Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Bullriders, cowmen and girls, and animal husbandry
Front-Ranger:
I'm reading some of the other stories in the collection by Annie Proulx which concludes with Brokeback Mountain. Here is a pasage from "The Mud Below."
--- Quote ---"...[Jesus] was a cowboy, the original rodeo cowboy. It says it right in the Bible. It's in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." He adopted a sanctimonious tone. "'Go ubti tge village in which, at your enterin, ye shall find a colt tied, on which yet never no man sat; loose him and bring him here. The Lord hath a need a him. And they brought him to Jesus, and they cast their garments upon the colt and they set Jesus on it.' Now if that ain't a description a bareback ridin I don't know what is."
--- End quote ---
Penthesilea:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on January 20, 2008, 03:58:47 pm ---I'm reading some of the other stories in the collection by Annie Proulx which concludes with Brokeback Mountain. Here is a pasage from "The Mud Below."
--- End quote ---
You know, apart from BBM, People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water and The Mud Below are my favorite stories in Close Range. Somehow The Mud Below really stuck with me. I love the title, I like Annie's grim description of rodeo life, and somehow she even managed to make me feel for and like its hero, Diamond Felts, despite everything. He his far from being a likable person, in fact, he's a rapist and despicable for it. Maybe 'to like' is the wrong word, but damn that boy stuck with me. Far from the way Ennis and Jack did, obviously, but still.
Yet when I read The Mud Below for the first time, all I could think of towards the end of the story (when D got hung up on a bull and the following scenes) was Jack. The danger, the pain, the loneliness - it must have been like this for poor Jack in those years after Ennis and him split 1963 :(.
In my Wyoming travel guide I read this sentence: There's a reson they call it the suicide sport.
The part you quoted is so interesting regarding Jack being a Jesus-like figure. I totally missed this. Thanks for pointing it out.
Front-Ranger:
You're welcome, Penth. My impression of the other stories in Close Range is that they are pretty weird. Definitely high-intensity reading! But reading them definitely enriched my understanding of Brokeback Mountain! I will post more about the anthology in The Culture Tent.
I have watched a lot of bullriding in the past week, since Denver's major rodeo, the National Western, is taking place. It often put me in mind of this illustration from the island of Crete:
Front-Ranger:
In the story, Jack remembers a bullrider who was "checked by a horn dipstick" meaning he was gored, probably in the rump. A dipstick is uncomfortably close to a tire iron, so once more he is presaging his own death. :'(
Front-Ranger:
More ancient bulls. People worshipped them once, and they do still. Every time I go to Wyoming, I drive past a huge cowbarn with a big sculpture of a Hereford bull on the roof.
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