Annie Proulx: Fine Just The Way It Is, Wyoming Stories 3

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

FINE JUST THE WAY IT IS
Wyoming Stories 3
By Annie Proulx
221 pp. Scribner. $25
Publication Date: September 9, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/books/review/Carlson-t.html?ref=review


True Grit

Annie Proulx

By RON CARLSON
Published: September 7, 2008

In Annie Proulx’s new story collection, a young rancher about to build a cabin on his claim in the late-19th-century Wyoming wilderness walks the perimeter of his 80 acres singing old cowboy songs. This ritual marking of his place takes him all day, and in the dusk he returns, his voice a raspy whisper. The careful observation of such a ceremony would seem to suggest that time might shed its blessings on the rancher and his wife, that they might enjoy peace and ease here and the grace of days.

Who are we kidding? This is Annie Proulx, a writer who staked her claim around the spectacular rectangle of Wyoming by marking its “metes and bounds” with “Close Range,” took insurance on it with “Bad Dirt” and now appears with “Fine Just the Way It Is,” a third collection of Wyoming stories, just to make sure. The title could be paraphrased “Even if it’s broken, don’t fix it.” “Close Range” is a remarkable book, lyric and gritty, and it contains “Brokeback Mountain,” a breathtaking love story. But each of these collections bears Proulx’s brand of hard drama, hard irony, hard weather, and hard and soft characters blown about and many times destroyed by the powerful mix. Her sense of story is admirable, her sentences are artful, and she writes like a demon. She has nicely disrupted the mythology of the Old West.

All but one of the stories in “Fine Just the Way It Is” range from the 19th century to the modern day and offer a world in which the natural elements are murderous and folks aren’t much better. Right after Archie, the fresh young landowner in “Them Old Cowboy Songs,” sings the property line, Proulx throws in an uncharacteristically sunny aside: “There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.” From time to time, you glimpse an Eden in Proulx’s world, and when you see it, you’d better take a photograph, because it won’t last long. More often her narratives are richly and bleakly Dickensian, right down to the names. In just one story, she gives us Chay Sump, Lightning Willy, Bible Bob, Bunk Peck, Rufus Clatter (a politician), the mother and stepdaughter Flora and Queeda Dorgan, Sink Gartrell, Wally Finch, John Tank and the libidinous voyeur and telegraph operator Harp Daft.

We’re used to seeing the people in Proulx’s stories deep in their hard­scrabble lives, eking out their survival in company that often turns out to be wildly insalubrious. Archie, the young rancher, goes wrangling cattle to save some money, but the weather — which has always been a real thing in Annie Proulx’s writing and not some symbolic touch brought in like a soundtrack — gets hold of him. Between a double dose of winter and a bad decision, his fate is iced up. But what happens to his wife is unspeakably worse, and Proulx doesn’t spare us a beat of it, from her first labor pangs to the rest. Proulx puts legs under the old saw about the frontier being tough on women, making them carry the hard weight. With her Adam and Eve expelled and destroyed, she ends the story from the perspective of a neighboring prospector. “There was no way,” he concludes, “to know what had happened.” Proulx won’t traffic in euphemism unless it cuts with the blade of irony.

In a story nicely titled “The Great Divide,” another couple, Hi and Helen Alcorn, also look for their dream house, this time in a treeless homestead settlement. Yet all their post-World War I American optimism can’t win the West. Their decision is the good news and the bad news at once: “They would make their own frontier.” This attempt takes various forms. At one point, Hi desecrates an Indian burial cave while fashioning a crude still to make potato whiskey. There’s the metaphor right there — and symbols like these appear again and again, both in Proulx’s stories and in the history of the American West. Later, Hi throws in with his brother-in-law, Fenk Fipps, and Fenk’s sidekick, Wacky Lipe, chasing wild horses. Fatally kicked, Hi jokes all the way to town.

The deepest grief in the collection is borne by Dakotah Lister, who returns from Iraq injured and bereft. Raised by a feckless “trash rancher” and her resentful grandmother, Dakotah experiences her life as a relentless series of miscommunications and harm. Each rite is accompanied by embarrassment, mistake and mayhem. This kind of story could become brittle in a moment, could snap in half and sink, but Proulx buoys it with one stellar insight when Dakotah returns from serving in “Eye-rack.” On the drive home: “She realized that every ranch she passed had lost a boy, lost them early and late. . . . This was the waiting darkness that surrounded ranch boys, the dangerous growing up that canceled their favored status. The trip along this road was a roll call of grief.”

In two other tales, Proulx has a little fun featuring Satan at work remodeling his domain, but better than these is her honest-to-pete tall tale about “The Sagebrush Kid.” The title character isn’t a boy; it’s a gravy-and-blood-fed plant that, according to legend, is still a voracious menace to this day, offering unwary pilgrims shelter from the sun. In Proulx country, it’s even dangerous to park in the shade.

Ron Carlson’s most recent book is the novel “Five Skies.”



http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Fine-Just-the-Way-It-Is/Annie-Proulx/e/9781416571667/?bnit=H%20H

Synopsis
Returning to the territory of "Brokeback Mountain" (in her first volume of Wyoming Stories) and Bad Dirt (her second), National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx delivers a stunning and visceral new collection. In Fine Just the Way It Is,  she has expanded the limits of the form. Her stories about multiple generations of Americans struggling through life in the West are a ferocious, dazzling panorama of American folly and fate.

"Every ranch...had lost a boy," thinks Dakotah Hicks as she drives through "the hammered red landscape" of Wyoming, "boys smiling, sure in their risks, healthy, tipped out of the current of life by liquor and acceleration, rodeo smashups, bad horses, deep irrigation ditches, high trestles, tractor rollovers and 'unloaded' guns. Her boy, too...The trip along this road was a roll call of grief."

Proulx's characters try to climb out of poverty and desperation but get cut down as if the land itself wanted their blood. Deeply sympathetic to the men and women fighting to survive in this harsh place, Proulx turns their lives into fiction with the power of myth -- and leaves the reader in awe. The winner of two O. Henry Prizes, Annie Proulx has been anthologized in nearly every major collection of great American stories. Her bold, inimitable language, her exhilarating eye for detail and her dark sense of humor make this a profoundly compelling collection.


Publishers Weekly
The steely Proulx (The Shipping News, etc.) returns with another astonishing series of hardscrabble lives lived in the sparse, inhospitable West, where one mistake can put you on a long-winding trail to disaster. "Family Man" is set in the Mellowhorn Home for old cowboys and aging ranch widows, where resident curmudgeon Ray Forkenbrock shares memories of his father with his granddaughter and an eavesdropping caretaker; the secret he reveals gives new meaning to the word "relative." In two demonically clever riffs on human weakness, "I've Always Loved This Place" and "Swamp Mischief," the Devil, accompanied by his secretary, Duane Fork, must entertain himself thinking up new ways to bother the living and the dead, as temptation is no longer a necessary evil. Saving the best for last, "Tits-up in a Ditch" breaks new literary ground with the gut-wrenching tale of an Iraq veteran who returns to her family raw with grief. Pioneer homesteaders facing drought and debt give way to modern-day hippies trying to lose themselves in the vanishing wilderness and real estate developers out to make a buck-unforgettable characters in nine stories that range in tone from crude cowboy humor to heartbreaking American tragedy. (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Biography
Even when Proulx is writing about modern-day characters, her stories seem like they are from another time. In a way, they are: Proulx often sets her tales in forgotten places at a pace that's measured, intricate, and more closely aligned with earlier, quieter days.

[Meryl]

Thanks, John.  Sounds like Annie is as sharp and eloquent and clear-eyed as ever. 

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

Thanks, John.  Sounds like Annie is as sharp and eloquent and clear-eyed as ever. 

Thank you, Meryl!

"Sharp and eloquent and clear-eyed as ever," is the word!

[Front-Ranger]

The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Annie Proulx today..."Bringing out the heavy hitters" as the article was callled, a roundup of autumn books. She said 'Brokeback Mountain ... is the source of constant irritation in my private life....There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story. They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for 'fixing' the story. They certainly don't get the message that if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it.'

[fernly]

Proulx throws in an uncharacteristically sunny aside: “There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.” From time to time, you glimpse an Eden in Proulx’s world, and when you see it, you’d better take a photograph, because it won’t last long.

Ain't that the truth.
Puts one in mind of a certain tent.

Thank you so much for posting the reviews, John. I'm off to order the book..

[Meryl]

The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Annie Proulx today..."Bringing out the heavy hitters" as the article was callled, a roundup of autumn books. She said 'Brokeback Mountain ... is the source of constant irritation in my private life....There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story. They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for 'fixing' the story. They certainly don't get the message that if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it.'

Dear me, I can't imagine having the chutzpah to send fan fiction I wrote to Annie Proulx herself! 

[Aloysius J. Gleek]

And prickly, Ms. P., don'cha think, Meryl!   

Thank you, Fernly, and Thanks!, Lee, for the heads-up! in re the WSJ article below:

 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122065020058105139.html?mod=yahoo_itp&ru=yahoo

Return to the Range
Annie Proulx goes back to Wyoming for her new short-story collection



By ROBERT J. HUGHES
September 6, 2008; Page W2

Annie Proulx's novel "The Shipping News" won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and her stories include "Brokeback Mountain," the basis for the Academy Award-winning film. Her latest story collection, "Fine Just the Way It Is," is her third set in Wyoming. In nine pieces, she explores the hard lives of aging cowboys, ranch hands and pioneers, and especially the lot of women.

Ms. Proulx, who doesn't have a land line at her house in Wyoming, answered questions by email. 

WSJ: This is the third volume of Wyoming stories. Is it your last set in that state?

Annie Proulx: Yes, this is the last of the Wyoming stories. If I do write any more they will go into the storage cupboard. It's not because my idea of Wyoming story material is played out, but partly because I want to avoid the regional-writer label. And because I'm attracted to different landscapes and characters of greater ethnic diversity. And because I want to work on something different.

WSJ: The final story in the collection explores the role of women in Wyoming (and even the Army), the return of injured Iraq war vets, the difficulty of the ranching life in general. Even today, then, women on ranches, are secondary citizens, aren't they?

Ms. Proulx: In a real sense women on ranches are secondary citizens, but many, if not most, would be furious if you said that out straight. They see themselves as the mythic Western women, mate to the mythic cowboy/rancher—strong, good-natured and cheerful, independent, hard-working, able to solve hard physical problems, tireless, God-fearing, decent and upright and all the rest of it. Most ranch women do live as though these ideals were attainable. Some of them single-handedly run big ranches after the men are dead—if they are lucky enough to inherit the place. But once in a while the disturbing word gets out that ranch life is not paradise on earth for women. I'm thinking of Judy Blunt's quite bitter "Breaking Clean," the Hasselstrom-Collier-Curtis collection "Leaning into the Wind," and Alice Marriott's "Hell on Women and Horses." I know Ms. Blunt was excoriated by many ranch women who felt betrayed. Alice Marriott was not excoriated but praised, because she presented her ranch women as proud and happy with their very tough but satisfying lives. "Leaning into the Wind" contains both points of view. It goes both ways, of course, and there are worse situations than to live with the belief that you are part of a hard-working, decent, traditional society, that you are living the finest kind of life, and though the price is daily battle with difficulties, you welcome them, knowing you can cope. My final collection of Wyoming stories focuses on women, as the two preceding collections were about men. Because Wyoming is a rural place, and because in rural places the economies and ways of life are usually dominated by livestock or natural resource extraction that take physical strength, it is usually men who do the work and control everything. In general outsiders are seen as threats, as harbingers of unwanted change.

WSJ: Several stories center on the hard lives of women, and the scorn in which men hold them. "Family Man," for example – an interesting title given the way the story plays out . The love of men for men – grandfathers for grandsons, sons for long-lost fathers, informs some of these stories as well. You are interested in the strange byways of human emotions.

Ms. Proulx: Yes, our human loves and hates, one's sense of self, a character's behavior in parlous circumstances all interest me. I think it's not so much scorn that Western men feel for women as something more pedestrian; for many men women are lesser creatures, closer to working stock than equals.

WSJ: Your characters don't necessarily have this epiphanic moment of awareness. Sometimes, events overtake them too quickly, sometimes they just don't get it. Do you feel that this is an area you can explore better in a short story than a novel?

Ms. Proulx: Yes. The failure to comprehend, not to look ahead at possibilities, to let things slide along, hoping for the best but getting the worst, is a theme that seems well suited to the short-story form. Many of the stories in this collection encompass situations that might be expanded into novels. The need to condense rather than inflate gives a kind of power to the sentences and to the story itself. Working on large themes in a small space is difficult but extremely satisfying when one gets it right. But to me the short story is the superior literary form, perhaps because didactic, moral and social forces can play subsonic roles. My interest in history and social change fits the short-story form. My stories, I suppose, can be read as small examples of particular social times and places. I have always liked John Compton's anecdote in his lively "Life of the Spider" about attending a Chinese opera which sounded to him like squalling cat fights, and, later, as a treat for some Chinese friends playing a recording of "Ave Maria"—the friends rolled on the floor shrieking with helpless laughter.

WSJ: Are there subjects or stories perhaps better suited to a longer form, for you?

Ms. Proulx: Well, yes, there are, but rather intangible. All I can say is that I know them when I see them. Quoyle's travails in "The Shipping News," for example, needed a long, slow buildup before he could attain grace. To use the absence of pain as the definition of happiness depended on his lifetime of misery. "Accordion Crimes" covered the U.S. history of characters in eight or nine ethnic groups—simply could not have been compressed into a short form.

WSJ: The emotional disconnectedness of your characters is apparent in stories set in the past and ones set in the present. Do you see this emotional ignorance as an ongoing part of the human condition?

Ms. Proulx: I like the phrase "emotional ignorance." I think that emotional ignorance defines most of us, especially Americans, who believe in romantic, lasting love and happiness. Both beliefs are conducive to an almost innocent expectation of a RIGHT to be loved and to be happy without earning it. Since those expectations are very often dashed in real life, emotional ignorance is often paid for with a laggard sense of betrayal, bitter tears and, eventually, a tablespoon of cynicism. How the cold light of eventuality falls on the characters and what they do with it certainly interests me.

WSJ: This compares to a story such as "I've Always Loved This Place," in which the devil himself is among those responsible for the faddishness of home design, landscaping and such – not to mention the magazines that cater to these areas. Not to mention targets such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Canada Revenue and cyclists, among many, many others – a Dantean litany of modern-day horrors, so to speak. And in "Swamp Mischief," we get a wonderful picture of the hellishness of the email universe – and plagues descending on the land. Your Devil is an original creature – part punisher, part decorator, part futurist. These are stories tinged with cynicism, and a wry approach – did you position them within the volume as relief from the heavier-going stories?  

Ms. Proulx: The devil tales were indeed placed in the collection as relief from darker and more serious stories. This was the suggestion of Liz Darhansoff, my agent, some years ago in earlier collections of the Wyoming stories. For me the devil stuff is also a relief from the more intense work. They are rather fun to write. I did spend considerable time years ago reading Morton W. Bloomfield's "The Seven Deadly Sins," and of course I have Thorndike's "History of Science and Experimental Magic" and other delightful reference works to aid me in working with vain thoughts and efforts. A glance at any late-night talk show host will supply the devil's glib style.

WSJ: Your characters also have unusual and memorable names, at least to Eastern ears – Queeda, Clatter, Verl, and older-fashioned ones such as Bonita, Mizpah and Jedediah. Do you keep a list of names, do you note them in your reading, in your conversations with people in the area?

Ms. Proulx: Actually the names are not as peculiar as you may think. Pick up your local phone book and peruse the columns of subscribers. Plenty of curious names. The non-norm names began because, as a reader, I disliked names that all sounded alike. I was constantly losing track of whether Joe was the lawyer or the murderer, and Jim the magician or the tennis pro, and John the archery instructor or the bar tender. So, in the beginning I chose unusual names for characters as a mnemonic device to aid the reader. Musician Jim White once sent me pages of oddball names he culled from crime reports in Florida newspapers. I'm saving them for a Florida novel. (Not.) And yes, I do keep notebooks full of names for characters. Aside from telephone directories good sources of names are histories and bibliographies. One does not use someone else's entire name, of course, but only pieces of it. One of the name traits of the (old) West that I like is the way pioneer mothers gave their infant boys "girl" names such as Carol, Helen, Marion and many others.

WSJ: When you have an idea for a story does it begin with an image, an idea of a conversation, a photograph perhaps or even a geographical area?

Ms. Proulx: The ideas for stories (for me) nearly always come from the geography, but an occasional overheard phrase can start the machinery as well. You can make a story out of almost nothing if you have a mind that is inclined toward stories. 

WSJ: Are there writers you admire who have written about the West, such as Willa Cather ("The Song of the Lark," in addition to her better-known novels like "O Pioneers") or John Williams (of "Stoner" and "Butcher's Crossing"), or others? Are there writers who've influenced you?

Ms. Proulx: Actually I read very little "Western" fiction. What fiction I do read is usually foreign books in translation. But I read a great deal of Western history which I find more interesting and thought-provoking than the fiction. Haven't read Willa Cather since I was a teenager. (But met her geologist grandson a few weeks ago.) I don't know about the "influence" situation but there are many, many fiction writers whose work I enjoy and admire. The list includes Aidan Higgins, James Welch, J. F. Powers, Barbara Baynton, Dermot Healy, Nathaneal West, Tim Gautreaux, Graham Greene, William H. Gass, George Higgins, Michael Ondaatje, Cathie Pelletier and many, many more. Once, stuck on the tarmac for an hour I made a list of favorites which ran to more than 60 names, but I don't think that is what you want just now. Of course the list changes constantly.

WSJ: Are you working on another novel? If so, and if it's not too early in the writing process, can you speak about it?

Ms. Proulx: I'm not actively working on another novel, but I have one in mind and am gathering my materials and thinking about it. It is roughly set in a long temperate geographic sweep from the Atlantic northeast to New Zealand.

WSJ: What effect did the success of "Brokeback Mountain" have on your writing life, if any?

Ms. Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life. There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story. They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for "fixing" the story. They certainly don't get the message that if you can't fix it you've got to stand it. Most of these "fix-it" tales have the character Ennis finding a husky boyfriend and living happily ever after, or discovering the character Jack is not really dead after all, or having the two men's children meet and marry, etc., etc. Nearly all of these remedial writers are men, and most of them begin, "I'm not gay but…." They do not understand the original story, they know nothing of copyright infringement—i.e., that the characters Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are my intellectual property—and, beneath every mangled rewrite is the unspoken assumption that because they are men they can write this story better than a woman can. They have not a clue that the original "Brokeback Mountain" was part of a collection of stories about Wyoming exploring mores and myths. The general impression I get is that they are bouncing off the film, not the story. There's more, but that is enough, ok?

Write to Robert J. Hughes at [email protected]

[optom3]

Dear me, I can't imagine having the chutzpah to send fan fiction I wrote to Annie Proulx herself! 

I must agree with you there.However she seems very touchy bordering on cruel in her opinions of those who do.I wonder does she know that for some people the movie and S.S  affected them so irreversably,that in an odd way, I think they feel if they write a sequel with a happy end,that will somehow solve problems in their own lives.
Rather than being so curt about it all, why not see it as a complement.It was Proulx after all, who said for the first time ever in writing, the characters had become real to her,more so than actual people.She also said, Heath became Ennis.As the characters became real to her,then why expect any less from either the viewer,reader or both.I can't help but feel, that in some of what she writes, there is a sense of real disdain towards gay men in particular.
That part of the interview bothers me on some level that I can't quite grasp.It is faintly disturbing and that is from a narried heterosexual woman.
I personally would never send anything to a published author, not even a letter, for fear of harsh judgement.I do feel she is a little visceral in her comments.

[Shakesthecoffecan]

I got my copy in the mail yesterday. Have not had time to read any of it yet, except the two stories that were published in the New Yorker. I am going to read those as well to see if they have changed any.



Mine has a different cover.

"On the surface, everything was lovely, but when you
got into the inside circle you soon found out that the
lines of demarcation were plainly marked."

--John Clay, My Life on the Range

[CellarDweller]

Oh, I'll have to run and get that!!!

When I saw Annie Proulx at a reading in NYC, she read to us one of the stories in that book, called "The Sagebrush Kid".

I loved it.

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Oh, I'll have to run and get that!!!

When I saw Annie Proulx at a reading in NYC, she read to us one of the stories in that book, called "The Sagebrush Kid".

I loved it.

Yep, that is on page 79. There are 9 stories total, it seems like fewer than the previous in the series, but they are longer. There are 221 pages total.

[CellarDweller]

Cool!  Thanks for the update Truman!  I now have shopping for the weekend!

[southendmd]

So, I bought my copy tonight. 

The salesperson said to me, "A lot of press about this.  Do you have the other two?" 

I said,  "Yeah, I'm a big fan."   

[Shakesthecoffecan]

SPOILER ALERT

So I read the first story last night, Family Man.

Like so many of Proulx's stories I find myself figuring out "who knows the whole story". Most often only the reader get to see what is going on in everyones mind, like how in Brokeback Mountain, Ennis had no idea that Jack remembered the dozy embrace.

In Family Man, 80 somthing Ray Forkenbrock, an old ranch hand, is a resident of a retirement community where his granddaughter comes to visit and tape record his memories. He posesses a whole story, and much pivots on his ability to convey to her a family secret and perceptions of how this passed knowledge will be handled. Around this swirls related tales of heart attacks, accidental deaths, attempted murder, rental cars and secrets kept.

[Penthesilea]

I just ordered my copy. Will safe it for my October vacation .
I really like her gritty characters.

[CellarDweller]

Oh cool, Truman!  I'll definitely be buying this book tis weekend!

[Shakesthecoffecan]

"I've Always Loved This Place" (SPOILER ALERT)

This second story gives the book its title, "Fine Just The Way It Is" is the reply the Devil gets when he tells Charon his plans to remodel the place.

When I first read it I was like "Huh?" I didn't really see how it fit into this volume, other than a reference to Ranchers, who the Devil maintains are not going to be impressed with his redecoration. It is full of words that sent me to the dictionary and one I never did find: japish.

Finally on rereading it I caught something, a comparison of the Canada Revenue to the IRS, and it started to become clear: Proulx is describing her own version of HELL!

[CellarDweller]

I tried to find that word online, but didn't get anything.

[Clyde-B]

"I've Always Loved This Place" (SPOILER ALERT)

This second story gives the book its title, "Fine Just The Way It Is" is the reply the Devil gets when he tells Charon his plans to remodel the place.

When I first read it I was like "Huh?" I didn't really see how it fit into this volume, other than a reference to Ranchers, who the Devil maintains are not going to be impressed with his redecoration. It is full of words that sent me to the dictionary and one I never did find: japish.

Finally on rereading it I caught something, a comparison of the Canada Revenue to the IRS, and it started to become clear: Proulx is describing her own version of HELL!

My guess would be that it's the adjective form of jape, which means to do something jokingly or mockingly.  If that's true japish would mean joking or mocking.  Since it refers to an article in The Onion, at least the meanng fits.

[shortfiction]

I got this today at the library and I like it already.

[CellarDweller]

I got my copy today while I was shopping.   

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Have you read any of it yet? I re-read Them Old Cowboy Songs over the weekend. They have been discussed muchly here already, but there were two lines in it that stuck out to me as a Brokie:

"There is no happiness  like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude."

pg. 50, and;

"It's. I ain't ever been. Loved. I just can't hardly stand it--" (Italics is Proulx's)

pg. 55

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Last night I read The Sagebrush Kid, which is dedicated to George Jones.

Now one could probably correctly assume this is the George Jones she is refering to, which I don't quite understand but never mind.

This very short story features Bill and Mizpah, who operate a stage coach station who adopt a sage bush as their surrogate child and a Calcutta born Indian named R. Singh, who is living among the Souix. Shades of Stephen King here, that I have felt for a while Proulx has some strange connection of language and ideas with. Kind of a Maine thing.

[Shakesthecoffecan]

The Great Divide falls right in the middle of the book.

This story follows the marriage of Hi and Helen between the two world wars. I found myself comparing their existance to that of my own grand parents, people with big ideas and no experence. They fall back on the now closed myth of the frontier and leave their home in Iowa

Proulx makes reference in this story to a car, and Essex, the only other time I have heard of it was in Flannery O'Conner's story Wise Blood, in both cases the car is second hand.

A warning to the reader: there is a difficult to read part about wild horses. They get their revenge in a way, but as things go with revenge, it victimizes the wrong person.

[Shakesthecoffecan]

I have been thinking about Deep-Blood-Greasy-Bowl for a few days, waiting for the revelation as to its purpose.

Proulx prefaces the story with the comment that while they were building "our" new house, workmen uncovered evidence of prehistoric habitation. She ties this in with the local geography and tells a tale of a Native American tribe in the days before horses charging a heard of Buffalo to their death off a nearby cliff.

It might resonate more with someone that is unfamiliar with the practice. I had first learned about it at Ulm Piscun in Montana when I visited in 2000. There is also another site where this was done in Alberta, called "Head Bashed In", it is not far from Cowley.

It was a very involved process, and Proulx gives it a good treatment. It reminded me of her earlier carrier writing technical manuals and descriptive pieces for small publications. It ties in nicely with her own stewardship of her piece of the earth. It shows us that xwé:wamənk (Munsee for Wyoming) was a rough place to live long before the white folk and their sheep showed up.

[CellarDweller]

Last night I read The Sagebrush Kid, which is dedicated to George Jones.

Now one could probably correctly assume this is the George Jones she is refering to, which I don't quite understand but never mind.

This very short story features Bill and Mizpah, who operate a stage coach station who adopt a sage bush as their surrogate child and a Calcutta born Indian named R. Singh, who is living among the Souix. Shades of Stephen King here, that I have felt for a while Proulx has some strange connection of language and ideas with. Kind of a Maine thing.

This was the story that Annie read to us last year in NYC.  Loved it then, love it now!

[Shakesthecoffecan]

In Swamp Mischief we are visited again by our old friends, The Devil and his assistant, Duane Fork.

In it we learn that Satan does have an email address: [email protected] but like many of us, his emails tend to be spam.

Bored and wanting to cause some mischief on Earth, he creats a flock of pterosaurses at a national park, but in the tension betwixt the evolved world and the world of spiritual myth, the details of diet undo the operations. Proulx maintains the Devil is deffinatly a western figure, having left his name in so many places.

My favorite line in the story: "No Canadian stuff today. I'm in no mood for their so called civility."

[Shakesthecoffecan]

I am in the home stretch now with FJTWII.

The next to the last story, Testamony of the Donkey, uuuuh, it is classic Proulx, if there is such a thing.

Marc and Catlin live together in a trailer in the rural landscape. We are treated to a background of their lives, and overview of their relationship and then half way thru, the direction turns 90 degrees. It is an ominious turn, and the reader knows exactly where they are headed, but man what a ride! It is flat out horrifying. I was glued to the book, page after page, I read it as the light died and hardly noticed.

This is so much shades of Postcards, Jewel Blood trying to cross a creek in the snow, OMG, this one will stay with me a long time.

[retropian]

YAY! I'm looking forward to reading it. I like how many of her previous stories have a wry black humor present. Her sense of humor doesn't soften the stories. She can be funny but not sentimental.

[Shakesthecoffecan]

YAY! I'm looking forward to reading it. I like how many of her previous stories have a wry black humor present. Her sense of humor doesn't soften the stories. She can be funny but not sentimental.

Hey Ian, have you been able to read the two stories that have been published in the New Yorker?

[retropian]

Hey Ian, have you been able to read the two stories that have been published in the New Yorker?

Sorry. I didn't see your post earlier. No, I haven't read them in the New Yorker. I haven't had time to pick up her new collection yet. I will soon.

[shortfiction]

Well, shoot.    The due date is tomorrow and I only got to read 2 stories--too much going on--and they won't renew it.
I'll just have to borrow it again later.

[Artiste]

Intéressant Annie !

Interessting Annie !