Recently Clarissa Facebook messaged me that there was something Brokeback-related going on in Seattle and invited me to attend and stay with her. Not a gathering of Brokies, but a community event. I probably can't go, but what's interesting is that it was a public book club. Anyone could attend, and they would read the short story and see the movie and later discuss their thoughts about them. (There's one here kind of like that called "Books and Brews" held in breweries, discussing kind of high-profile hipsterish books like Patti Smith's first memoir. You don't need to pre-register, you don't have to comment on or even read the book, but if you do want to comment, the host -- a professional comedian who provides ad-libbed but not mean levity between comments -- would hand you the mic.)
Here's what I wrote to our old friend Ellemeno:
How fun would it be to sit in the book-club discussion saying things like "Obviously the kettle and coffee pot are a metaphor for Jack and Ennis" and "I'm sure you noticed how Jack was always associated with wind" and "I'm sure we all know what the bear represented" and "It was interesting that Ennis says, specifically, 'the people on the pavement' (as opposed to the more common "people on the street") and earlier he'd had a discussion while spreading pavement with a guy who says 'breaks my back' and Ennis then gazes off wistfully into the distrance," and "Who has theories about why there was only one cherry in the cake?" "Oh, I'm sure you all noticed that the entire movie is an inkblot/mirror structure, with the center point when Ennis is seen in a mirror image getting his toothbrush, and from then on everything that happens matches something that happened in the scenes going back from that moment." And then we could add, "This movie was really good! I'd see it a second time!"