Author Topic: How did Proulx a many times married lady get into the heads of 2 gay men  (Read 5280 times)

Offline optom3

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I am asking this,because Proulx admits to being ,a too many times married aging lady.Yet she seems to have completely got into the mindset of Ennis and Jack.I know the simple answer is, sheer genius,but I wondered if anyone had any other more esoteric suggestions.Everything from the incredible characterisations,right down to the sex,seems not just plausibel,but incredibly real.
Researching the area and time period,was probably the easy bit,accurately portraying the 2 men must have been extraordinarily difficult.

Offline brokeplex

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short explanation, she is a creative genius.

a longer explanation would involve all of her techniques to develop empathy, her ability to watch and listen carefully to others, and her openess to inspiration. all of these must be done before a pen touches paper, or a finger a key board. AP has touched on some of her inspirations, but I haven't really heard her open up her soul and tell the public the origins of her techniques and their details.

like you, I would very much enjoy hearing her opine.

Offline myprivatejack

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Any creative person,specially in writing and acting fields,get inspired before creating act,in other people's experiences,listening,reading,and living by these other persons relating or by their own experiences.I guess that living in Wyoming herself,it will have been easy in some extent to her to,even, met someone in this case.And,above all,of course there's the genius of someone like her,able to put in the shoes of very different persons from her.Isn't what great actors,such Heath and Jake are,can do perfectly?.
I like your silences,quiet conversations of evident sensations,where our words are life´s tinsels.
The lost illusions are the found truths.

Offline optom3

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Any creative person,specially in writing and acting fields,get inspired before creating act,in other people's experiences,listening,reading,and living by these other persons relating or by their own experiences.I guess that living in Wyoming herself,it will have been easy in some extent to her to,even, met someone in this case.And,above all,of course there's the genius of someone like her,able to put in the shoes of very different persons from her.Isn't what great actors,such Heath and Jake are,can do perfectly?.

I agree Jake and Heath were beyond brilliant.But they had the SS and screenplay to work with.I just wonder how Proulx so emotively depicted the characters.Even reading the SS i a gut wrencher.It really packs one hell of a punch.To do that with just the written word is sheer genius.I read the book before seeing the film,and it just floored me.I sobbed for so long,I thought I would run dry.
I know she is a very acute observer,and that is part of her genius.But it is still a big leap from observation to emoting.I guess I will have to give up,and just say,genius!!!!!

Offline Clyde-B

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  • Clyde-B when he was Jack and Ennis's age
She also does her research.  She knows some happy gay couples.  When she answered my letter, she said so.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Here is a little of Annie Proulx's explanation of her work in an interview for The Missouri Review:

Quote
Interviewer: Do you have a standard operating procedure in the way you work? Do you start with place, or history, or character and story, or is it different with each book?


Proulx: Where a story begins in the mind I am not sure—a memory of haystacks, maybe, or wheel ruts in the ruined stone, the ironies that fall out of the friction between past and present, some casual phrase overheard. But something kicks in, some powerful juxtaposition, and the whole book shapes itself up in the mind. I spend a year or two on the research and I begin with the place and what happened there before I fill notebooks with drawings and descriptions of rocks, water, people, names. I study photographs. From place come the characters, the way things happen, the story itself. For the sake of architecture, of balance, I write the ending first and then go to the beginning.

Interviewer: What's your approach to research?

Proulx: The research is ongoing and my great pleasure. Since geography and climate are intensely interesting to me, much time goes into the close examination of specific regions—natural features of the landscape, human marks on it, earlier and prevailing economics based on raw materials, ethnic background of settlers.

Interviewer: Where do you go for that kind of information?

Proulx: I read manuals of work and repair, books of manners, dictionaries of slang, city directories, lists of occupational titles, geology, regional weather, botanists' plant guides, local histories, newspapers. I visit graveyards, collapsing cotton gins, photograph barns and houses, roadways. I listen to ordinary people speaking with one another in bars and stores, in laundromats. I read bulletin boards, scraps of paper I pick up from the ground. I paint landscapes because staring very hard at a place for twenty to thirty minutes and putting it on paper burns detail into the mind as no amount of scribbling can do.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Artiste

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Oh... quelle comme quelle surprise comme si Annie est ma grand-maman !!

J'ai maintenant un sourire!

En y pensant!!

Au revoir,
hugs!

Offline Artiste

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Optom (Fiona):

what wonderful thread subject you created:

   How did Proulx a many times married lady get into the heads of 2 gay men 
 

........

It's so interesting!

Au revoir, hugs!

Offline Artiste

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May I say that we must NOT forget that Annie is a Canadienne-francaise , yes one quebecoise lady, in many ways!!

It is therefore, in her nature to be observant that way... it seems to me.

One of my grand-maman was like Annie, very much so!!

When grand-maman and I went walking, she always found money on the ground!! Really, a penny, five cents or more!!

Maybe, that is why that I am like her and Annie... picking up pieces of paper on the soil to see what it is and how that tells a story or a clue to one possibly ??

Au revoir Annie,
hugs!!

Offline Artiste

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Clyde, may we read your letter she sent you??

May I ask ??

Au revoir,
hugs!!