Book CLub: Discussion of Postcards by Annie Proulx

[Front-Ranger]

Welcome everyone to a bookclubish discussion of the novel Postcards, by Annie Proulx. I first read this novel back in 1997 right after reading Brokeback Mountain in the New Yorker. It was one of her first novels, written mainly while in residence at the UCross Foundation near Sheridan, Wyoming, also while at her home in Newfoundland.

The story is set during the Depression in rural America, as all of her work is about rural people. It is basically about one family called the Bloods. We have Mink, the father; Loyal, the eldest son; Jewell, the mother; Dub, another son; and Mernell, the daughter.

The story begins with a facsimile of a postcard, which is sent by the Rural Electrification Service, regarding the need for all farmers to install electric fences. This is a powerful (sorry!) metaphor, which begs comparison to the electricity references in BBM.

Jump in here with clarifications, questions, and your thoughts on the first chapter!!

[Front-Ranger]

For those of you who are reading Postcards, note the discussion of the milkweed pods in the first chapter. I missed it the first time around, and I think it's a significant detail. I didn't see anything similar in Brokeback Mountain about plants. They didn't seem to play a big role, except for small mentions of colombine and lodgepole pine trees. Or, did I miss something?

[Front-Ranger]

Here is some background about Annie Proulx:

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=6122.msg122343#msg122343

[Shakesthecoffecan]

I will get my copy back out and review. What I rememebr about the opening chapter is Loyal's dedication to the land, his pride in keeping his field clean, his dog going along with him to the task. There is a sense that the rest of the family is not as meticulas as he.

[Front-Ranger]

So what does Loyal look like? I imagine him looking something like this:

[Front-Ranger]

A quote from page 5:

"Evening haze rose off the hardwood slopes and blurred a sky discolored like a stained silk skirt. He saw and heard everything with brutal clarity...."

Annie Proulx is talking about Loyal Blood here, who's just been through a traumatic experience. What a way to start a novel! That AP demands the most from herself and from her readers!! We'll see this "brutal clarity" again...in fact, I call it The Brokeback Effect.

[Front-Ranger]

I always imagine Merville as being played by Reese Witherspoon. Anybody else see that? Now, things are getting complicated because Joaquin and Reese played together in that Johnny Cash biopic, "Walk the Line."

[Front-Ranger]

For those of you who are reading Postcards, note the discussion of the milkweed pods in the first chapter. I missed it the first time around, and I think it's a significant detail. I didn't see anything similar in Brokeback Mountain about plants. They didn't seem to play a big role, except for small mentions of colombine and lodgepole pine trees. Or, did I miss something?

I thought I'd resurrect this thread as we began talking about milkweed on another one. The novel Postcards helped me understand the Great Depression and the people who lived through it. So, it helped me understand my parents, primarily my father, who came of age during the Depression. It's about a family on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania and how economic hardship scattered them.

[Front-Ranger]

I thought of Merville when I read in the page "Monarch Flyway" that people could make money collecting milkweed pods.