Close Range: Wyoming Stories I (1999) By Annie Proulx

 

Annie Proulx is a Pulitzer Prize winning author with a large body of work including the blockbuster novels The Shipping News (1993) and the epic Barkskins (2016). She has also penned multiple short stories, famously including Brokeback Mountain (2005), which was made into a major Hollywood movie directed by Ang Lee.

Brokeback Mountain, at 35-pages, is the concluding story in Close Range: Wyoming Stories I, a collection of eleven short stories with the common denominator of ranch life in the western state where people are few, but cattle are thousands. While the state is beautiful, it has historically presented a challenging life for its residents, both cowboys and others. Close Range tells some of those stories.

One of these is A Lonely Coast, a short story about the trials and tribulations, mostly trials, of three Wyoming women. “All three women had been married, rough marriages full of fighting and black eyes and sobbing imprecations, all of them knew the trouble that came with drinking men and hair-trigger tempers.” The only available men were ranch-hands mostly, guys who live a solitary life but once a week will gather around the Buckle, the local bar, and drink themselves under the table. “Their” women were not much better.

A key theme in these one-saloon crossroads is going to a bigger town where the action was really no different. “That was the thing, they’d start out at the Buckle then drive down to Casper, five or six of them, a hundred and thirty miles, sit in some other bar probably not much different than the Buckle, drink until they were wrecked.” 

It was at this point that a haunting song came to my mind. It was composed by David Broza a folksinger born in Israel, raised in Spain, and widely traveled in the Americas. I have seen him perform at the Chicago Winery and at the 150 year anniversary celebration of the Oak Park Temple B'nai Abraham Zion. He records in Hebrew, Spanish, and English. He at one point in his travels ventured to Wyoming, and wrote a song titled Night in Wyoming. 

Night in Wyoming - David Broza

Other stories in Close Range include: The Bunchgrass Edge of the World, People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water, 55 Miles to the Gas Pump, and seven other stories.

It still amazes me that Brokeback Mountain in its original form was a 35-page short story. Director Ang Lee with an assist from author Annie Proulx, took the story and turned into a breakthrough Hollywood movie starring two major actors, Heath Ledger and Jake Gillenhaal, playing the lead roles of two gay ranch hands. Its cultural significance cannot be denied. While issues it addressed have improved, they have not gone away, and even today are under direct political threat.

While writing this I watched the movie trailer for Brokeback Mountain 2. The tag line is "there are places we can't return."  It should be "there are movies we can't sequel." I will see it but was not even remotely impressed by the trailer.

Recommendation: Anything by Annie Proulx is worth reading.

The Canterville Ghost and Other Stories (1887) By Oscar Wilde, collection published by Alma Classic 2016

 

Recently I picked up a collection of short stories written by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) in 1887. They are eclectic in nature, and quite interesting in their different literary styles. The title story is The Canterville Ghost, so categorized as a “hylo-idealistic romance,” a term with which I was unfamiliar. It is a “philosophical position that reality exists by virtue of our belief in it” – perfect for ghost stories. In the short story an American professor and his family move to the English countryside and rent a manor house, which it turns out is haunted. It is an enjoyable story, considered a young adult classic, and has been made into a movie multiple times, I just watched the 1996 version with Patrick Stewart playing the ghost -- quite fun.

The closing story in the collection was a complete surprise, Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime. It is sort-of a murder mystery, with a built-in spoof of the upper classes. In the story there are plenty of available clues. One could best describe the plot summary as reverse Sherlock Holmes, instead of trying to solve a murder, Lord Arthur is diligently trying to devise a murder he can get away with. One of the characters, a supplier of dynamite, is an underground Russian anarchist – who brought to my mind The Secret Agent written by Joseph Conrad. I checked on this briefly, while Wilde who died young, is contemporary with both Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) and Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness), though nothing I have come across connects them.

The other two stories in the collection are The Sphinx without a Secret, and The Model Millionaire, both of which are more character studies than stories.

Recommendation: Light, fun reads.

Boston Adventure (1943) By Jean Stafford

 

Jean Stafford was an accomplished short story writer when she hit it big at age 29 with her first novel: Boston Adventure. It was a best seller.

The book tells the story of a young woman named Sonie. Her father, Hermann Marburg was an educated German immigrant who like many tens of thousands of Germans came to America in search of opportunity in the years after the first World War. He met Shura, Sonie’s mother on the ship on the way over. She was a Russian immigrant, fleeing the chaos of post-revolution Russia. She was poor and minimally educated and spoke not a word of English, and only a small amount of German.

Sonie’s father tried to practice his trade as a skilled cobbler but rapidly discovered no one who lived in their immigrant community of Chichester near Boston could afford his services. Her mother took a job as a housekeeper at the Hotel Barstow, a summer retreat for Boston’s rich. In large part the financial disaster of their situation led to the rapid failure of the marriage. The father disillusioned by America's often mistreatment of immigrants became an alcoholic and abandoned the family. The mother slowly sunk into mental illness.

Since the mother was often too ill to go to work, Sonie, still a child, would cover her shift at the Hotel. There she met Miss Pride, a wealthy widow who went by her given name. She pitied Sonie and took into her home and under her puritan stern yet benevolent wings after Sonie’s mother was institutionalized. Also still living in Miss Pride's home was Miss Hopestill Mather, her strong-minded, almost bohemian daughter who she is trying to marry off to a young, well-educated doctor from “a good family,” named Philip McAllister. Dr. McAllister’s father is an Episcopal Reverend, and while Miss Pride dismissed him as “almost Catholic” conceded that he was, at least, protestant.

Hopestill gently teases McAllister, primarily to keep her mother happy. However, she wants nothing to do with him beyond friendship, that is until she becomes pregnant, father unknown. The doctor agrees to marry her to salvage everyone’s reputation even though he had been feigning interest in Sonie. All of which comes to a predictable ending (with one exception, I and I suspect a great many other readers expected Sonie’s alcoholic father to return to the story, he does not).

The author’s depiction of Boston’s elite is both comic and brutal. Having “lost” their city to Irish Catholic immigrants, they were determined to not allow a new wave of immigrants into their social circles.

Recommendation: Okay, I guess. The first part covering the new immigrants in Chichester is interesting. The second part, after Sonie moves to Beacon Hill in Boston, is at times fun, at other times clearly contrived situations. I found myself not caring about any of the main characters, including Sonie.

The Magic Mountain (1924, German) By Thomas Mann; (English translation 1995 By John Woods)

 

The plot of The Magic Mountain was interesting, the writing was excellent, but the reading was slow, it took me three weeks to make my way through this novel. Written by Thomas Mann the novel covers the several years before the outbreak of World War I. It was first published in German in 1924, I read the English translation by John E. Woods published in 1995.

Mann’s earlier work included Death in Venice which dealt with a cholera outbreak, and won him commercial success and literary praise. The Magic Mountain, with a plot that deals with tuberculosis (TB), is considered by many to be his masterwork.

The title refers to the International Berghof Sanatorium, a tuberculosis treatment facility in the Alps of Switzerland. In an era of limited medical ability to address TB, the Berghof is a resort-like facility where wealthy, mostly highly educated Europeans go to for a “rest cure,” a regimented program of a lavish diet, on-site medical assistance, and fresh, cold mountain air thought to provide the only hope for a cure, of which there were few.

The novel begins in Hamburg (normally referred to as the “flatlands”) when Hans Castorp, who has just finished engineering school is set to begin an internship at the family’s ship-building firm. Before the internship begins he decides to visit his cousin Joachim Ziemssen who is a patient at the Berghof for several weeks. Joachim has arranged for his cousin to stay in the room next to his. When he arrives, he quickly learns to adjust to the Berghof routine. That routine includes mandatory community meals with fellow patients, as well as regular “rest cures” and sleeping on the balconies where one can breath in the mountain air.

These community meals are where the sanatorium’s other patients and medical staff are introduced, and there are many. Some will become important characters in the story. One is Herr Lodovico Settenbrini, an Italian man who spouts humanist philosophy throughout the book; late in the novel we will discover that Settenbrini is a high-ranking Mason. Another is Herr Naphta, a friend and neighbor of Settenbrini, who while ethnically Jewish was raised by the Jesuits and was on the verge of joining the order when he was diagnosed with TB and sent to the Berghof.

There is an attempt at a love story in the novel. One of the patients is a French speaking woman named Clavidia Chauchat. She is married to a Russian government administrator stationed in a province “beyond the Caucasus.” Hans is head over heels in love with her but only tells her so the night before she departs the Berghof to visit her husband. She returns to the Berghof several months later after spending much of her time in Spain. She returns as the “traveling companion” of an extraordinarily rich Belgian man named Mynbeer Peeperkorn.

The conversations between the cousins and Settenbrini and Naphta are why this book is a slow read. Presented as digressions from the main plot, these discussions ranged from theology, philosophy, politics, the secrets of the Knights Templar, the nation-state chaos of pre-war Europe and other topics. Note, while I said these endless discussions were a slow read, they were not uninteresting, quite the opposite. They are great essays tied together, loosely, by the storyline. Readers should not skip over them. 

One philosophical discussion that repeats throughout the novel is on “time” and how time is situational, particularly when the people having the discussion have been diagnosed with what then was an incurable disease.

Recommendation: Excellent book, but you will need to devote time and patience to do it justice.

Kim (1901) By Rudyard Kipling

 

Few novels have been reviewed as many times as Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. Most reviews relate the story as another British Raj story, which it is, but it is also a fascinating essay on comparative religion, an analysis managed by most as a “group of people” comparison, whereas Kipling’s characters bring this down to an individual level.

It is set in India when it was a colony, crown jewel of the British Empire (1858 – 1947). English-speaking countries normally refer to this as the British Raj. Phrased differently it was a British military occupation preceded by an oligarchy known to history as the East India Company (1600-1878). The book tells the story of an attempt by operatives of the Russian Empire to sew and advantage from unrest in the country, a strategy that remained in effect well into the twentieth century and included two wars in neighboring Afghanistan.

The novel centers on three main characters: 

Kim(ball) O’Hara, the son of a soldier from an Irish regiment known as the Mavericks that marches under the banner of a Red Bull. Kim is an orphan, his mother died at birth and his father was killed in battle. He is a runaway who has the kind of street smarts that would impress Tom Sawyer. He is known by everyone on the street. Kim has no religion, but his father was clearly Catholic.

The Holy Man, a.k.a. The Man in the Red Hat, an elderly Buddhist Lama from Tibet who has come to India in search of The River of the Arrow, a mythical “cleansing” waterway that washes away one’s sins. He is lost without a guide. Kim will assume that role becoming the Holy Man’s “chela” personal assistant/disciple.

Mahbub Ali, a Mohammedan, is a horse trader. While he deals with everyone, he is the eyes and ears of the Raj. Early on he will retain Kim to run messages for him. Eventually being a friend and mentor to the lad.

The overwhelming majority of the other people in the novel are Hindus with their hundreds of gods, a large contingent a Sikhs and many others from multiple religions including what we would today refer to as pagan. To overstate it, they co-exist with each other.

Because the novel borrows from each of these religions, nationalities, and cultures, it becomes overwhelmingly confusing at times. The value of Kim is that this multi-cultural state is natural to him. He judges none as a group. Throughout the novel Kim is referred to as “Friend of the World.”

And of course, in 1950 a movie was made based on the novel. It makes little attempt to develop the religious aspects of the book but otherwise does a decent job of covering it as an episode of the British Raj, though makes a minor change to the ending. The movie stars Dean Stockwell as Kim, and Errol Flynn as Mahbub Ali.

Recommendation:  Yes, including the movie.

Captains Courageous (1897) By Rudyard Kipling

 

Without really planning this, I have just read another “sea novel,” this time Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling written in 1897. A few weeks ago, I did a book blog on SeaWolf by Jack London written seven years later in 1904. Reading these two books basically back-to-back was accidentally informative; they have the same underlying plot: a young man from a wealthy background falls off ship and is rescued by a passing ship where instead of returning him to land, the ship’s captain “forces” him into servitude onboard.

In the plot summary, each of the young men must learn how to work on a masted sail merchant ship on the high seas; hunting seals in the North Pacific in Sea Wolf, or catching cod in the North Atlantic in Captains Courageous. The big difference between the two stories is the character of the ship’s captain. He’s an authoritarian monster in Sea Wolf, while in Captains Courageous, although by all means a stern sailor, he is kind of benevolent. Comparing the leadership qualities of the captains is quite a contrast.

In Captains Courageous the young man’s name is Harvey.  He is mentored in sailing first by a crew member named Manuel, and eventually by the Captain. He makes friends with the only other boy on board his age, who happens to be the Captain’s son. A spoiled brat when he is first rescued he develops into a hard-working sailor by the time they finish the cod catch season and head to port where he contacts his parents who have written him off as dead. They are stunned not only by his survival, but also by his new level of maturity.

The 1937 movie version had an all-star cast for its time. Lionel Barrymore plays the Captain, with Spencer Tracy as Manuel. The boys are played by two of the biggest child stars ever: Freddie Bartholomew as Harvey, and Mickey Rooney as the Captain’s son.

Recommendation:  Yes, book and movie.  Light reading.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941) By James Agee; Photography By Walker Evans

 

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was not originally meant to be a book. It was a feature story assignment by Fortune Magazine to journalist James Agee and photographer Walker Evans. They were sent to rural Alabama during what elsewhere were the final years of the depression era. They were to record the plight of sharecroppers. They so accurately documented the daily reality of these poorest of Americans that the magazine declined to use their stories fearing subscribers to Fortune would not want to read about it. When Agree finally received permission to take the stories to other publishers he met with little success, finally getting it printed in book format, and then it was a commercial failure. It was not until years later the literary world began to recognize its value.

Agee and Evans spent an entire summer visiting and interviewing three different families, often staying at their homes, meeting their extended families, neighbors, ministers. It was a difficult assignment because they had to win the trust of the people whose privacy was being invaded and put on display for the general public, making them fodder for a magazine’s commercial use. Arguing their stories needed to be told was understandably met with skepticism by people whose lives and backbreaking labors had been used repeatedly by landowners and others to make a buck, while they got table scraps – the very root of sharecropping (tenant farming), and only one step above serfdom.

Since the project was imagined as a series of stand-alone articles on each family, putting it in book form was somewhat difficult. In its final form the book is comprised of three family profiles with connecting essays, most of which are philosophical in nature and occasionally make no direct reference to the families. The book’s introduction does a lousy job of preparing the reader for this format. The Library of America publication of the book, which is what I read, includes sixty-four pages of remarkable black & white photography by Walker Evans.

This project and book took place early in the writing career of Agee. He went on to do extensive assignment magazine reporting including coverage of World War II, and earned a reputation as a book, arts, and film critic. Later he became a script writer in Hollywood with his most famous work being on The African Queen (Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn), and the bone-chilling drama The Night of the Hunter (Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters).

Agee is known for compound sentences, wonderfully descriptive, but one random sample from the book contains 365 words, ten colons and twenty-seven commas before breaking to a new paragraph, not with a period, but with another colon.

Recommendation:  For casual readers I would not recommend this. The problem is not his writing, which while complex is superb; the problem is the lack of structure in the story.