Author Topic: Proux and Thoreau  (Read 11786 times)

Offline Lynne

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Proux and Thoreau
« on: April 25, 2006, 07:27:42 pm »
This is a beautifully-written article by Pauline Park, which I found in the New York Blade.  I think it speaks directly to Annie's 'finishing the story in your own life...'.  I am posting it here in its entirety because I do not want to chance the link becoming invalid.  It's a keeper.  I highlighted a few sentences I especially liked.

Thank you for reading this one.

-Lynne


http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=220878

Henry David Thoreau might well have been thinking of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist when he wrote that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." While Thoreau’s "Walden" long predates Annie Proulx’s "Brokeback Mountain" short story and the Ang Lee film based on it, the transcendentalist philosopher’s magnum opus remains as relevant today as was published in 1854.

Much of the comment about the film, just released on DVD, has focused on its transgressive love story. But if "Brokeback" speaks powerfully to gay and non-gay audiences alike, it is because the film not only articulates the tragedy of true love constrained and ultimately defeated by homophobia, but also speaks to the tragedy of life not truly lived.

Thoreau could have been describing the "Brokeback" Wyoming of the 1960s when he wrote, "The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!"

Jack attempts to persuade Ennis to climb out of the rut of heteronormative expectations in rural Wyoming, but Ennis is traumatized by a childhood episode in which his father took him and his brother to see a dead gay man who was tortured and beaten to death for having the temerity to live openly with another man.

So Ennis’ fear of violence is a realistic one. But in choosing to live his life from a script written by someone else, Ennis is false to himself and to everyone else—and above all, to the one person who loves him for who he truly is. In their final encounter, Jack confronts Ennis with the desperately sad truth that they have wasted their lives in outward conformity and secret transgression. Ennis has settled for mere existence, wasting years in a loveless marriage, unable to overcome his fears. The price of outward conformity to a rigid code of heteronormativity is a slow inward death for both of them.

CANONICAL PHILOSOPHY may have little appeal to most people, whether LGBT or otherwise. But at its most practical, philosophy poses basic questions that we all face as human beings: What is life and how shall we live it? In "Walden," Thoreau offers this answer: "I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now."

What is that "moonlight amid the mountains" of which Thoreau speaks? It is the sheer exhilaration of the authentic life lived fully in the integrity of one’s own truest self. Ennis and Jack glimpse the literal moonlight amid the mountains when they live on Brokeback and later return to it on their periodic "fishing trips." But only Jack can see the metaphorical moonlight of the authentic life that offers itself to them before they descend from the mountain into the dreary desperation of straight conformity and loveless marriage. Thoreau could well have been describing Jack in the passage in "Walden" in which he famously declared: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

The authentic life is there for the living, and the deepest tragedy of "Brokeback Mountain" is Ennis’s refusal to accept Jack’s invitation to live it. Regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, anyone seeking to live an authentic life need look no further than the conclusion from "Walden" for guidance:

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,  and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Pauline Park is a member of the Philosophy Forum, a discussion group that meets the second and fourth Sat of each month at The LGBT Center, 208 W 13th St. She can be reached at [email protected].
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Proux and Thoreau
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2006, 05:26:58 pm »
Thank you, Lynne. This is fascinating! I'll have to borrow my daughter's copy of Walden and read it through. Did you happen to see my poll question, Do you agree with Thoreau? on the polling place? Great minds think alike!!
"chewing gum and duct tape"

moremojo

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Re: Proux and Thoreau
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2006, 05:49:03 pm »
Wonderful article, Lynne--thanks for sharing. I was especially struck by this quote from Thoreau:

" If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
That really resonates with me right now, in light of the disdain towards idealism that someone close to me has recently expressed. In rough terms, Jack is the idealist in BBM, while Ennis is the pragmatist. At story's end, Jack is dead, and Ennis lives on, but one wonders what kind of life he faces without the optimism and daring that Jack represented. The Jacks of this world are all too often ruthlessly crushed and suppressed, but that doesn't nullify the importance of their contributions, not least of these being the added sweetness and softness they lend to a sometimes hard and unfeeling existence.

Offline Lynne

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Re: Proux and Thoreau
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2006, 12:29:30 am »
I did see the poll question - I went with 'lives of quiet desperation'...then saw I could choose more than one, got scared that I was just depressed, then went away to think.  I guess I haven't changed my mind, so 'quiet desperation' still gets my vote.  So I'm not being completely depressive, for me, it's like the quiet desperation is the baseline existence, because it's onto that you add the moments of import or subtract the moments of indignity.

Walker Percy (son or nephew to Walker Alexander Percy, the poet, once said (I looked for the quote and couldn't find it)  that 'a man's life is only worth something as long as he's onto something; that if ever you get complacent, with nothing more to reach for, your life is essentially over.

Grim, I know..
-Lynne

Edited b/c I've got OCD about my own typos...
« Last Edit: June 14, 2006, 11:42:36 pm by Lynne »
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Re: Proux and Thoreau
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2006, 10:20:29 pm »
I don't find it grim...I want to know more! In striving is the key to happiness. The path is the happiness, not the destination.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline iristarr

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Re: Proux and Thoreau
« Reply #5 on: June 12, 2006, 11:18:27 pm »
Thanks Lynne for your very (always) thoughtful post here.  Glad to see you're still at it here at BetterMost.  I've been gone for a while, just needing to digest and settle down a bit after the initial passion for BBM and its reverberations, but a couple of sweethearts from this group sent me birthday greetings recently, and I dove back into it.  It just doesn't go away, does it?  There truly "ain't no reins on this one," apparently.  Wishing you the best, Iris.
Ennis and Jack, the dogs, horses and mules, a thousand ewes and their lambs flowed up the trail like dirty water through the timber and out above the tree line into the great flowering meadows and the endless coursing wind.

Offline Lynne

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Re: Proux and Thoreau
« Reply #6 on: June 15, 2006, 12:04:53 am »
I don't find it grim...I want to know more! In striving is the key to happiness. The path is the happiness, not the destination.

I will look some more and see if I can come up with anything that substantiates or expands on Walker Percy.  I believe it was something a literature professor of mine mentioned in passing during a lecture.  If you don't know, Walker Percy wrote a short novel entitled The Second Coming.  It's typical of a lot of Southern American literature like Flannery O'Connor, Peter Taylor, Katherine Porter, etc...with the strong Christian imagery and all that entails.  One thing I remember distinctly, though, is that the central female character was someone who uplilfts; she even builds a pulley system to 'hoist' something she wants to move.  I remember this every time I see Jack hoisting the supplies (?) to keep them off the ground away from the bears.  I'm virtually certain that Proulx (and McMurtry and Ossana) are strongly influenced by a lot of these works.

Thanks Lynne for your very (always) thoughtful post here.  Glad to see you're still at it here at BetterMost.  I've been gone for a while, just needing to digest and settle down a bit after the initial passion for BBM and its reverberations, but a couple of sweethearts from this group sent me birthday greetings recently, and I dove back into it.  It just doesn't go away, does it?  There truly "ain't no reins on this one," apparently.  Wishing you the best, Iris.

Iris!  I've been missing you.  Please accept a belated Happy Birthday wish from me!  I sure hope you had a wonderful one.  I thought about you Friday, but I'm behind on just about everything in both virtual and real life lately.  It certainly hasn't gone away for me yet, but I'm running hot and cold on making my changes.  My early forward momentum seems to have susbsided and I let myself get dragged back into the inertia.  Then I go again....It's terrific to see you back here, Iris.

Love,
Lynne
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline southendmd

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Re: Proux and Thoreau
« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2013, 03:22:38 pm »
Here's an oldie from Lynne to bump for Throwback Thursday.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Proux and Thoreau
« Reply #8 on: October 28, 2013, 11:29:26 pm »
... the central female character was someone who uplilfts; she even builds a pulley system to 'hoist' something she wants to move.  I remember this every time I see Jack hoisting the supplies (?) to keep them off the ground away from the bears.  I'm virtually certain that Proulx (and McMurtry and Ossana) are strongly influenced by a lot of these works.

Love,
Lynne

I love this! Thank you dear friend!  :-*
"chewing gum and duct tape"