The "ABCs of BBM": Round 965! (Rules in first post)

[Fran]

One cold night, fueled by whiskey, [Ennis and Jack] couple urgently; and though both vehemently deny that they're "queer," they spend the rest of the summer in an intimate idyll.

-- Christopher Orr, The New Republic     

[southendmd]

One whiskey-fueled night in the summer of '63 changed the nature of the boys' relationship.

[southendmd]

Round 846!

In honor of the 12th anniversary of its publication, let's have a round dedicated to the short story.

[memento]

In an interview by Planet Jackson Hole, Annie Proulx was asked: "How did you come to write Brokeback Mountain? What inspired the story?"

Annie Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" was/is one of a number of stories examining rural Western social situations. I was trained as an historian (French Annales school), and most of my writing is focused on rural North American hinterlands. The story was not "inspired," but the result of years of subliminal observation and thought, eventually brought to the point of writing. As I remarked in a 1999 interview with The Missouri Review, Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.

[Fran]

They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you're sleepin on your feet like a horse," and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness.

[story]

[southendmd]

In an interview by Planet Jackson Hole, Annie Proulx was asked: "How did you come to write Brokeback Mountain? What inspired the story?"

Annie Proulx: "Brokeback Mountain" was/is one of a number of stories examining rural Western social situations. I was trained as an historian (French Annales school), and most of my writing is focused on rural North American hinterlands. The story was not "inspired," but the result of years of subliminal observation and thought, eventually brought to the point of writing. As I remarked in a 1999 interview with The Missouri Review, Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.




=thanks= Sandy
 

[memento]

In an Interview by Planet Jackson Hole, Annie Proulx said: "As I remarked in a 1999 interview with The Missouri Review, Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars."

[Fran]

Another excerpt from the aforementioned Planet Jackson Hole interview with Annie Proulx:

PJH:  I think it's clear to anyone who reads "Brokeback Mountain" that above all it's a wrenching, starcrossed love story. It is about two cowboys, but it seems inaccurate to call it gay literature. How do you feel about the film being assailed as gay agitprop emerging from liberal Hollywood? Did you ever intend for the story to be controversial?

AP:  Excuse me, but it is NOT a story about "two cowboys." It is a story about two inarticulate, confused Wyoming ranch kids in 1963 who have left home and who find themselves in a personal sexual situation they did not expect, understand, nor can manage. The only work they find is herding sheep for a summer -- some cowboys! Yet both are beguiled by the cowboy myth, as are most people who live in the state, and Ennis tries to be one but never gets beyond ranch-hand work; Jack settles on rodeo as an expression of the Western ideal. It more or less works for him until he becomes a tractor salesman. Their relationship endures for 20 years, never resolved, never faced up to, always haunted by fear and confusion. How different readers take the story is a reflection of their own personal values, attitudes, hang-ups. It is my feeling that a story is not finished until it is read, and that the reader finishes it through his or her life experience, prejudices, world view and thoughts. Far from being "liberal," Hollywood was afraid of the script as were many actors and agents. Of course, I knew the story would be seen as controversial. I doubted it would even be published and was pleased when The New Yorker very quickly accepted it. In the years since the story was published in 1997, I have received many letters from gay and straight men, not a few Wyoming-born. Some said, "You told my story," some said, "That is why I left Wyoming," and a number, from fathers, said, "Now I understand the hell my son went through." I still get these heartbreaking letters.

=aside= Sandy
Thanks.

[southendmd]

From an article in encyclopedia.com:

You won't find Brokeback Mountain on any Wyoming map. I think of it as rising somewhere in the Bighorn Mountains. West of Buffalo, maybe, or near Cloud Peak.

Brokeback Mountain is, of course, the fictional peak that inspired first an Annie Proulx short story and now the Ang Lee film that has become a surprise hit.

[memento]

Annie Proulx described a grief-stricken Ennis upon finding the two shirts in Jack's closet:
The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack, but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.