Our BetterMost Community > Chez Tremblay
Annie Proulx's still pissed...
Berit:
I've read this thread several times now and I get more and more ..... ??? ....for each time
AP wrote BBM, she gave us this beautiful story. She took the story from what she had experienced, people she had met and seen, stories she had been told. It is her story. She gave birth to BBM. It hasn't a happy ending but that is the way life is, it has seldom - or never - a happy ending. It is what it is and for me, continuing this story is to ruin it. But I don't read fan fic or slash. That is my choice. I have tried and I found it totally ridiculous. Other, on the other hand does read and it is fine by me. AP doesn't like her short story to be changed. She has her right to her opinion. As I understand it, people have sent their stories to her with wishes that she would like them, encourage the writer and even write a sequel her self. That was dumb. She got pissed. I don't blame her.
Keep the fan fiction and the slash on forums like this, read and enjoy if you like that kind of stuff. Don't expect a prize winning writer to alter her story just because you had "a better idea".
I love BBM. I love the sadness of it, it is like life itself. For me Ennis is still in his trailer, looking out on the yellow field, longing for love lost.
I thank Annie for writing this, giving me BBM.
Please feel free to correct me if I have been mistaken in any way.
JudgeHolden:
Your not mistaken in any way Berit, you are right on. I never fail to be amazed by the reaction to Proulxs reaction myself. We are are all here because of the story SHE wrote. No story, no Diania Ossana reading the New Yorker one night and showing it to Larry McMurtry = No Movie.
I have read some fanfiction in my time and tried my own hand at it, and IMO, though some of those writers had a great deal of talent of their own, none came close to the woman who can write passages like:
One summer evening, their bed spread among the floor among the chips and splinters, they fell to kissing. Rose, in some kind of transport, began to bite her kisses....
"Oh Archie, I didnt mean to hurt,..."
"You did not...It's I aint never been. Loved...feel like I been shot," pulling her into his arms, rolling half over so that the salty tears and saliva wet her embroidered waist shirt, calling her his little birdeen, and at that moment she would have walked into a furnace for him.
Things dont go no better for these lovers in their rose-coveerd cottage than they do for Jack and Ennis after they come down off the mountain:
There was no way to know what happened. The more he thought about Archie the more he remembered the clear, hard voice and the singing. He though about Gold Dusts's rampant fur, about the sleek weasel at the McLaverty cabin. Some lived and some died, and that's how it was...
The following spring as he rode past their cabin he saw that the frost heaves had tipped the stone over and that the ridgepole of the roof had broken under a heavy weight of snow. He rode on, singing, "when the green grass comes, and the wild rose blooms," one of Aechie's songs, wondering if Gold Dust had made it through again.
Those who saw the movie and dont care to read any further of the woman who created the characters they loved, that siezed and fired their imaginations and launched a thousand terrible fanfics, and a few pretty good ones, ask of yourselves, why is that.
If its just a sexy read your looking for, no need to dress it up in character devlopment, plant flowers around it, etc. Most porn mags feature one-handed reads by writers who are clearly capable of better, but got to pay the mortgage and child support like the rest of us. What I sense here is the snit that comes from rejection, Annie Proulx rejected me so Im rejecting her back.
Not so. Annie Proulx gave you a piece of her soul and Im not being dramatic. Giving birth to a character is not all that different from parenting in real life. Theres no real map and no sense if you succeeded or not. She labored and brought forth these characters and the world responded, but that was ten+ years ago and she has since moved on. I wonder what people seek from her now, what more do they want. I sense Proulx saying, thats all there is, theres no more, frustrated that people want more from her than shes prepared to give, she moved on and why cant they.
I used to think it was sour grapes from mediocre writers toward a truly great writer, but now I think that our celebrity culture has created a sense of genuine obligation on the part of those who eleveate people to fame toward the ones who are elevated. Nevermore (dont mind my quoting you do you Nevermore?) said that a writer needs to be detached in order to have those powers of observation that make them a writer in the first place. To have the long view, you need to be further out than your fellow men, in other words. Proulx is famously standoffish; she chose to live in the most unpopulated state in the Union. So what. William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, JD Salenger, and Cormac McCarthy, are famously averse to company. But they are men, and it only burnished their myth.
Woman are not allowed to have that artist detachment, apparently, and no one is quicker to cry fowl apparently than other women. (Bradford, you are dead on), its not enough to be one of the greatest living American writers, Proulx has to be a warm, maternal Oprah figure, listening patiently and empathetically to all our problems. Its not enough to give us the fruits of her labors, and let them speak for themselves. She has to be our therapist too.
injest:
for me, the dialogue in fan fic is so tricky that I can't get into it much...most writers seem to think that all you have to do to make your characters sound "rural" is to use a lot of "ain't"s and conjunctions "wanna, coulda"s and drop the g's off everything in sight..(sorry, drop the g's off everthin' in sight)
well there is a bit more to it than that....grating to me. Sounds artificial and patronizing
I wrote a few pieces of fanfic back in the day, for me they were more a way to get some of the feeling out...I am humble enough though to know they are no where NEAR the quality of Proulx's and no way would I presume to send them to her.
Ellemeno:
--- Quote from: JudgeHolden on May 09, 2009, 04:07:57 am ---
Proulx is famously standoffish; she chose to live in the most unpopulated state in the Union. So what. William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, JD Salinger, and Cormac McCarthy, are famously averse to company.
--- End quote ---
I think this is the main point. So I would say a person oughtn't to be surprised if Proulx is less than enchanted and less than cordial when a person and her or his unsolicited manuscript that lays claim to Proulx's characters crowd her space uninvited.
brokeplex:
--- Quote from: injest on May 09, 2009, 08:26:39 am ---for me, the dialogue in fan fic is so tricky that I can't get into it much...
most writers seem to think that all you have to do to make your characters sound "rural" is to use a lot of "ain't"s and conjunctions "wanna, coulda"s and drop the g's off everything in sight..(sorry, drop the g's off everthin' in sight)
well there is a bit more to it than that....grating to me. Sounds artificial and patronizing
I wrote a few pieces of fanfic back in the day, for me they were more a way to get some of the feeling out...I am humble enough though to know they are no where NEAR the quality of Proulx's and no way would I presume to send them to her.
--- End quote ---
Injest you have just summed up very neatly the main reason why the fan fic on the Bettermost site gets no traction with me. And like you, I have "attempted" to slug through some of the efforts, and finally gave up.
Wannabe writers of realistic fiction should never try to not write about subjects, locales, time periods which they have little direct personal experience. To the informed, their efforts seem lacking, or as you suggest patronizing. The uninformed of course may be impressed, but what of it?
Sci-Fi / Fantasy has legions of fan fic writers who do wonderful work on the sci-fi / fantasy canvas, and in that environment you just have to write well and know a bit about character development - and it helps to love the genre.
AP should stay pissed and ever vigilant to keep control of her intellectual property.
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