Customer Reviews

That Old Ace In The Hole

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Arliss Howard, who directed and starred in "Big Bad Love" (2002), gives a deft and able reading to Annie Proulx's latest tale set in the great southwest, the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. Howard's take on the slight twang and pacing of voices native to this part of the world is on target.

A Pulitzer Prize winner for "The Shipping News," novelist Proulx can paint a character inside and out with the best of them. Such is the case with our narrator, Bob Dollar, whose parents dropped him on a Colorado doorstep when he was 8-years-old. He grows into manhood a bit unfocused and unchallenged.

Bob does land a paying job with Global Pork Rind, a company that dispatches him to the hinterlands in search of large sections of land, ranches, that can be bought by Global Pork and converted to hog farms. He is cautioned that most take a dim view of hog raisers for neighbors so he must be very circumspect in looking around.

He comes upon Woolybucket, Texas (don't you love that name? Welcome to Woolybucket! But, I digress. No five, four, three, two or even one star motels there, so he rents a dilapidated bunkhouse from a widow, LaVon Fronk, and hires out to Cy Frease, proud proprietor of the Old Dog Café.

There's a lot to be learned for Bob - beyond the historical documents that LaVon has stashed in her house. The locals aren't dweebs or ineffectuals; they're a proud lot who want to hold on to their land no matter what.

Does Bob get their land or does their land get to Bob? Listen to this tale rich in portraits of working class America and see.

- Gail Cooke

Full of zip and twinkle, "That Old Ace in the Hole" marks the return of the Annie Proulx readers relish as opposed to the depressing presenter of "Accordion Crimes" and "Postcards." In this novel, she focuses her sights on the Texas Panhandle, a place of constantly-alarming weather, frequently-alarming characters, and a strange beauty. Young Bob Dollar has the first job is his career, scouting land for a Global Pork Rind hog operation. He is advised to look for god-forsaken places where elderly residents are longing to sell up and move out and whose offspring would not return to the area even if someone held a gun to their heads. But because of possible inexplicable opposition to placing a hog operation in the comminuty, Bob must scout surreptitiously. Wind-blasted, lightening-stricken Woolybucket, Texas, would seem to be the perfect find, but one where Bob's cover story of scouting property for a development of luxury homes has the locals scratching their heads.

But while they're scratching, they're talking, spinning tales of generations of quirky Woolybucketites that have Bob enthralled. Abandoned by his parents at his Uncle Tam's thrift shop in Denver at the age of eight, Bob does not have many generations to look back on. For that reason he must make this job work. He must find the perfect spot for a Global Pork plant.

Reading Annie Proulx, you almost feel as if you're discovering the English language all over again. Uncle Tam's roommate Bromo Redpoll, has "glary eyes and a rubbery mug" and a strange chest. There are people named Rilla Nooncaster and Freda Beautyrooms. You have entered strange territory here, and it is worth while to take it slowly and enjoy the sights.

This is a comic novel and as such does not have the depth or emotional resonance of "The Shipping News." "Old Ace" is filled with great stories, but it will not grab you by the heartstrings and give your world a twirl.

'All mills catch the wind', is the translation of the Dutch motto of Annie Proulx latest novel, and as a Dutchman, and a devoted reader of her books, I couldn't resist buying it.
To my surprise, reviews of this book tend to be not so positive. To me, admittedly it's not as great as The Shipping News, but how could one improve on that novel? But it's a great book, vintage Annie Proulx.
I read it as a kaleidoscope of life and people and stories from the Texas panhandle, like Postcards was a kaleidoscope of large parts of the USA.
So, its scope may be smaller than Postcards, its characters are unforgettable, real, and very very funny. As a Dutchman I was struck by Habakuk van Melkebeek, the Dutchman in the book, who speaks nearly correct Dutch, with just a few spelling mistakes in the writing, a rare thing when Dutchmen are put on the stage in an American novel. He clearly is a Netherlands character, but also fully adapted to panhandle life.
Over the years I have traveled many parts of the US and I've grown to love it and the people that I've met. This book makes me look forward to visiting the panhandle, although ... I'll make sure to be low profile. Strangers are few and conspicuous over there, and appear not to be liked that much all of the time.

With this novel, Annie Proulx solidifies herself as one of America's greatest living literary treasures. This, I assure you, is not hyperbole. Ms. Proulx has an uncanny gift for twisting and shaping language into poetic prose that's as sharp and pointed as the barbed-wire fences she pays homage to in this remarkably satisfying novel. Some reviewers have complained of Ms. Proulx creating unnecessary confusion by introducing too many characters with too many quirks. I disagree: Ms. Proulx's characters are well realized and instantly memorable. Their lives interconect in a plausible, natural progression; nothing here feels forced. In fact, I would compare Ms. Proulx's densely populated novels to those of William Faulkner, another gifted author who eschewed perpetrating stereotypes in favor of creating rich, absorbing characters devoid of affectation. Her style of writing, however, is pure Hemmingway - direct, masculine, and concise. There are a few miscues here - hence the 4-star rating - but overall "That Old Ace in the Hole" is an intoxicating read that rewards patient readers looking for an entertaining yet thought-provoking story. A true gem.

It's not fair, of course --- a writer has to move on. Annie Proulx cannot be expected to settle permanently into the sad and harshly beautiful Newfoundland coast that served as both setting and character for her masterpiece, THE SHIPPING NEWS.

And yet, THAT OLD ACE IN THE HOLE, Proulx's valentine to the quirky stalwarts of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, can't help but disappoint in part for falling so far short of her award-winning 1993 novel. The parallels between the two books scream for comparison. Both center on good-hearted but ineffectual men stumbling toward something unpromising in the distance that turns out to be a life. Both books celebrate the dignity and eccentricity of a rural area and the people who inhabit it. In both, place trumps plot by an Oklahoma mile.

Unfortunately, the newer novel lacks both the compelling protagonist and the quietly powerful narrative arc of the older book.

THAT OLD ACE IN THE HOLE begins as Bob Dollar, a 25-year-old junior college graduate from Denver who is unsure of his career ambitions, takes a job scouting land in the panhandles for Global Pork Rind. Pork farming, we learn early and are constantly reminded, is nasty business --- filling the air for miles with noxious fumes, providing few jobs and forcing the pigs to live out their short lives in a way that offends even people who know how it feels to kill their own supper.

Global Pork Rind makes too clear a villain to provide any moral tension. The reader never gets the pleasure of questioning, even for a moment, whose side to take.

The story stretches out like a long car ride through the dusty Southwest. Bob, who follows orders from his employer by lying about his affiliation, ingratiates himself to the good people of Woolybucket, Texas. They are a predictably colorful group --- insular and set in their ways, but also admirably tenacious and willing to welcome Bob into their community once he scales their initial suspicions.

As always, Proulx displays an uncanny ear for dialect and an eye for local custom. The rhythms and idiosyncrasies of Woolybucket feel real.

Bob is a guileless sort, uneasy with the lying and unenthusiastic about his mission. It's no surprise when he fails to score any land for his company. The only real surprise is that he sticks with the job as long as he does. And that's the problem with Bob --- he can't seem to take action. He remains, even at the end, propelled more by happenstance than purpose.

Proulx hasn't lost her voice. THAT OLD ACE IN THE HOLE bursts with the eloquent descriptions of the natural world that are her trademark.

"It was all flat expanse and wide sky. Two coyotes looking for afterbirths trotted through a pasture to the east, moving through fluid grass, the sun backlighting their fur in such a way that they appeared to have silver linings. Irrigated circles of winter wheat, dotted with stocker calves, grew on land as level as a runway. In other fields, tractors lashed tails of dust."

It feels almost petulant to criticize a book that offers images as fresh and apt as this: "In the fallen windmills and collapsed outbuildings he saw the country's fractured past scattered about like pencils on the desk of a draughtsman who has gone to lunch."

But language alone, no matter how pleasing it may be, is not enough. Readers slogging through hot, languid Texas days with Bob Dollar are likely to long for a bracing gust of Newfoundland cold.

--- Reviewed by Karen Jenkins Holt

Proulx's gift of character invention is on display again in this bright, warm-hearted novel about an awkward misfit making his way among the old kooks and rawhide toughmen of the Texas Panhandle. The panorama of scenery, folkways and crusty dialogue pleases thoroughly. If all that is the flicking flame of "Ace," the historical background Proulx provides is the furnace of embers that gives off the real heat. She writes fantastically about regional origins and eccentricities. On a down note, the plot is by and large flimsy - a clockwork series of events that ultimately feels very canned.

Bob Dollar is pretty much a loser, but he's not a crook. He finds himself hired as a scout by Global Pork Rind, and his job is to look for farms that the company can swindle the owners out of in order to put in hog farms. He doesn't really want to do it and manages to stall his employers for pretty much the entire book, meanwhile endearing himself to most of the colorful locals and becoming rather fond of them himself.
It's all set in small towns in the Texas Panhandle, which, if Proulx is to be even half-believed, is populated by people with odd names (LaVon Grace Fronk, Jerky Baum, Habakuk van Melkebeek and Freda Beautyrooms, for starters) who live in towns with names with names like Wooleybucket. Keeping pace with Bob Dollars growing love for the harsh and unforgiving region, readers find themselves really caring about these tough characters. Dollar's house of cards comes tumbling down at the end, but he ends up somehow floating to the top of the deck and, while we don't see prosperity in his future, we do see a kind of peace.
Annie Proulx has another winner here.

My step mom is from the panhandle in Texas, and I grew up travelling across that God-forsaken country from Southern California and back again; experiencing grit-filled wind storms, freak snow, termites that brought the house down, pigeon shoots off the back of a tractor hoe, cotton bale jumping, learning how to drive on some ol' Texan back road into and out of ditches, Elvis Xmas songs, the best damned biscuits and gravy you EVER had, and more relatives with names like Proulx invented for this novel than you'd care to believe.
This book brought it all back to me, fresh and oil stained to its' very roots. The characters are wonderfully kooky (and thus in my mind's eye, very realistic- you just can't make people up like the ones who live in Texas!), and the story unfolds as only a true Proulx does: it meanders and crosses over story line to story line, until at the very end, you are happy to leave these folks to their fictional lives, knowing they'll be just fine, ma'am...
Thanks again for some more fine reading, and for capturing so well the true Panhandle sprit. I look forward to whatever comes next!

Blah.
Proulx's obviously a research hound. But in this book her facts and histories own the day. Same of course is true with all her work, but here it is not seamless, they don't complement. It's like she's searching for a story to fit all she learned hanging out in the panhandle. She integrates the two better in her equally (fictionalized) fact-dense Accordian Crimes. If she weren't the prose master she is, I wouldn't have stuck with this one. Much of sub-plots are predictable: Tam's jewlery motherlode. Or simply meaningless: Orlando passing through Wooleybucket -- is marketing guy for fart records truly a missed opportunity? Then there are the Why Bothers?: Bob almost driving off a cliff. And the Unanswereds: Bob never did pick up Lavon's son from jail; what of the animosity there? Just like the storm that briefly threatens the Barwire Festival at the end, the book whips up into a frenzy of an ending that simply dissipates and it's over, with a final nod to her source material. The Novel here never finds its soul.

Proulx is an exceptional writer, prose writer, crafter of words, whatever. If you don't know them, Postcards is exceptional beyond Shipping News. Her short stories are masterfully crafted without being "overburdened" by the research that is so obviously important to her work. Maybe she should keep it short, like the vingettes of Postcards. Or check back into another tone of voice like Accordian Crimes, that had a much darker edge compared to all her other work.

I adore every one of Annie Proulx's works of fiction. Except this one. It is little more than a series of short anecdotes, almost none of which rises to the level of any of her previous writing. The main character, whose sole reason for existence in the book is to drive around and listen to people talking, is as flat and dry as the Texas panhandle she writes about. The storyline of his inner conflict about his job and the issue of pig farms never really gets into second gear. This would be okay if it was written with the same unique and artful use of language that is the trademark of Proulx's writing. But it isn't. After the striking, monumental beauty and passion of her Close Range stories, it doesn't seem like the same author.