The Book (original AP complete short story), The Message & Its Impact

[TJ]

I hope I worded the multiple choice answers correctly.

"NYM" here stands for New Yorker Magazine which did not publish the short story with the italicized paragraphs which was in Annie Proulx's own books.

I read the New Yorker Magzine version when it was reposted in the NYM archives; someone elsewhere had posted a link to that when I was active in an Yahoo Group Brokeback Mountain Movie discussion run by a know-it-all heterosexual woman from Australia who did not want anyone else to discuss, or simply mention their gender or sexual orientation. It was because of her attitude that I decided to create a Yahoo Group to discuss the 1997 copyrighted Dead Line, Ltd. edition of the story as published in "Close Range." (I did not get banned from her group, I left it on my own.)

Before I started my book discussion group, a person had sent me a plain text copy of what was published in the Close Range short story book.

I bought the stand-alone paperback book two weeks after I created the Yahoo Group. Then on January 6, 2006, I saw the movie at a local theater.

[TJ]

Annie Proulx said in interviews and in her own writings about the Brokeback Mountain short story that she had lots of gay men who had written her and thanked her for what she wrote and how much the story was either related to their own experiences and/or had an impact on them when they read it.

Some of what goes on in the story reminds me of some things in my life and also of things in the lives of people that I have met in at least 50 years of my own life.

[TJ]

I still think the title of this discussion thread which I created should be a separate major category in any forum board because if Annie Proulx had not written the short story in the first place, there would not have been an Ang Lee Brokeback Mountain movie.

[starboardlight]

I'm one of those who read the story after seeing the movie. i think my impression of AP's prose was colored by my reaction to the film.

I did really love her language though. The way she phrased things were gorgeous to me. Describing the kiss as "the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together" was just vividly descriptive.

[Ellemeno]

I stumbled upon knowledge of BBM in October 2005, about two months before the film came out here.  I had never paid much attention to a movie before it had even come out, but I was completely immersed in Brokie world right away.  I read the short story, with italics, many times in those two months before seeing the film.  I had it downloaded into my PDA, and basically (sorry for the TMI here) every time I sat down to pee I would read a few pages of the short story.  As soon as I finished the last words, I would start over again at the first words.  And even that didn't feel like enough.

It's probably been 3 months since I read the whole story all th way through, but I still open up the pdf file of it on my laptop at least weekly, to make sure my quoting of it is verbatim, or to look for ideas for the ABCs game.

I don't want to know how to quit it.

[Front-Ranger]

Watch this forum for a book discussion on, what else, Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain!! (What took us so long?)

[brokebackjack]

Watch this forum for a book discussion on, what else, Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain!! (What took us so long?)

Where is it? If nobody started it I will.