Rating: 
Summary: A Subtle and Unrelenting Comedy
Review: After carefully anylising Proulx character development and precise diction it seems to me that the whether the characters depicted by Proulx capture the spirit of Wyoming is irrelevant. Each of these characters should be taken both in correlation with the setting and also they should be allowed to stand on their own. These characters should serve to titilate by thier absurd responses to life, not to portray an active representation of the Wyoming landscape. Proulx makes a very conscious effort to seperate Wyoming from her characters. If fact you could say that Wyoming could be seen as an individual character. Each character interacts with eachother but they are not to be taken as the same thing.
Rating:
Summary: Family ties and ranching make it very Close
Review: After reading a couple of stories of Annie Proulx's collection "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" I started feeling the line that kept the narrative together was the familiar feeling. But near the end, when I reached a tale called "The Governors of Wyoming", I realized that they are also about ranching.At a point in this very same story, a character states that "the main thing about ranching (...), last as long as you can, make things come out so's it's still your ranch when it is time to get buried. That's my take on it". This statement is clear what keeps all the stories together in this collection. In a way, or another, the main characters --and the main plot of narrative-- are dealing with forces --be them another person, destiny etc-- that are trying to steal their ranch. However, the family ties are another acting force --that may help to keep the ranch or lose it. There are always conflicts between siblings, husband and wives, mothers and sons. And another major theme is the intolerance that is all around us most of the time. This theme is the main object in the last --and probably the best --story, called "Brokeback Mountain" that narrates the relationship between to male cowboys that fall in love with each other. Due to their inhospitable environment their affair is fated to surrender. But if this is not a surprise, the dignity and beauty with Proulx deals with the characters that is an amazing thing. The stories have different objectives and paces. Take "Job History" for instance. It is so fast that sometimes looks like a newsreel. And so it could be, because it is the story of members of a family that are so busy with their own lives that they end up missing the history that is happening in their times. And it --history -- is interfering in their lives more than they realize or wanted to. Contrary to "Mountain" this is a very fast narrative. Each story has its own appeal and is dealt in a different way. "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World" stars like a regular one, but when its touches of surrealism begins, it becomes something very unusual, and one of the best of the collection. Much more accessible than Proulx's Pulitzer and National Book Prize winner "The Shipping News", "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" is a real treat to readers who like a sophisticated prose, written with heart, soul and smartness. It reads like Cormac McCarthy's best. Like most anthologies it is not easy to keep a high level all the time --but the writer succeeds most of the time. Of course, there are stories that I like better than other ones, but, as whole, I think the book is so good that it is impossible not to give it my highest recommendations.
Rating:
Summary: No contrast except in the imagery
Review: Ever since she allowed a happy ending to ruin things in The Shipping News, Annie Proulx has made life miserable for every character she's drawn. If she has an impulse to evoke sympathy for any of them, she conquers it. I present as evidence Accordion Crimes and Close Range. Nothing good happens in these stories except the passing of time and even the passing of time fails to change anything. At the finish of "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water," she writes, "That was all sixty years ago and more. Those hards days are finished. ... We are in a new millenium and such desparate things no longer happen." Then she rams home the final line: "If you believe that you'll believe anything." It takes a lot of work to find contrast within any one of these stories. For instance, the first image in "A Lonely Coast" is of a house burning up out on the vast Wyoming plains at night: "And you might think about the people in the burning house, see them trying for the stairs, but mostly you don't give a damn. They are too far away, like everything else." From that happy beginning, the story goes on for 18 pages describing several tiny, confined lives that run together like brown and blue paint, with no logic except gravity; then, bingo, the story ends with an absurd shootout on a highway. The thing about Annie Proulx is her imagery. For example, from "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World": "Aladdin, face like shield, curly hair springing, tipped his head toward the tablecloth, mumbled, 'O bless this food.' Heavy beef slices, encircled by a chain of parsnips and boiled potatoes, slumped on the platter." That is beautiful, how Aladdin tips his head, not toward the platters, the table, the food---no! Toward the tablecloth! That is poetry. Also, as you can see throughout these stories, she connects clauses with commas but with no conjunctions; for example, "Another mudholed lane took him into a traffic circle of commuters sucking coffee from insulated cups, pastries sliding on dashboards. Halfway around the hoop he spied the interstate entrance ramp, veered for it, collided with a panel truck emblazoned STOP SMOKING! HYPNOSIS THAT WORKS!, was rammed from behind by a stretch limo, the limo in its turn rear-ended by a yawning hydroblast operator in a company pickup." Never mind the string of clauses with no conjunctions, what about the last driver? He's yawning, he's a hydroblast operator, he's in the company pickup! That's why I keep reading this depressing stuff of hers, because of the magic show. Who else would have conjured up a yawning hydroblast operator? What's a hydroblast?
Rating:
Summary: Wyoming as a state of the soul
Review: I am a grown-up, middle aged man not drawn much to sentimentality. I am not a practiced reader of fiction and I have spent only one night in Wyoming. I just finished reading the final story in the collection, "Brokeback Mountain",about ten minutes ago. I still have tears in my eyes. It seems to me that I am still falling out of a dream into the wet and chill February morning by San Francisco Bay where I now live. But the dream was of a place utterly familiar. I mean, emotionally familiar, familiar in memory, and evidently, familiar to my body. I can still feel the tingling just behind my cheekbones and the low-voltage electric discomfort in my chest. I guess Annie Proulx touched something in the geography of my own soul with her story. And even in the sadness that swirls around my eyes, I am grateful to her for that. And amazed that this woman could write so tellingly of men's hearts. I said that I am a middle-aged man. So I have a history behind me. That's part of what makes you middle-aged. When you're young, who you want to be someday is the largest part of who you are. When you're middle-aged, the evidence begins to mount. The past is what it was and that is the largest part of who you are. It's harder to make believe anymore. And the story includes loss, confusion, missed opportunities, cowardice, fear, and memories of your own Brokeback Mountain. And sometimes the only redemption for the past, if it is redemption, is to remember it, fully. That's all. Now that I am back in the waking world a bit more, I also want to say that Annie Proulx weaves the English language beautifully, with the kind of strength, color and contrapuntal roughness that makes it so earthy and satisfying. There were a few passages that I read out loud, just for the rhythm, the accents, the tumbled spring-thaw rush of sound. In a story about people not noted either for reflective insight or poetic diction, she has, paradoxically, by her own re-membering of them, let them be themselves, without apology, and yet re-situated them in a place of human grandeur. I guess Aristotle had a point when he wrote about poetry as a moment of katharsis, of the compelling power of pity and fear. I bet he never thought he could find it on Brokeback Mountain.
Rating: 
Summary: feh
Review: I enjoyed "The Shipping News", and think Wyoming is a
beautiful state, so I thought this might be a worthwhile
read. In my opinion, it wasn't. Ms. Proulx seems to dislike
the people, leaving no doubt everyone in Wyoming is a
redneck, and every family abusive....Not bad writing, but
disappointing content.
Rating:
Summary: Reality's Never Been Of Much Use Out Here
Review: I read this collection of stories after reading a review by Ronald Scheer who has reviewed numerous modern westerns on this web site. Other novels or collections I have read at his suggestion include works by James Galvin, J. Robert Lennon, Ralph Beer, David Long, Mark Spragg, Rick DeMarinis. Beside Proulx, I would also highly recommend Ralph Beer's "The Blind Corral", James Galvin's "Fencing The Sky" and David Long's "Blue Spruce." Mark Spragg's mostly comic novel "Fruit Of Stone" is also well worth reading.
While all these authors are all among the most skilled practitioners of the art of writing I have ever encountered, these stories, mostly of Wyoming and Montana, can also
be disturbing; they are all somewhat similar; they describe a portion of America that is grappling with the economic and environmental ravages of logging and mining, according to social historian Jared Diamond, Pulitzer-prize winning author of "Collapse." They all detail the sad and often tragic life of the modern cowboy. Or alternatively, for the cowboy's no- nonsense personality, you could watch Kevin Costner's 2004 movie "Open Range." Proulx is certainly as good as any, and packs her pages with powerful images like a can of sardines. There is hardly a bad story in the bunch I discovered,since I read them all. One of the more interesting facts I learned after reading all these novels is that this area of America was settled by a higher than expected proportion of immigrants from Iceland, Scandinavia, Finland, and Scotland.
Rating:
Summary: Best book I've read in a long time
Review: I was UNDERWHELMED by "The Shipping News," while at the same time I couldn't put it down. My mother had the same reaction. "I can't figure out why I ever finished this book about such weird people," she said when she sent it to me. We both agreed we'd hated it.
After this experience, I only picked up "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" because of the last story, "Brokeback Mountain," and the controversy due both to the subject matter and from the film currently being shot by Ang Lee, starring two Hollywood "Pretty Boys" Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.
After reading these stories, I think I get it.
Proulx is a master of the short story. The short, spare sentences rapidly flesh out characters and a correspondingly spare and beautiful landscape, without becoming bogged down in the endless, bleak exposition that filled most of "The Shipping News."
In the context of the short story, where Proulx doesn't have a novel's luxury of pages, her prose becomes economic rather than self-indulgent, setting tone and describing the characters and the life in the high altitudes of Wyoming with the deadly accuracy of a keen blade.
There's not a lot of laughs in Proulx's books, and the juxtaposion of the characters' hard, cruel and bleak lives with the unforgiving Wyoming landscape is nothing short of devastating. But, unlike "The Shipping News," it works here. The stories start with a bang with "The Half-Skinned Steer," an unrelenting look at a man who's been chewed up and spit out by his early years in Wyoming, coming to an ironic end in a snowstorm a few miles from the ranch he's returning to for a funeral. Proulx builds to a climax through the stories with tales of characters suffused with regret, loss, and the will to go on living despite cruel, painful lives. The final story, "Brokeback Mountain," is the tale of two uneducated cowboys who meet and fall in love during a harsh summer of sheepherding in 1963, and how their love and lives fail them over the next 20 years, finally ending with the inevitable tragic conclusion...yet painting a bittersweet picture of survival in the face of a time and landscape that spawned the murder of Matthew Shepard.
Again, devastating. This story made me cry for the first time in 25 years, every time I read it.
These stories are not for the faint of heart, but if you can handle them, you will find yourself dwelling on them for months, when you have a minute and your day is quiet.
Extremely highly recommended, and not nearly as depressing as it sounds. And by the way, I can't wait for the film of "Brokeback Mountain."
Rating: 
Summary: A little too bleak for my taste ...
Review: I'm not quite sure what to make of this collection. I loved AP's writing style and wanted to be drawn into the stories. However the problem was that once was I was in the stories I wasn't sure I wanted to be there - I found the subject matter a little too depressing - I had imagined stoical countryfolk living bleak but dignified lives against a magnificent, uncompromising landscape. Instead I was a little taken aback by the undignified and squalid behaviour of the charactors and how they all seem doomed to end up unhappy. Surely their are SOME happy marriages/parent-child relationships in this part of the world? I liked 'Brokeback Mountain' but the rest of the stories seemed a bit samey. I've never been to America but based on AP's view of it, I think I would give Wyoming a wide berth! In some ways Ms Prolux reminds me of Thomas Hardy - the same tales of lives predestined to unhappiness against the uncaring splendour of nature - but unlike Hardy she appears to lack a sense of humour/or any compassion for her characters. Her characters have no nobility, hence it becomes difficult for the reader to empathise with their plight.
Rating:
Summary: Wyoming it ain't
Review: I've lived in Wyoming most of my life, except for college in Princeton and the first part of my career in New York City and San Francisco. I wouldn't say I'm just another redneck in America's Outback. So when I say Annie Proulx's "Wyoming" stories aren't a true reflection of the character and the landscape of a state (or a state of mind, if you will), then you can trust my perspective. Wyoming has always been a place on the way to someplace else; Ms. Proulx is like so many people before her who have lingered here long enough to affect a rather jaundiced view of this place, but not long enough to understand it. I can understand why Ms. Proulx's "Wyoming" is so appealing to uninformed and effete Eastern media and readers; it plays to their fantasies about this place. But add Ms. Proulx's overwrought prose and her dark view of this or any world, and you're going to get a verbose, tangled, inaccessible and ugly portrait. That's OK for her nearly unlovable human characters, but new Western literature is also about surroundings, and in that, her writing fails. A reader who is truly interested in this landscape and wants to see it the way folks live in it is better advised to pick up Ron Franscell's "Angel Fire" or C.L. Rawlins' "Gravity National Park."
Rating:
Summary: A brilliant collection of gripping stories
Review: In some ways it's odd that Annie Proulx achieved such success with her novel The Shipping News, because she is a born short-story writer. This latest collection seems to me her finest work yet, illuminating the dark corners of human nature in language that is lucid, gripping and intense. The stories and the characters found in them are astonishingly vivid and stay in the mind long after reading. Proulx writes about people who generally have no voice in fiction, which is clearly off-putting to some readers. But the emotional truth in her work continues to grip the reader. I'm disappointed to note the number of Wyoming residents who seem distracted by the book's sub-title and feel it should be some kind of travel brochure for the state, and have reviewed it complete with sneers about Easterners. This is literature, not journalism! Fans of beautifully-written, emotionally intense writing should read this book! And also enjoy it for the beautiful watercolors.
|
