Well, maybe it's just me, but I don't blame Annie one bit for what she said.
We need to keep a few things in mind, I think.
We were all hit very hard by the movie based on her story. I know a number of people who didn't read the story until after the movie came out. I was one of them. I new it existed, but I'm the type of person who always likes the book better. Rather than ruin the movie, I held off reading the short story until after, so I could enjoy them both for what they were.
Annie, however, wrote that story over 10 years ago. Any emotional connection she had to the story or characters has long faded. I'm sure she's written a lot of stuff since then that she's equally proud of, but instead must deal with a constant barage of questions on Brokeback. Artists evolve, and improve. I'm sure that while she's still fond of Brokeback, her other work shows different facets of her abilites of an author, and they're being overlooked for work she's done over 10 years ago.
On top of that, other writers are sending remakes of that work, having characters she's created doing things she's never intended them to do.
I write poetry, but have started a slash story. It's been on the back burner for a while, and I would never even think of sending it to Annie Proulx for her review.
Hmmmm...well I've been thinking about this after reading the article on the other thread about it posted today. I'd agree entirely. I saw the movie first, and to be honest that was a pure fluke at the time, because my friend and I tend to just pick a day to go to the cinema after work and we go and watch whatever's starting next when we get there. That day it just happened to be Brokeback. I'd heard it mentioned vaguelly as "the gay cowboy film", but I'd no idea what it was about really and just went along with no particular expectations really. Sometimes we go and happen to chance on a really good film, other times whatever it is ends up being total crap (after the last one we went to see, "Pathology", I've been told I'm not allowed to chose again if there's two starting at the same time - it was totally awful!
)
The day after I saw the movie I went out and bought the book, partly because having seen the movie and thinking it was fantastic I felt I needed to read the story too, and partly because one of the guys that works with my friend I went to see BBM with said he'd not seen it, but he'd read the story and how fantastic that was. Having now seen the film many times, and read the story many times, I can't say that I prefer one over the other. There's something special about both of them, and I love them both for different reasons.
Thinking back to when I was younger when I used to go to a local writers group, I always used to hate it when they did the group critique sessions because whenever anyone said to me that they thought I should change how a story happened, or what a character did, I always felt like saying (and I think I actually did say on more than one occasion), "Look, it's my damned story and these characters are in my damned head, and I'll tell it the way I want!" As others have said, if Annie's being bombarded with fanfics, often of dubious quality, I'm not surprised she's more than a little pissed off by it!
Until BBM I was never really a fan of fanfics, but since reading some of the BBM fanfics I've kind of revised my opinion. There's some I think are great, some are okay, and others, well, I haven't got past the first page with them. Earlier this year I did start writing a fanfic myself (currently on the back-burner due to work commitments etc.) which was something I never thought I'd do, but when Jack and Ennis appeared in my head one lunch time at work, they were demanding to be written about. What I'll do with it when it's finished, I don't know. I'll possibly share it with the Brokie community, but I wouldn't dream of sending it to Annie Proux. I remember reading Stephen King's autobiography a few years ago, and one of the things he said was that people often asked him
why he wrote, and he said it was because he
had to. When that story and those characters appear in your head you just have to write about them or they carry on bugging you until you do.
In that respect I guess Annie's no different to any other writer, she writes because she has to on one level. Yes, she's a published author and her work's widely known now, in large part I guess due to BBM, but I guess that even if all the world's publishing houses folded tomorrow and the government banned publishing, she'd still have to write, even if it wasn't published, because that's what she is - a writer. I suppose, like anyone, she's quite proud and pleased that people like her work, but I'm guessing that chances are even if the public weren't there to read it, she'd still have to write it. As others have said, when 10 years+ later people are still badgering you about something you wrote way back when, as though that's the only thing you've ever written it would become very tiresome after a while. Going back to that writer's group I used to go to - we got a book of our work published - I had a short story and a couple of poems in it. It was a very limited print run, but had ISBN number and the works, and most of the copies I guess got sold to friends and families of people in the group who knew they were in it. I've got a couple of copies of it around here somewhere, and I guess there may be a bookshop or two somewhere who stocked it who may have a copy or two gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, or in some dark stock room, but I don't get constant questions about it. Many of my poems and some of my stories are on my website, and I get emails from people all over the place asking if they can use my poem "X" for whatever, but if suddenly I started getting a deluge of emails saying , "So what about 'A stone in the water'? Why did you write those particular ones?" I'd be thinking, and possibly saying, "Well actually I have written other stuff since then y'know!"
Everyone's different though. Some people are pretty tolerant, and others have a lower tolerance level and different reactions. On my forum, one of my now ex moderators is very outspoken and tends to just say what she thinks. That's just her. It annoys some people, and on occasions, as boss of the place, I've been a bit miffed with her reactions to decisions I've taken on how I run the forum, but at the end of the day, that's just part of her personality. Maybe it's not her best quality, but she's other qualities that more than make up for that. On the whole, I tend to be more tactful, but recently after members repeatedly pissed me off with some of their antics I finally snapped and sent out a strongly worded announcement that shocked members, because they're not used to me talking to them like that (it did the trick though - they've been perfectly behaved since then
).
Like the lady said, if you can't fix it, you gotta stand it, and she's had to stand the constant questions and attention about BBM since 2005, but when one too many "pornish" manuscripts lands on your doormat, and one too many reporters asks you about Brokeback, it must be enough to test the patience of a saint! Of course the other thing to remember is that (not that I'm saying the media are biased in any way or anything), the quotes in that article are just a couple of sentences from what may have been a lengthy interview. We're not to know that she didn't infact say "...They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for 'fixing' the story. They certainly don't get the message that if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it....that's just a very vocal and irritating minority though. Generally Brokies are all really nice people and I'm pleased that so many people have enjoyed the story and gained a lot from it..." or something along those lines. Let's face it, "Brokeback Mountain Author Slams Movie's Fans" is a much better attention grabbing headline than "Brokeback Mountain Author Says Brokeback Fans Are Great But It's A Pity About A Small Minority Of Them"
We only read what the press want us to read, and there's any number of ways you can slant an article to get the desired effect by taking phrases out of context or only reporting the bits you consider are "newsworthy".
