Annie Proulx
Close Range: Wyoming Stories
In her collection titled Close Range: Wyoming Stories, Annie Proulx presents readers with eleven short stories that focus on the lives of those who call the West home. Though the stories all revolve around the stark plains of rural Wyoming, each is set apart through the unique voices and relationships of its characters. The stories are written to highlight the wild, rough and tumble ways of desperate people like cowboys and ranchers. Proulx writes honestly and unapologetically, and no topic seems to be too sensitive for her stories. This type of grit paired with the reader’s insight into the realistically crafted raw emotions of average people creates a level of sympathy and understanding, even for some of the most filthy, misguided, or misfortunate characters.
“Brokeback
Mountain”
As
one of Proulx’s more well-known short stories, “Brokeback Mountain” tells the
story of the surprising and unorthodox relationship of two Wyoming men. Ennis
Del Mar and Jack Twist, both young, inexperienced men looking to make some
money during the summer, take jobs working as sheep herders on Brokeback
Mountain. During their time together on the mountain they become close friends
and eventually form an intense sexual relationship as well. At the close of
their summer work they go their separate ways, both men going on to marry
women, have children, and work to make a living for themselves. After
reconnecting some years later, Ennis and Jack realize that they are deeply
connected and wish to continue seeing each other periodically for “fishing” and
“camping” trips, despite their dedication to their families. Eventually, their
romantic and sexual relationship becomes apparent to Ennis’s wife, Alma, who
has had enough of it and leaves with the children. Ennis now finds himself very
unhappy, especially because he knows he can never be with Jack for fear of the
backlash they might receive at the stigma of homosexuality. One day Ennis
learns that Jack has died, supposedly an accident involving a tire blowing up
in his face. Ennis travels to Jack’s parent’s home to get some kind of closure,
where he finds a shirt in Jack’s childhood room that he stole from Ennis their
summer on the mountain, proving to Ennis that their love had been real.
The
first thing that really stuck out to me about “Brokeback Mountain” was that the
story was told by an omniscient narrator. This seemed to be particularly
significant and worked really well because this allowed for Ennis and Jack’s
story to be told without any apparent bias or prejudice. That being said, the
story did seem to focus primarily on Ennis’s life. It seemed to me that
Proulx’s intention of doing this was to highlight the character that felt conflicted
and unsure of the relationship. Another feature that I thought made this a
really gripping story was the subtle, underlying layer of danger in Ennis and
Jack’s relationship. Because of the film adaptation of the story along with its
infiltration into pop culture, I can see how it would be easy to brush it off
as a silly story about gay cowboys. However, I saw the story as having a really
genuine depiction of the type of fear homosexual men had to face during this
time in the West. The story Ennis told about the gay man who was found dead in
a ditch when he was a kid, his own father making him watch as other men took a
tire iron to him, illustrated really well the severity of what would happen if
their relationship was revealed and the risk that Jack was willing to take to
be with him. The reference to this at the end of the story, when Ennis was
skeptical about the way Jack had died and feared that he had been murdered,
made the story kind of heartbreaking.
“55 Miles to the
Gas Pump”
This
short story from Proulx’s collection describes a couple who have been married
for over twelve years, Rancher Croom and his wife known only as Mrs. Croom. The
story begins with a description of Rancher Croom that depicts him as a dirty,
disheveled drunkard. The narrator then described him falling off a cliff to his
death, though whether it was an accident or a suicide is unclear because he was
impaired. The story then cuts to Rancher Croom’s wife sneaking around while
Croom is out (she has no idea that he has just fallen off a cliff), trying to
cut her way into the attic where Croom has forbidden her to go and kept locked
and guarded all these years. Mrs. Croom discovers the corpses of several women,
believing them to be Mr. Croom’s ex-lovers and noting that they appear to have
been sexually abused. The last line of the story reads: “When you live a long
way out you make your own fun.”
What
I liked so much about this story was that it was funny, but not in a lighthearted
or silly way, but in an unexpected kind of ironic way. The story itself is
pretty creepy; Proulx does a good job of creating this kind of mood by
emphasizing the flaws and unpredictable nature of the characters, which created
a lot of tension for me as a reader. What made then story even remotely
laughable was that last sentence, acting very much like a punchline. I think I
found the line to be so powerful because it addresses the real subject of the
story. Proulx isn’t actually writing about the Croom’s weirdo marriage, she’s
making a statement about geography, location, and distance. This refers back to
the title of the story. In my mind, it just means that when people are isolated
like that (as many ranches are in Wyoming and the rest of the West), people
become desperate.
“The Governors of
Wyoming”
The
story begins with two sisters, Renti and Roany, picking up an older man named
Wade Walls when he gets off of a bus. It is revealed that Walls is a friend of
Roany’s husband, Shy. The two of them have apparent business to attend to, that
is the reason for the visit, but Shy left town unexpectedly without much
explanation a few days earlier. While they all wait for the return of Shy,
Roany and Walls gets into an argument over steaks found in the home freezer. Apparently,
Walls and Shy go way back and their common goal is to disrupt the grazing
patterns of cattle at surrounding ranches. Walls believes that cows overgrazing
the land is responsible for all that is wrong in the world, especially the
ruination of the Wyoming landscape, and therefore has made it his personal
mission to stop the cows. Shy returns home, readers find out that he was
actually at a cabin with a young Native American girl he paid to have sex with
him. Eventually, the two men set out to cut some fences on neighboring ranches.
Unfortunately, ranchers who had fallen victim to this type of vandalism before were
lying in wait and Shy’s own cousin ended up shooting him as Wade Walls ran away.
Though
the story certainly had many redeemable qualities, there were some things that
I just couldn’t get past as a reader. For starters, it was really unclear to me
as to why Shy would have ever gotten involved with Wade Walls in the first
place. Shy comes from a ranching family, actually lives on a ranch, and
obviously sees no problem in eating meat. It seems that he does not stand for
the same things as Walls, he even shows reservations about disrupting his
neighbor’s ranches, so I felt that it seemed pretty forced and untrue to the
realities of the world Proulx had created that he would ever partner with
someone like Walls. Another aspect of the story that I don’t understand its
significance or Proulx’s intention in writing was the bit about Shy’s desire to
be with a young girl. I cannot see how that added to the story other than just
a means of building Shy’s character. That story seemed to have been stuck in
the middle of the bigger story, and it is very unclear to me how those things
play into each other, so I see that as a failing. I like the general story that
Proulx has set up, but there need to be clearer connections or some kind of
motif running throughout the story in order to make this a more complete story
in my mind.
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