The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Annie Proulx: Fine Just The Way It Is, Wyoming Stories 3
CellarDweller:
I got my copy today while I was shopping. ;D
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.
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