getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)

[serious crayons]

If we're reminiscing about our first exposure to the story, here's mine: Three or four years ago, I was in a book club. Laurie, one of the other members and one of my oldest and closest friends, recommended that we read this story about two gay cowboys. She had read it when it came out in the New Yorker and just loved it. Laurie is a big Annie Proulx fan, and she thought this story was particularly great. She knew of an edition that was a whole little book with nothing but Brokeback Mountain in it. So we all bought it and read it and got together over beers and BLTs to discuss.

Everybody liked it and the discussion was OK. I think we said it was sad and the descriptive prose was really beautiful. Maybe we segued into talking about how hard it would be to be gay in that culture, or something. I can't really remember. I can tell you for sure that I learned more about the story from -- to take an excellent example but far from the only one -- Mel's OP on this thread, about Proulx' offhand revelations. Let alone my almost nine months on these boards!

Anyway, you know what the saddest thing is? As far as I know, Laurie has never seen the movie. She's kind of a movie snob and likes to disdain the whole genre and believe that books are vastly superior. She never, ever sees movies in the theater, though she occasionally rents them. But when she rents them she likes to rent films so obscure that I've never even heard of them, and I read a lot about movies. She always sneers at movie remakes of books. I'm pretty sure she would think of a Hollywood version of Brokeback, especially one with two pretty actors playing those gritty roles, would be a ridiculous waste of her intelligence. Even though, of course, I've told her how much I loved it.

Do I sound a little bitter? Sorry. That quality of Laurie's has always highly annoyed me.

But in this case, it's sooooo her loss.

 

[Front-Ranger]

Just think how she'll feel when she finally sees the movie and realizes what she missed! I'll bet she'll listen more closely to your suggestions after that!

Oftentimes I skip the fiction in my weekly New Yorker because I'm more of a nonfiction person than a novel or short story person. But lately I've been trying to read all the fiction, because I'm looking for a "new" Brokeback Mountain. But, sadly, I haven't read anything that comes close. There was a pretty good story in the September 11 issue called "Black Ice." It is by Cate Kennedy and is set in Australia. Interestingly, the phrase "just an Aussie Sheila" is used in it, which is the first time I have seen that phrase used outside of Katie77's thread in "Our Daily Thoughts." The Sept 11 issue is the one that has a tightrope walker suspended in midair, with an inside cover that shows him with the WTC site in the background.

[serious crayons]

I'll look for it, FRiend! I used to read the fiction in the New Yorker before anything else (well, except the movie reviews). But I've really fallen out of the habit in the past few years. They've changed fiction editors, so maybe that's why.

OT, but ... I started to read a story by Joyce Carol Oates in the second-to-latest issue that was so sickening and horrible that I had to quit reading and almost couldn't pick up the rest of the magazine. It's about a frat kid who gets drunk and his frat bros throw him down a garbage chute and he dies. It's become controversial, because it's based on an actual recent case, and apparently the details in Oates' story closely resemble the real details, so people have protested that it's a pretty cruel thing to do to the family. Oates herself says that if she had it to do over again, she'd have changed more of the details.

However, Oates also wrote a short novel called "Black Water" that is closely based on the Chappaquiddick (sp?) episode. It is told from the POV of the character based on Mary Jo Kopechne. It is excellent.

Sorry to stray so OT. I should have posted that in the books thread. Getting back to Brokeback ...

[Front-Ranger]

Yes, I read that story by JCO too and it had little to recommend it. It even seemed kind of racist.

[Garry_LH]

First off Mel... You ought to take up writing. You got more going than a lot of folks that think they do have it going on.

 I'm one of those that read the story a couple of months before I saw the film. Those few short pages reached into me and tore apart decades of seeing the world through Ennis's eyes. It kicked me in the gut, and it never has every fully let up after that. It still amazes me that the film did the justice to the story that it did. That's a real rare thing in any adaptation.

Maybe this is not the place for this, I'm not too sure. If it needs moving, just let me know where it lands.
There's been all kinds of things written about Jack's death. But in one interview with Jake I caught, he said he felt Jack died when he realized there was never going to be a life with Ennis. That one sentence from Jake has been chewing on me for awhile. Cause it sure does shed a light on the change that comes over Jack after he drives that twelve hundred miles for nothing. Where in tears, he drives clear to Mexico to find physical release of a fix for the death of this hope, perhaps his soul, if not his love for one Ennis DelMar.

Part of what attracts me to Mz. Proulx's writing is it is real. Nothing in life is a true perfect moment. Every expression we make, ever action we initiate, all of it flows from what has gone before in our lives. We think we fix one problem in our lives, just to find it has found a different way to express itself. With luck, that new way is healthier, and a bit less destructive. And with luck... not so born again, we think we have all the answers for every body else's lives, while we're still trying to bring balance to our own souls.

Then, here I am ah wandering around the coffee pot again... Not to sure where I'm headed, or how all this is connected.

[nakymaton]

There's been all kinds of things written about Jack's death. But in one interview with Jake I caught, he said he felt Jack died when he realized there was never going to be a life with Ennis. That one sentence from Jake has been chewing on me for awhile. Cause it sure does shed a light on the change that comes over Jack after he drives that twelve hundred miles for nothing. Where in tears, he drives clear to Mexico to find physical release of a fix for the death of this hope, perhaps his soul, if not his love for one Ennis DelMar.

Yes. I've heard that as well (though I'm not sure if I've seen the interview... I'm on dial-up and I often skip over links to video). And the movie really shows that physically, as well... the mustache appears in the very next scene, and really is effective in covering Jake's smile, so that even when Jack looks a little bit hopeful (like in the "maybe Texas" scene), there's something missing. He's not quite the same Jack that we saw on the mountain, or after the reunion. There really is a light that goes out... goes out of both of them, actually, though Ennis hides his light so much in the first place that there isn't the obvious sudden change.

Part of what attracts me to Mz. Proulx's writing is it is real. Nothing in life is a true perfect moment. Every expression we make, ever action we initiate, all of it flows from what has gone before in our lives. We think we fix one problem in our lives, just to find it has found a different way to express itself. With luck, that new way is healthier, and a bit less destructive.

Yeah. A lot of people have criticized her for being anti-romantic, or for being so incredibly hard on her characters. But there's a bitter truth to her writing, too.

[Marge_Innavera]

There's been all kinds of things written about Jack's death. But in one interview with Jake I caught, he said he felt Jack died when he realized there was never going to be a life with Ennis. That one sentence from Jake has been chewing on me for awhile. Cause it sure does shed a light on the change that comes over Jack after he drives that twelve hundred miles for nothing. Where in tears, he drives clear to Mexico to find physical release of a fix for the death of this hope, perhaps his soul, if not his love for one Ennis DelMar.

The truck scene seems to be the point in the movie where things start to go downhill; to the point that the last scene by the lake has a very strained quality to it. IMO if they had met up in November that would have been a now-or-never turning point.

[NavyVet]

It's so good to find a detail discussion/analysis thread, coz I seem to have come up with all kinds of questions about BBM.  I'm sure they've been addressed somewhere, but there's hundreds of threads and thousands of pages and I'm so overwhelmed.

I'm afraid to admit it, but when I first read the short story last year, I was not impressed.  (Don't throw tomatoes at me!)  It was difficult to read, as I found it disjointed and full off run on sentences.  I remember thinking I've read amateur fanfiction better than this and this author won a Pulitzer?  Huh.  But that's just me.  And it was so tragic and sad and depressing, I wasn't going to see the movie.  I don't handle sad endings well (maybe that's a PTSD thing for me) and so I never read 'character death' fics either. Anyway, I did go see the film and was profoundly affected.

Now to my first question. (I fixate on the weirdest details sometimes) 
I noticed a part of the story that didn't make it into the movie was the bit about Jack being 5 years old and his father beat him and pissed on him.  The scene established the fact that Jack was apparently circumcised.
Was it ever established in canon that Ennis was?  Or is it a fanon thing that Ennis is uncut?
Just curious.  Any thoughts?

[nakymaton]

You know, when I read the story, my reaction was: somebody finally did it right. But then I glanced at BBM fanfic, and I thought: good grief. I have never read any fanfic in any fandom that is so embarrassingly awful.

And if people can say "the story isn't that good" and "fanfic is better" over and over and over again, I should be able to come out and say that I have the opposite opinion. The story is incredible, and the fanfic is... well, overdone, unsubtle, poorly characterized, and painful to read. I don't understand how a story and a movie that are so good can inspire people to write stuff that... isn't.

I would prefer not to have this thread used to sort out story details for comparison with fanfic.   

(Edit: I'm deleting my account on my own.)

[NavyVet]

Um... okay ... I didn't mean to open a can of worms.
I only mentioned IMO that on first impression, the grammar and sentence structure surprised me.  Her 'style', I guess, took some getting used to for me.  I have reread it multiple times since then and it has grown on me.  I was also speaking generally when I mentioned that I had read a few exceptionally good fanfic stories by talented authors, not specifically to the BBM fandom.  Yes, there's lots of bad out there too, but there are always exceptions.
I didn't think I was going on and on (it was my first post), but I'll be sure not to bring it up ever again.

I did, and still do, have honest questions about story details, some involve comparison between the story and the movie.  Now I wonder if maybe that's not allowed either.  So, forget it.  I'm afraid to ask.
Sorry, never mind.