Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
Penthesilea:
First: Mel, your OP and other posts here are beautiful, more than well thought-out and truly amazing. I bow my head.
On this thread are so many good thoughts, I took notes while reading though it, so I won't forget what I want to comment on.
Back to the OP:
Judging on what I've read from Proulx (which is not much, allowedly) it's typical for Proulx to come off-hand, in half-sentences with crucial informations. Moreso, she likes to gut-punch her readers through the backdoor. A story may flow along - but then, in the last paragraph, or even in the last sentence, there comes the punch.
A good example for this is the story, which in German is called: "In Hell, all you want is a glass of Water" I just transalted the German title and hope the original one is the same or at least close enough for you to know what story I'm speaking of.
At the end of said story, a long-ago act of deathly violence is illustrated. Then she writes: "We're heading for a new millenium now and such things don't happen any more. A likely story!"
Or a very short one, where a freshly widowed woman looks through the attic of the house for the first time in twelve years and finds bodies of women her husband had murdered. Last sentence: "Living this far out in the middle of nowhere, you get your own idea of fun."
(Note: I read those stories in German - except BBM - and thus can only paraphrase Proulx's words. I hope I am able to get my point across anyway).
Back to Ennis and Jack:
--- Quote ---From nakymaton:
"It's like being slammed, over and over, with the realization that these weren't just
two guys who enjoyed having sex with one another -- this was an incredibly
profound love. And we don't learn the depth of it until Jack's dead."
--- End quote ---
I can't retrace this train of thought because I saw the movie prior to reading the story. When I read the story for the first time, the prologue already brought me to tears: Ennis desolate in is trailer, thinking/dreaming of Jack.
When I read the story the first time, I noticed the details of affection, of love not sex, of the depth of their relationship: shouldn't let you out of my sights, paw the white out of the moon, the high-time supper, the dry heaves, and so on.
I ask myself how I would have reacted, had I read the story first. I was already in love with the characters when reading the story. And so I was somehow disappointed by story Jack: "He now had a little money on his own and found ways to spend it" Jack's lying in the motel Siesta ("Shit no") and so on. The fact that story Jack seemed to have slept around pretty much. I really didn't like this about Jack.
Jack is far more likeable/loveable in the movie, shirts or no shirts.
This leads directly to the next quote:
--- Quote ---From nakymaton:
Nearly all of the characterizations are softened somewhat from the short story, I
think, too. (That is, it's possible to empathize with most of the characters in the
movie. In the story... well, it takes a re-read to seriously empathize with even
Ennis and Jack.)
--- End quote ---
I agree very much with you here. What comes to my mind is Proulx's description of the boys: "rough-mannerd and rough-spoken": Ennis peeing in the sink, Jack saying he missed Ennis bad enough sometimes to make him whip babies. How much more loveable is the confession in the movie "miss you so bad I can hardly stand it".
Jeff Wrangler:
Mel,
Your post #42 here: I'm not going to take up the space by copying it here, but--Wow!
I know this is a story discussion, but one thing you wrote jumped out at me: In the film is Jack really lying to Lureen in the back seat of that convertible? I'm inclined to think, no he's not. It's 1966, Jack is still very young at that point, he's lonely, he's horny ::) , and I know or have known many gay men who "went both ways," married--or not--and fathered children before they sorted everything out. I'm inclined to think that at just that moment, he's not lying--not, anyway, lying in the sense of deliberately creating a falsehood.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 11, 2006, 09:10:09 am --- I'm inclined to think that at just that moment, he's not lying--not, anyway, lying in the sense of deliberately creating a falsehood.
--- End quote ---
I don't think he's lying in an extremely deliberate Machiavellian sense, thinking, "Hmm ... her daddy's rich and she wants me, so I'd better keep stringing her along." But I don't think he's exactly being truthful either. Look how lukewarm he is with her compared to how he is with Ennis (or even, for that matter, Jimbo!). She's the one who knocks HIS hat off, not the other way around (in fact, he picks up her knocked-off hat and gives it back!).
I don't get the sense that Jack is still sorting things out in this case so much as taking the path of least resistance. He's doesn't feel passion toward her, actually he's not all that excited about the direction she's going, but, well, everybody expects him to be with a woman, and here's one who's pretty and rich and wants him, so might as well go along for the ride and see what happens.
So it's kind of like the "me neither" -- not true, but said mainly just to conform to expectations.
Jeff Wrangler:
Maybe I misread Mel's intention but from this:
--- Quote ---to Lureen about liking the direction she's going,
--- End quote ---
because of the reference to Jack's line of dialogue, I took that as specifically referring to the scene in the back seat of the convertible and wrote my post accordingly. That's not a lukewarm response that we see there. Not from that grin on Jack's face. He's a 22-year-old boy who's about to get his rocks off. ... ;D
nakymaton:
Thanks, Jeff. :)
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on September 11, 2006, 09:10:09 am ---I know this is a story discussion, but one thing you wrote jumped out at me: In the film is Jack really lying to Lureen in the back seat of that convertible?
--- End quote ---
Like Katherine, I don't see Jack as deliberately lying to Lureen to get his hands on her daddy's money, or anything like that. And like Katherine, I see Jack as pretty much passively following wherever Lureen leads. And yeah, he looks like he's enjoying the physical contact with somebody (though he seems a bit confused by the sudden appearance of breasts ;D ). But "fast or slow, I just like the direction you're going" sounds like a Line to me. (Of course, so does "what're you waiting for, cowboy... a matin' call?") But I guess... well, I see Lines as things that people say when they either are scared of being hurt by being sincere, or when they don't have something sincere to say.
I guess the back seat of a convertible isn't the sort of place where people are brutally honest with one another, particularly when they're having sex hours after their first meeting. So maybe I'm being a bit harsh on Jack, there. (And again -- movie-Jack doesn't tell the whole truth, but he doesn't seem to outright lie as much as story-Jack does. Except about the ranch neighbor. And even there, he seems like he almost wants to confess everything to Ennis... but all that he manages is "sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it." And Ennis probably wouldn't have been able to take any more honesty than that.)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version