Author Topic: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)  (Read 150746 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #170 on: October 23, 2006, 11:48:35 am »
No, go ahead with your questions about the story and comparisons of story to the movie, NavyVet. This is the place, you've come to the right place!! As for talk about fanfiction, you can talk about it to your heart's content over on the fanfiction forum. We have set aside a whole forum with two moderators for people to talk about fanfiction. Now, Mel, don't get your dander up, cut NavyVet a little slack, he'll get in the swing of things very soon!!
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #171 on: October 23, 2006, 12:56:26 pm »
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. 

Her style took me some getting used to, too, NavyVet. The first thing I tried to read of hers was "The Shipping News," and I didn't get very far. I read BBM before seeing the movie and although I liked it I wasn't as swept away by it as some people were. If they hadn't made a movie of it I might never have read the story again. Now the more I read it the more I appreciate it, but even now it's not as easily appealing as the movie is, for me.

Offline Momof2

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #172 on: October 23, 2006, 01:51:46 pm »
If I had read the story before the movie, I might not have watched the movie.  I am an avid reader, but was not greatlty impressed.  Thank goodness I did not.  I am not sure what it is about the story, I guess the whole time all I could picture was "Our" Jack and Ennis and not the ones in the story.  I would like to read some more of her writing.

I have to say that we have some unbelievably talented writers on FanFiction.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #173 on: October 23, 2006, 02:59:04 pm »
For all of you who are greatlty, or even just greatly, impressed with fanfiction, I invite you one and all to redline it over to the fanfiction forum and make those unbelievably talented writers' day. And while you're at it, you might mention to them that they might use a little of their talent to create their own original characters. But if you have a weakness for a story that is full off run on sentences, or even a story with run-on sentences in it, this is the place to talk about it.
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #174 on: October 28, 2006, 10:17:19 am »
To start our weekend off right, I borrowed Fabienne's sig line to quote to remind us of why the story is so great, and to show that Annie Proulx IS a romantic after all, in her own way:

'Ennis, riding against the wind back to the sheep in the treacherous, drunken light, thought he'd never had such a good time, felt he could paw the white out of the moon'

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Offline fernly

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #175 on: October 28, 2006, 11:01:06 am »
Lee, thank you for highlighting that sentence. I still get so swept up in the story when I read it that it's hard to stop and focus on one line.
And thinking now about that "treacherous, drunken light," I can see the wind that Ennis is riding against tossing the trees back and forth and sending the erractic, disorienting shadows and moonlight through the air and across the rocky ground.
The literal image is so beautiful.

Symbolically.....it's been said before (sorry, I don't remember by who) that the wind here again is Jack, Ennis feeling the force of it pushing him to return to their camp.

Not sure about the following - all you smarter folk please help me out here...
 The light, that's "treacherous", difficult to use to see his way clearly....Jack's changing the way Ennis sees the world, making it harder for him to know where to go, but then Jack's also going to be the bedrock of Ennis' emotional life.
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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #176 on: October 28, 2006, 01:24:46 pm »
I love your lists! Yes, I have seen those banded pebbles casting pencil-long shadows and those gelatinous green bands in the sky. Annie is so perceptive!!
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Offline ifyoucantfixit

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #177 on: October 29, 2006, 03:50:16 am »
Katherine asked this question ages ago, when we were discussing the brief reference to Jack's post-divorce drive ("twelve hundred miles for nothing"):

I know it's taken me a long time to answer the question. Not four f'ing years, but long enough. See, I'm not a writer, and I wasn't an English major, and most of the time I'll be damned if I can figure out what makes a piece of writing work (or fail to work) for me. So here's a pretty lame attempt to talk about sentence structure and story structure by somebody who, honestly, sucks at this kind of thing.

My first response is: you know, that isn't the only time in the story that important information, particularly important emotional information, comes out in an off-hand kind of way, at the end of a sentence or a paragraph that, at first glance, appears to be about something else.

The first example is in the prologue, in the first paragraph:

"...Again the ranch is on the market and they've shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, "Give em to the real estate shark, I'm out a here," dropping the keys in Ennis's hand. He might have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream."

Here's this entire paragraph that's about -- what? Rural poverty, the loss of Western land to developers, and the lifestyle of a guy who's more than a little rough around the edges, peeing in the sink, hanging his clothes from a nail or something? It's not just unromantic -- it's anti-romantic.

And then, at the end of the paragraph, there's that little half-sentence. ...he is suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream. And there, almost hidden at the end of run-on sentences and bleak descriptions, is the most important detail in the entire prologue.

It's... well, it's a surprise, I guess. Here I, the reader, have been lulled into thinking that I understand this character and his situation, and then suddenly, in half a sentence, everything I understood is turned on its head. It's not the way I would structure, say, a scientific argument, but I think there's something powerful about forcing a sudden change in perception. It's like... I don't know, like a Zen koan, or like suddenly waking up. It draws attention to the detail that's out of place.

And it's a particularly appropriate structure for characterizing Ennis. I mean, if you didn't pay that close attention to Ennis, you might see a guy who works hard, has earned enough respect to be responsible for the keys to the ranch, but who hasn't earned enough money to own a ranch himself. And a guy who... well, he doesn't quite seem the cocktail party type, does he? But the surface appearances don't even begin to tell the story of Ennis del Mar, and the real story slips out only at the end, only if you're paying attention.

And that's not the only time that the end of a sentence or paragraph contains something unexpected, something apparently unrelated, a kind of revelation:

"They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, 'I'm not no queer,' and Jack jumped in with 'Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours.'"

"Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain drainages...[snip]...but never returning to Brokeback."

The whole paragraph in which Ennis and Jack talk about other affairs, but which ends with:

"Ennis laughed a little and said he probably deserved it. Jack said he was doing all right but he missed Ennis bad enough sometimes to make him whip babies."

"Ennis didn't know about the accident for months until his postcard to Jack saying that November still looked like the first chance came back marked DECEASED."

And the sentence I was thinking about, right after it:

"He called Jack's number in Childress, something he had done only once before when Alma divorced him and Jack had misunderstood the reason for the call, had driven twelve hundred miles north for nothing."

I guess the structure of the whole story also hides the main point until the end. Lots of people have pointed out that, after the reunion at least, Jack and Ennis seem to talk about their attraction to each other a lot:

"'Christ, it got a be all that time a yours ahorseback that makes it so goddamn good.'"

"'Sure as hell seem in one piece to me...'"

"'...I sure wrang it out a hunderd times thinkin about you.'"

"'That's one a the two things I need right now...'"

But you know what? All that time, they're talking about sex. So they seem to accept the sex, and unlike on the mountain, they even talk about it.

But the emotional depth of the relationship isn't apparent... until the flashback to the dozy embrace.

And then the offhand mention of the twelve hundred drive for nothing.

And then learning that Jack wanted his ashes spread on Brokeback Mountain, that it was "his place."

And then Old Man Twist's revelation that Jack had talked about bringing Ennis up to Lightning Flat, at least until that last visit.

And then the description of the punch, mixed together with the discovery of the shirts.

It's like being slammed, over and over, with the realization that these weren't just two guys who enjoyed having sex with one another -- this was an incredibly profound love. And we don't learn the depth of it until Jack's dead.

I know enough about the short story form to know about O. Henry's stories, and about the way the plot always goes off in an unexpected direction at the end. I guess, in a way, Brokeback Mountain follows that form. But it isn't Jack's death that's the surprise, or at least, it isn't the biggest surprise. It's the discovery of the love we had missed noticing all along. Love, not just sex -- that's the twist.

And I think the whole story structure is part of the characterization of Ennis, as well. We're never allowed too deeply into Ennis's mind. We're allowed to see some of the events, and we're allowed to see the sex. But the love... the details that point to it are mentioned in offhand comments, as if they are pushed out of mind, until Jack's dead and the realization all comes together.

And then, going back and reading the story again, all those details that add up to the love start to stand out. Pawing the white out of the moon. The headlong, irreversible fall. Trying to puke in the whirling snow. "Little darlin." "This ain't no little thing that's happenin here." Reading the story for a second time is like dreaming with Ennis.

And those shirts were there, all along, in the second sentence of the story.

that is about the most profound and insiteful post about brokeback i have ever read...i loved loved loved it...you may not think you are a writer, but that is not true..janice



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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #178 on: October 29, 2006, 10:47:49 am »
I second that, Janice.

I hope nakymaton will grace us with one more offhand revelation before taking off for parts unknown.  :'(
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Offline fernly

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Re: getting hit hard by offhand revelations (story discussion)
« Reply #179 on: October 29, 2006, 11:13:17 am »
Quote
I hope nakymaton will grace us with one more offhand revelation before taking off for parts unknown.  :'(

I hope so too, except....not doing that taking off for parts unknown part.
on the mountain flying in the euphoric, bitter air