The phrase that really jars for me, is when she says, I guess they just became too real.I would have thought that was one of the highest accolades an author could receive. Is not the whole purpose of writing a fictional work, to build up characters which resonate with the reader and produce a response, any response.
When she openly admits that Jack and Ennis became very real for her, as she as writing, why would she be upset that they became real for so many of us.
I read the story first and sobbed for days as I fervently read and re read it. I felt the pain of both Jack and Ennis and it resonated deep inside, touching a wound and reopening it, long after I thought it had healed. I was very wary of going to see the film and prevaricated for some time. I had my own very fixed images of Jack and Ennis by then and was wary of walking away from the film, bitter and angry as I have on many occasions when I have read a book first and then seen a film.
It is a testament to the genius of Ang, script writers, Heath and Jake, that I absorbed the film and took something new from it. The film was of course filled with more detail than the sparsely penned S.S. but that enhanced, rather than is often the case detracting from my experience.Ennis and Jack were reborn and again I started into another downward spiral of regret, chances handed to me so freely, yet like Ennis, rejected as I lacked the courage to move forward with what intuitively I knew would make me happy.
So Proulx rather than bemoaning the fact that maybe the characters became too real, should rejoice that they were given life by Heath and Jake, and from that rebirth emerged a film which stopped those affected in their tracks.Not just for a day, but for a lifetime, giving courage, where previously none had existed, to go out and grab life by the balls !!
If that was my only success in life I would die a happy lady.She is undoubtedly fed up with, as she sees it, inferior works of fiction, my advice on that subject would be, buy a bigger bin. It is like the people who bewail the mind numbing fodder we are fed via our T.V. if you do not like it, use the off button.It is not rocket science.
As for the lady herself, if I go to my grave feeling I have made just one persons life richer emotionally, if I changed the opinion of only one bigot, or gave courage to someone to pursue the life they want, I would die a happy lady. For Annie, I think she should be happy that her epitaph could easily and honestly be, I made a difference and opened a few eyes. Not a particularly shabby way to be remembered.