Close Range By Annie Proulx Reviewed
Wyoming Stories From the Writer That Authored Brokeback Mountain
The follow up to Annie Proulx's first collection Heart Songs and Other Stories, Close Range offers tales of Wyoming as the cowboy heartland, and the place itself becomes a true character that spits and chews on Proulx's creations until they're mangled and mutilated by life's joys and trials in equal measure. Brokeback Mountain stands chief amongst them as a story of note, but there are others, perhaps less celebrated, that are equally as powerful, as painful and as evocative.
Wyoming Stories From Ghosts to Real Grit in Close Range
It would be untrue to say Annie Proulx is not a writer with range. From what might seem a narrow subject to some, Proulx coaxes out stories that are as diverse as the quietly witty folk tale The Blood Bay to the dark, supernatural Half Skinned Steer which explores the theme of duty that, weighing heavily like a Stetson made of melted horse-shoes, forces one man to return to the roots he tried so hard to escape and confront the life he left unfinished.
55 Miles to the Gas Pump is simply hilarious and typical of Close Range in its almost wicked sense of humour, revealing incidents of remote Wyoming life in the extreme including dead bodies stashed in an attic and attempted suicides, all written with loving affection for the absurd and the down right dark, and always with language that blossoms, with rapid fire sentences and guttural low-blows that, just when a reader thinks they've got Annie Proulx's measure, rewards with something surprising.
People In Hell Just Want A Drink Of Water is perhaps the most rewarding of Annie Proulx's short stories next to Brokeback Mountain. It is a tale of feuding families and the complex relationships which determine a person's life, and is both articulate and almost scarily well observed. In fact, so prolific is this offering from Close Range that it could almost be a novel in itself.
Annie Proulx's Close Range Not for Everyone
As good as the stories are, and when they are in full flow they are exceptional, Close Range will not be to everyone's taste. Annie Proulx asks a lot of her readers; that they fill in gaps in her sometimes expansive plots, that they follow her rapid-fire prose with the skill of an expert marksman picking out just the right word to divulge meaning, and that they untangle the almost holistic dialogue of Wyoming folk, but if the reader can manage all that, the stories in Close Range are certainly worth the trouble.
Brokeback Mountain as the Literary Jewel in Annie Proulx's Crown
Lauded as her best work, Brokeback Mountain is a master-piece and it is a story in which all the elements that make Annie Proulx an exceptional writer are woven together to create an incendiary look at what love and loss can render in such an unforgiving environment as Wyoming in the early 1960's.
It would be remiss, however, to judge the collection solely on the strength of Brokeback Mountain, for each story is different and distinct. A reader must truly love Proulx's salty voice as the omniscient narrator to appreciate the full scope of Close Range but Annie Proulx's work is as intoxicating as a double-shot of aged whiskey, and it burns the soul in just the same way.
(Paperback: 320 pages; Publisher: Harper Perennial; New Edition Published: 1 June 2000; ISBN-10: 1841150762; ISBN-13: 978-1841150765)
Close Range Wyoming Stories
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