure where I'm headed, or how all this is connected.
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