Close Range : Wyoming Stories

Annie Proulx writes like Gogan would paint if he used a spray gun. She is vivid, minutely attentive to detail and strings words in lines like no one I have read lately.From "The Mud Below," a story about a bull rider "Emanating from him was a kind of carved-wood quietude common to those who have been a long time without sex, out of the traffic of the world." I would never in my life been able to craft a sentence or a sentiment like that. Every page is layered with literary extravaganzas like this. It becomes exhausting to have to read, savor, explore, cherish, and finally to store away for further pondering such stuff.From "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World." A father contemplates his daughter, gone to Denver, and taken up severe bodybuilding. "He was satisfied that she was alive, not building bombs nor winking at drive-by johns." The ranch dad knows he cannot control or even influence his daughter but finds contentment in knowing that however odd her life choices are, she is safe and seems happy. Enough. She also has an ear for the speech of the high plains, or an imaginative mind to invent what she has not actually heard around the campfire. In this sentence, she describes lifelong friends. From "Pair of Spurs." "They'd been high ace in each other's hand since baby days when Scrope's mother took care of infant Wrench." What a phrase that--' ace high in each other's hand.' We know exactly what she means but I certainly had never heard it put that way before. She gives us some history along the way. I never knew that Governor Doc Osborne, a medical doctor, was the first Democrat to be governor of Wyoming. He also is the only governor to be sworn into office wearing shoes made from human hide, to wit, the skin of outlaw Big Nose George Parrott. And bizarre as it is, the tale is true. But she is utterly relentless in her disdain for the people she immortalizes. Her characters are not the salt of the earth, cowboy ethic riders of the high, wide spaces of Wyoming. Rather they are the scum of the earth. Murderers, baby killers, and semi-literates fools. One character takes up environmental activism, one might think him a laudable person, given his time and place. Nope, he turns out to be a serial rapist of young girls. No one has a thought to marital fidelity. The longest-lasting and most intense love affair she posits is one between two cowboys ("Brokeback Mountain.") If the lifelong lovers are not gay, they both eventually have wives and children, they surely are queer for one another. And she makes even this tortured love seem squalid and tragic rather than heroic. She hates the people of Wyoming and I don't blame her. If her stories in any way reflect the norm-and the characters are universally sad, stupid, squalid, cheap, ignorant, selfish, and vile-I don't see how she could do anything else. But no culture can in actuality be such a monotone of bitterness, loathing, and self-contempt. It just isn't possible.

Life can be hard for rural ranchers in Wyoming. Harsh weather, stock kills, little money, distant neighbors, rodeo lifestyle, and rowdy bars, all at the edge of civilization, or a bit beyond. Each story is different, focused on one or a few unique characters and situations. Earthy, sometimes profane language and descriptions conjure vivid images in reader's minds, at times almost too vivid. You feel like an invisible observer at the scene. These stories are not a "quick read." Dense prose jams your mind with sentences so packed with information it takes time to absorb. Sometimes Proulx uses allusion or metaphor to pack a tighter story. At these times I had to stop reading to figure out exactly what happened, sort of dazed in amazement that you could say so much in so few words. If you do not like writing that contains profanity, adultery, or the occasional nauseating scene, this may not be for you. On the other hand, an air of authenticity pervades these stories. Told without hyperbole, but rather from the perspective of "hey folks, it's just Wyoming," these stories are nevertheless a bit astonishing. I enjoyed them all.

If you love feasting on succulent prose, Annie Proulx will serve your steak rare, well seasoned and tempting to the max.“You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country—indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky—provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it like a claw in the gut.”Don't be tempted to look for happy endings against a backdrop like this. The characters who populate these stories, desperate for relief from their harsh, hard-scrabble existences, have a tendency to seek profit and pleasure in delusional pursuits of both the mind and the heart. Predictably (if not to them) they leave a wreckage of lives and livelihoods in their wake – either their own, their neighbors, their friends, or their families. Sometimes the lot. But oh, so enticingly.You’ll also find Ms. Proulx’s heart-crushing tour de force, Brokeback Mountain, in this masterful lineup.

I have returned time and time again, to The Shipping News, as if to find my true North from there. Her style of writing is always to choose somewhat grim topics, & cranky characters which she always manages to make palatable for the reader. She loves the Isolato as a hero. With Wyoming as her backdrop, and cowboys as her protangonists, she has presented us with a whole different perspective of hard bitten, wind whipped, down on their luck, dust eaters. What's more iconic of the American story than the those worn to the bone by life Cowboys? But for my money, as Annie Proulx tells it, I'm always in, because she deftly weaves the spell with power; she surely can turn a phrase that will leave you eyes wide with wonder. I always feel like I've been edified after reading Proulx, because I think her work speaks to the those who survive, and endure.

A set of beautifully written, often moving, sometimes funny stories about a state (Wyoming) where you're supposed to "take care of your own damn self".

I ordered it for my daughter who dropped another subject to do English two weeks into the academic year. I asked the seller to send it asap, and that was exactly what they did. Thank you very much.

Excellent read.

As an Annie Proulx fan I enjoyed this book, though I have to say slightly less than some of her others. Iwas looking forward to Brokeback Mountain, and I liked it more than the movie

Excellent