Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
The short story
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Lynne on December 04, 2006, 03:26:35 pm ---Hey there, Jeff,
I believe that the prologue is in essence an epilogue, regardless of when Annie wrote it or added it, for exactly the reasons you mention. It's apparent to me that Ennis has lived with the pain of being without Jack for quite some time. He seems to have been dealing with the dreams coming to him for a length of time such that he has made peace with them, considering himself fortunate when they're good and he can use them to 'stoke the day.'(?) It's as if he's had enough time to develop rituals, if that makes any sense.
--- End quote ---
True. I agree.
--- Quote ---Regarding the trailer's bathroom - I suspect it has plumbing, but it's either not functional (likely), or Ennis is so apathetic about the state of his life that p*ssing in the sink seems like the thing to do (equallly likely IMO).
--- End quote ---
Both possible, perhaps even likely. It just reminds me of my grandparents' early travel trailer. It had a little kitchen sink--you hooked up a hose to the outside of the trailer--but no bathroom.
What I'm getting at is, this description in the story gives me a mental image of a set-up even worse than the trailer we see in the film. The stove where he reheats the left-over coffee (eew) is maybe not much more than a two-burner propane hotplate. He's living in it--perhaps for free--on the ranch where he has been working, which has just been sold--the owner left him the keys to turn over to "the real estate shark." It's just this dumpy, tiny, rusty old travel trailer that nobody wants anymore, maybe parked out behind the horse barn and surrounded with weeds. He doesn't even have a bathroom--has to use an outhouse somewhere and wash up at the tiny sink.
So all he really has are the shirts and his dreams and memories of Jack. :(
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: MaineWriter on December 04, 2006, 03:46:47 pm ---I was amazed to learn this tidbit of information. I have always assumed it was an editing decision to leave the prologue off. I couldn't believe a magazine of the stature of the the New Yorker would make this sort of egregious error.
No wonder Annie almost had a stroke!
L
--- End quote ---
Tell you what, taken at literal face value of the words, "they forgot to typeset it" sounds a little fishy to me. I mean, I don't know how The New Yorker works now, or how it worked in 1997, but--she didn't get proofs? Jesus H.! Notwithstanding that it's The New Yorker, I'd have had a stroke if I didn't get proofs. I believe she said what she said, but I'd think maybe an error like this was more likely to happen when the pages of the story were made up.
Folks, I'm not calling Annie Proulx a liar. I am making a technical distinction between setting the text of the story into type and actually arranging--or making up--the contents of the magazine for printing. After spending most of my working life in endeavors connected to writing, editing, and publishing, it seems very weird to me that she would not have been sent a proof, a preliminary copy of the story after it was first set into type, where it would have been hard to miss that the prologue wasn't there.
Or maybe there's just more to the story of the missing prologue that "we" haven't been told.
moremojo:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 04, 2006, 03:49:54 pm ---What I'm getting at is, this description in the story gives me a mental image of a set-up even worse than the trailer we see in the film. The stove where he reheats the left-over coffee (eew) is maybe not much more than a two-burner propane hotplate. He's living in it--perhaps for free--on the ranch where he has been working, which has just been sold--the owner left him the keys to turn over to "the real estate shark." It's just this dumpy, tiny, rusty old travel trailer that nobody wants anymore, maybe parked out behind the horse barn and surrounded with weeds. He doesn't even have a bathroom--has to use an outhouse somewhere and wash up at the tiny sink.
So all he really has are the shirts and his dreams and memories of Jack. :(
--- End quote ---
It's also striking that there's no mention of a closet in the story trailer. Ennis hangs the treasured shirts, with the affixed postcard above them, directly onto the trailer wall. These very well may be the same shirts we read mentioned in passing in the prologue.
I agree that Ennis's situation seems much bleaker by the written story's end than in the film.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: moremojo on December 04, 2006, 04:36:40 pm ---It's also striking that there's no mention of a closet in the story trailer. Ennis hangs the treasured shirts, with the affixed postcard above them, directly onto the trailer wall. These very well may be the same shirts we read mentioned in passing in the prologue.
I agree that Ennis's situation seems much bleaker by the written story's end than in the film.
--- End quote ---
Exactly! I've always understood that we are to take the shirts mentioned in the prologue to be the "Brokeback" shirts. Struck me, too, even the first time I saw the movie, that apparently in the story the shirts are hanging out in the open--not that Ennis probably has many visitors. :(
karen1129:
I really wish some things in the book would have made it to the movie. Like, Ennis telling Jack he should have never let him out of his sight. Ennis telling Jack how bad he felt when they parted that first summer.
I read the story the night before I saw the movie. Didn't really soak it up. After seeing the movie the
first time, I was almost pissed at Ennis at the end. I really got more of a sense of Ennis' pain in the story.
Then, I was able to go watch again and see how Heath was able to portray that pain in actions.
I also have always wondered about the time lapse between the end of the story, and the prologue in the
book. I have always felt it was many, many years. Many years of Ennis in pain ! Many years of lonliness
and regret. Here come the tears !
Karen
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