I do have to agree with Jack and say I had never read the book before seeing the film. It was a complete shock, that 'deceased' stamp...
It took a while to get into the book. [a few days lolol] When I read it I was numb, but...but I kept going back. Afrter a certain point I started dissecting it down to the punctuation and ended by believing it to be the finest story in English since Faulkner was in his prime.
It is PERFECT.
Yet the author still--to this day, late in 2007--tinkers with it. There are several versions of BBM out there, all minutely different. [ for info, pm rodneywy]
Why?
AP keeps tinkering with it. She is the original brokie. It is said she wrote an Ennis story for herself, because she could not sleep wondering what he was going to do....
One can't reach for perfection without trying to make it even more....perfect, can we? It's a human thing, I think. I just started rewriting my best story due to a few offhand comments about the use of the word 'tiny' in BBM by Canstandit and ministering angel. It made me realise I had left out a huge possibility within my own story, with a word I did not develop fully....a word which has great significance, used several times in regard to one freeze-frame, without developing the end result. When I send the new one up to the person editing it I think I will say you are right, lets publish it LOLOL. This is number what, 29!!! I should be very happy I ain't Annie Proulx with her 60+ admitted revisions of Brokeback roflmao!!!
By the way, she is working on the second story in "the quartet of offbeat love stories " which BBM was intended to be part of.
How she will outdo BBM is anybodies guess!