Customer Reviews

Brokeback Mountain

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Annie Proulx, a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, packs a tremendous amount of information and incredible prose in 58 short pages. Brokeback Mountain is a heart-wrenching, gritty novella about two tough ranch hands who meet on a job, and, inexplicably, fall in love. These stoic, impecunious, high-school dropouts, who live rough lives, are desperately in need of work. Both Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist sign up with Farm and Ranch Employment and end up herding for the same sheep operation on Brokeback Mountain.

Ennis is engaged to be married when he meets Jack and does not consider himself queer. Neither does Jack. The two men embark on an intimacy that they feel is their own business, as long as it isn't hurting anybody else. It's just sex between two, lonely, horny, guys and it means nothing. When the summer is over and they part, Ennis feels horrible about leaving Jack. If, what they had together meant nothing, then why can't Ennis shake the bad feeling separation brings?

Ennis and Jack lose track of each other for four years and are reunited as married men with children. The love affair picks up where it left off during that summer on Brokeback Mountain. They share a forbidden love, sweeter than each man has with his wife, but, actions against conventional relationships could prove to be deadly. Cowboys, even tough ones, who admitted to being gay, were often tortured and murdered. Jack wants to have a life with Ennis and start up a ranch with him. Ennis is neither ready nor willing to give up his heterosexual lifestyle, even if he does love Jack

The detail with which Proulx describes the setting puts the reader in the mountains of Wyoming, surrounded by meadows, sheep, coyotes, and the expansive sky. You can smell the horses, campfire, beer, and cigarettes as Ennis and Jack sit around at night trading stories and getting to know each other. You can feel the exhaustion of the back-breaking work of tending sheep. Proulx delights the reader with accounts of every feeling, scent, and action. The dialect is precise and the text is never tedious or boring; it simply enriches the story as vitamins enrich food. With narration like this, the reader knows exactly what is going on and is transported into every nuance of the story.

Annie Proulx is in the same class as John Steinbeck and Mark Twain, in my humble opinion. I cannot stress enough how well written this book is, or what a gut wrenching story it is but I can stress how highly I recommend reading this book. My only complaint is that it is too short. Do not miss reading Brokeback Mountain. Soon, it will be made into a major motion picture, which I hope will be true to the book.
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In 1963 Jack Twist, with buckteeth "not pronounced enough to let him eat popcorn out of the neck of a jug, but noticeable," and Ennis del Mar, "scruffy and a little cave-chested," herd sheep for the summer on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming country. Both men are under twenty, both high school dropouts, both "rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life." These men fall hopelessly in love that summer and their lives are forever changed. Pulitzer prize winning author Annie Proulx in language as understated as Dante's ("that day they read no further") describes their first coupling: "in a little while they deepened their intimacy considerably."

Their dilemma, which provides the central conflict of this perfect story, is whether to leave wives and children and live together in fictional Wyoming-- forty years before the true life tragedy of Matthew Shepherd-- or to seek each other out in secret when they have the time over the passing years. They are well aware of the inherent danger of expressing their love before the world. Ennis: "We do that in the wrong place we'll be dead. There's no reins on this one. It scares the p--- out of me." Jack: "It don't happen in Wyomin [sic] and if it does I don't know what they do, maybe go to Denver. . . come on, Ennis, you just shot my airplane out a the sky -- give me somethin a go on."

I have read this story three times now and with each new reading pick up nuances I missed previously. Ms. Proulx has created here two characters who will tear your heart out; you remember them long after you finish reading. Ms. Proulx is quite a marvelous story-teller, writing about the redeeming power of love and the comfort of memory. Her language is as tough and beautiful as the Wyoming country. Near the end of her story, there is a poignant scene where Ennis finds his old shirt that Jack had stolen hanging inside one of Jack's own: "He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands."

This story deserves more than five stars.

Brokeback mountain is a sparsely worded book. Poulx wastes no words, choosing to tell this a story the way her characters would want it told. It is what a romance should be--the tale of a love between two people that is so overwhelming that no matter what rules and laws and societal mores exist to destroy that love the lovers cannot do anything but love another. Hopelessly, desperately, no matter what the consequences, her cowboys love one another.

The great tragedy of her story is not in a murder or a revolution or any other deus ex machina that Hardy would've relied upon, but in the simple seperation and denial of love between two men because the structure of the world these men live in. And yet it is a greater tragedy than any the Brontes ever dreamed up.

I was not expecting the sudden onslaught of tears that assaulted me when I finished this thin little book, and set it down. I did not know until after I was finished reading how deeply this story had affected me. I did not treasure the words or the times spent between the two lovers as I should have (which is perhaps the way it should be) until I was finished with the book and found myself weeping over two men who should have been the lucky ones to find great love in one another.

A story of love in a place where it is unexpected and how two people can't even name the feeling they have for each other because of the consequences and their own insecurities. The main characters are not written as angels by any means. They're exposed with their faults and failings. What makes the book so haunting is how even when they were together away from their wives they were so emotionally afraid of who they were that they can't come to terms with their identities as evidenced toward the end of the story. Their love is immature but strong which is a testament to the human spirit being able to love even when it has no guideposts. I think Ennis sums it up best - "I been lookin' at people on the street. This happen a other people? What the hell do they do?" Although the issues in the book are much less an issue nowadays, the time and place make for a good read. The anthology stories in Close Range of which this is included are excellent as well. All in all, a tragic story of unfullfilled dreams and only memories of a place called Brokeback. Yes, I even broke a tear at the end which is something for me.
PS: There are only two places where the story gets into "mature subject matter" if you know what I mean. It's very brief and doesn't take away from the story for the straight fellas out there. And yes Virginia, there are gay cowboys, know one in Central TX myself. :-)

I read Brokeback Mountain recently won 2 international film festivals. I checked out the web and found the preview of Ang Lee's film...the images, music, and words drove me to find the source material and so I went last night to the local bookstore and found Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx.

Flipping to the last story in the collection, I started reading Brokeback Mountain while leaning against the shelves in the store and once again I was wading through the complex prose, imagery and metaphor of Proulx...I tried, really I did, to get through The Shipping News but I just finally, exhausted, gave in.

Yet, I read on through the first few pages of this surprisingly short short story (they made a movie around 30 pages? was my first thought) and then skimmed a little and got the gist of the story and put it back on the shelf and went home.

Then I started thinking about what I had read and I could not get it out of my mind all night.

On the way to the airport today, I ran back to the bookstore and bought Close Range and reread Brokeback Mountain...and reread it and then went over certain passages, then reread it again. I didn't put it down through two flights (and an extended delay!).

I don't know whether to praise Proulx or curse her...she makes me work too hard as a reader! I feel some of her passages are riddles...she is teasing us to see if we can figure out what she means. The lyric beauty of the text fills my mind with images based on what I interpret but did I interpret the right thing? Did I interpret what I was intended to interpret? Did I see in her words what Proulx saw when she wrote them? Is there such a thing as "face value" when reading this story?

Maybe it is just a story about two lonely cowboys who fall in love amidst the beauty of Wyoming. I hope not.

Perhaps Proulx's greatest gift as a writer is she crafts and weaves words and images so we can each walk away with our own version of Brokeback Mountain and that is all each of us can hope to gain in reading it. As I read Proulx's words, I can smell the scent of pine in the autumn wind, see the aspen's golden hues shimmering in the lengthening shadows, feel the chill of approaching winter, and am achingly moved by the longing, passion, and pain of the two main characters.

Ennis and Jack stand for all of us...we each have our own Brokeback Mountain where dreams and hopes are built, passions are explored, secrets are hidden, and truths are humbling, overwhelming and, at times, elusive in their revelation.

Thank you Annie...you gave me much to think and reflect on.

Since picking up this book last week, I have felt absolutely consumed by the story, the characters, and the tragedy with which they were faced. Both characters loved one another so deeply, yet they failed to say so many crucial things to one another. Annie Proulx is an amazingly gifted talent who knows how to, in so few words, illustrate the differences in the needs of her characters. The following excerpt depicts what I am getting at perfectly:
"What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be."

The most complex and painful challenge for both men was perhaps the lack of true expression. Ennis never really let Jack know how much he longed for, and really did love him. Ennis seems to have had a harder time accepting the fact that he is in love with a man. Jack on the other hand is so willing to drop all he has, to sacrifice and lose everything (even his life) to be with Ennis. They both love each other beyond all logic. Yet they never really seem to say what needs saying, and without even trying - they break each other's hearts. Ennis was never willing to risk it all for a relationship that scared him to death. Jack felt driven to feed sexual appetites abroad and take the few precious moments a year that Ennis would give him. This broke my heart! How many of us struggle with the very same communication issues, but never really fix what needs healing?
This story definately deserves more than 5 stars!

This is a lovely, touching, remarkable short story on a very taboo subject. It's a reminder to us all that many seek 'balance in LOVE'. It's about two rough & tough cowboys who find themselves alone one starry night. They move on with their lives but can never lose thought of the hold they have for one another. The story was originially written by Annie Proulx as a magazine article in THE NEW YORKER in Oct. 1997. I couldn't help but think of Matthew Shepard, the gay hate crime victim, knowing that the author lives in Wyoming herself. I read an article that Ang Lee had signed to do a feature film on this story; whereby, I searched Amazon & found the short paperback available in England somewhere. I was happy to read it during a flight to Napa Valley, CA. Now I've learned via movies.com that the lead characters will be played by actors Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger (which should make for some major 'steamy' scenes as well as newfound FANS for them).

Great story. A bit hard for non-Americans to understand at first because the dialogue that is used emulates the accents of US southerners. But it doesnt take long before you're immersed in its portrayel of a somewhat realistic fictional story. Realistic in that it would not surprise me if occurances such of that in the story have actually happened countless times in the world today. Annie Proulx clearly knows where the characters come from, and how each of their attitudes should be conveyed to the reader.
It took me about half an hour to read, so it is by no means an epic. However I did read it because I had heard it was going to become a film, made by the director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Ang Lee. A book like this can easily be transformed to a beautiful engrossing film, lets hope all goes well.
For those that dont know the basic premise, it revolves around 2 cowboys who fall in love with each other on a mountain while herding sheep. They deny they're 'queer' even during their rough love making. Each goes on to marry and develop other lives - but they never forget each other. The story spans 25 years in less than 60 pages.

....

Proulx's use of dialect is stunning. Her feel of time and place also was excellent. I wish it had been longer. I wonder if younger gay readers would understand the depth of the closet that these two men inhabited.

I'd heard about this story for a long time, and when I finally did read it, I was amazed. Like all gifted writers, Proulx creates a distinct language for this story, full of slang, twang, and euphemisms, which in and of itself is as exciting as the tragic love story. Over twenty years are covered in this tale, and the passage of time starts to pull at you, as you realize just how infrequently the two of them get to see each other. The story is constructed to illustrate the impossibility of some same-sex relationships, and in that, I think Proulx has done a better job than many gay writers. Imagining Heath Ledger as Enis didn't hurt, either.