Close Range: Wyoming Stories.Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx Scribner. 288 pages. $25.00. The American West has been a favorite setting for many of the heavyweights of contemporary fiction: Cormac McCarthy For the musician, see . Cormac McCarthy, born Charles McCarthy,[1] July 20th, 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who has authored ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres. , Rick Bass, Jim Harrison
He was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana to a family of homesteaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles "Charlie" Doig and his grandmother , and Richard Ford Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel The Sportswriter and its sequels, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land . Women who set their stories in Big Sky country (Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho) have not received the same critical acclaim and publishing hullabaloo as their male counterparts. Enter Annie Proulx. She has only five books in print--including Heart Songs and Other Stories (1988), Postcards (1992), The Shipping News (1993), and Accordion Crimes Accordion Crimes is a 1996 novel by American writer E. Annie Proulx. It followed her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1993 work The Shipping News and was shortlisted for the 1997 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.[1]. (1996), all published by Scribner. Even so, Proulx has already won the Pen/Faulkner Award (for Postcards), as well as the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize Pulitzer Prize Any of a series of annual prizes awarded by Columbia University for outstanding public service and achievement in American journalism, letters, and music. Fellowships are also awarded. (both for The Shipping News). Her second collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories, entertains the mythic legends of drunken cowboys, rodeo heroes, betrayed lovers, and aging ranchers, while exploring all the loneliness, blood, and dirt of the Western landscape. The epigraph ep·i·graph n. 1. An inscription, as on a statue or building. 2. A motto or quotation, as at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. of Close Range is from a retired Wyoming rancher: "Reality's never been of much use out here." Most characters in these narratives veer between what is actually possible and what is dreamed, as many take on the complex "story-within-a-story" mode. "The Half-Skinned Steer," which has been chosen for inclusion in John Updike's anthology The Best American Short Stories The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of the Best American Series published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has strived to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American of the Century (Houghton Mifflin Houghton Mifflin Company is a leading educational publisher in the United States. The company's headquarters is located in Boston's Back Bay. It publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers , 1999), is one of the highlights of this well-crafted collection. A retired rancher, Mero, in his eighties and with a mind full of flashbacks, makes his way across the country to the old family ranch for his brother Rollo's funeral. The ranch is now a tourist trap tourist trap n. A place, such as a shop or resort area, that offers overpriced goods and services to tourists. called "Down Under Wyoming," and the journey turns hellish because of winter storms and the old man's difficulty with driving. Here, Proulx sets up all the themes that dominate this volume: the struggle of hope against nature, mortality, and despair. Some of the newer and less-heralded stories in this collection are even more impressive. "Job History" chronicles the economic woes of the West through the life of Leeland Lee, who moves from job to job and plan to plan with an unyielding hope that prosperity awaits over the next ridge: "Leeland quits truck driving. Lori [his wife] has saved a little money. Once more they decide to go into business for themselves. They lease the old gas station where Leeland had his first job and where they tried the ranch supply store. Now it is a gas station again, but also a convenience store. They try sure-fire gimmicks: plastic come-on banners that pop and tear in the wind, free ice cream cones with every fill-up, prize drawings. Leeland has been thinking of the glory days when a hundred cars stopped. Now Highway 16 seems the emptiest road in the country." Through the sparse, understated chronology, Proulx depicts not only the difficult economic hurdles of the isolated region, but also the fierce emotional ones. This is powerful fiction, and somehow Proulx manages to give each story the plot, depth of character, sense of setting, and thematic weight of an entire novel. But her talent is sometimes a flaw. On occasion, she packs in too much detail, particularly at the openings. She seems to be trying to show just how well she knows the geography, people, and history of Wyoming. While impressive, this background information often slows the stories down. The final offering, "Brokeback Mountain," features two ranchers--hard-drinking, cussing, rough-and-tumble men. But here's a new perspective on the macho cowboy: These two men have an intense, erotic, exhausting relationship during a summer up on Brokeback Mountain. Afterward, they move off to opposite ends of the country, marry women, and have families. Four years later, their relationship resumes. It is a tender and heartbreaking love story. The crushing last line of "Brokeback Mountain" sums up all the loneliness and failed dreams that make Close Range such a moving and wise collection: "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it." Dean Bakopoulos is a writer based in Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The 2006 population estimate of Madison was 223,389, making it the second largest city in Wisconsin, after Milwaukee, and . |
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