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.
