Raw, intense and heartbreaking.

This was the perfect book in the "to short" categorie! Sure it did packed a punch and in the short amount of pages it's was both romantic and heart wrenching. But my ebook was 60 pages and I was afraid I had picked up an abridged version but after looking at goodreads and seen that it's just 55 pages long makes me think otherwise. A very good short story/book but I wanted so much of the characters and writing. I might need to watch the movie instead but I'm a terrible movie watcher. Books are more my thing of entertainment

I enjoyed reading the short story two weeks ago and finally had the opportunity to see the movie. I was concerned about the film staying true to the short story in terms of characterization and atmosphere. The reading was enjoyable; I didn’t want to sour the memory of it by an unfulfilling movie. I was pleasantly surprised. Director Ang Lee and screen writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana did a brilliant job of interpreting and synchronizing the original text into a script. I honestly feel that I got a better understanding of the story by watching the film because so much is expressed visually—panoramic, mountainous and remote natural setting, and in human eye contact and body language; this is especially true with the intense, wistful facial expressions of actor Heath Ledger playing Ennis. He really gave a terrific performance.

In text and film, the isolated mountainous backdrop beautifully corresponds with the men’s tortured relationship. A natural sense of freedom emanates in the presence of the mountain setting and in the presence of one another, yet both are limited as each may not exist in the wider world, the wider community. Mountains aren’t ubiquitous, neither sadly, is societal tolerance for gay people.

More of a novella than a short story. Can be read here:


https://www.google.co.in/amp/www.newy...

Annie Proulx is one of the foremost American writers today. Her novel The Shipping News won the Pulitzer Prize, and her latest novel Barkskins seems to have been written in the same vain. As I am drawn to Pulitzer winners in my ongoing personal challenge to read them, I decided to sample Proulx's writing before undergoing the reading of one of her full length novels. Brokeback Mountain set high in the Rockies and later made into a movie of the same name was originally published in the New Yorker. A controversial story of forbidden love, the writing did not disappoint.

Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist were both twenty and looking to embark on their ranching careers. Each came from a distinct background from opposite ends of the state of Wyoming yet wound up on the same summer sheep drive up on Brokeback Mountain near the Montana border. Both young men were classic macho cowboys who could hold his own on the range. Ennis was engaged to be married to a local sweetheart the following December. Yet, one cold night while sharing a sleeping bag, the two men engaged in a forbidden act of love that is all but taboo in the cowboy community. This one event commenced Jack and Ennis' relationship for the next twenty years, one that would hold disastrous for them and their families.

At only fifty five pages in length, Proulx weaved a tragic story of forbidden love. It is a subject matter that I often stay away from yet the writing was so compelling that I read the entire story in mere minutes. Proulx is originally from the eastern United States, but her prose describing rural Wyoming is captivating, and one could see how from this short story, that the scenery could easily transfer to the big screen. It is because of the writing that I stuck with the story. I felt for Ennis' wife who had to hide her husband's secret for years, working to support their two daughters while he pined for Jack. Proulx set the story up so that the majority of readers would sympathize with the cowboys, but I was lead to feel for the supporting cast of characters who were all effected by these two men's decision of continuing a forbidden, clandestine, taboo relationship. Not only were the characters well fleshed out, but Proulx weaved in multiple story lines in this short tale, making the writing engaging from start to finish.

After reading the tragic Brokeback Mountain, I am left uncertain whether I will read Proulx's Pulitzer winning novel. I have heard that her full length books are slow moving albeit attentive to detail and emphasizing character development rather than plot. It is obvious that from this short tale that Proulx can write and I am intrigued to fit her novels into my ongoing Pulitzer challenge. For now, I am left with a bittersweet taste in my mouth after engaging in this short story.

4.5 stars writing
2.75 stars story

I'm fucking terrified that yesterday will mean a lackadaisicaling of today, wherein a legal, incorporated, minute change of one of many laws interwoven in the Hetereosexual Agenda banishes the rest to the "what more could you need?" closet and the society spectacle incineration. This work has been termed apolitical by some, but seriously, how can you call a history of human sacrifice apolitical? Not even dwelling on the money, status, and human network so often illegally amputated and afterwards legally maintained, but you should really be looking at where one may be fired, alienated, and killed for same sex marriage. Here is a good start. So long as all that exists, the tire iron is still in force. I'm not even going to talk about countries outside the US, both for reasons of US-centricity and, really, if the biggest imperial force of contemporary times starts putting socioeconomic pressure on the source of those homophobic delegations fucking around on their passports, some good may come of it.

The book? Well, for a tip of the iceberg, it doesn't mince around the brutality of living a love that historically and presently is deemed obscene, perverse, unnatural, absurd, corrupting, and above all, other. We're talking a difference of sexuality, indeed only the most popular of many myriads, that the US used in the late 20th century as an excuse for ignoring a pandemic within the boundaries of home territory. The book is wary, self-sufficient, sweet (mind, I wouldn't recommend using it as a guide to safe sex of the sort it contains), and knows that particular future of blood and vice and quarantine is to be expected. One review says, of the two main characters, that "[t]hey know what they're not—not queer, not gay—but they have no idea what they are"; to be labeled with the popularly ostracized is to commit to death.

In regards to same sex marriage? I'd like to think that bans lifted in conjunction with legal marital rights (hospital visits, name on the death certificate, adoption) will expand the reality beyond the sensationalized stereotypes and into the mundane of missed deadlines, exasperating paperwork, and side characters in a novel who, thanks to the author's experiences in a broader space of public personal interaction, will be enhanced with real flesh and blood. The problem, you see, is this is all very mental, philosophical, the sort of social structuring that really doesn't mean much to those who are still dying. The problem is whether this story of Brokeback Mountain will have to be told again, and again, and again, as the public refuses to take LGBT in more than a single wave of dosage, that category here, this category there, never mind the intersections of gender, race, religion, others upon others whose denizens will be impacted regardless of the awareness of common sense.

I don't know. I really don't. I'll keep reading, though. That much I am capable of.

Why did I think this would be a good choice for my morning commute?

Sweet baby Jesus! This was everything I remembered the movie to be and somehow more of a punch to the gut. I'm perpetually amazed at how a good writer can limn a whole lifetime of deeds and emotions in a few choice words. Annie Proulx is that kind of writer. As a bonus Campbell Scott suffuses life into the characters of Ennis & Jack to point of making your heart bleed, reminding us he's a great actor. When Ennis says n  little darlin'n I about bawled my eyes out on the train. It overshadows sheafs of 'I love yous' in other stories.

Is this a romance? Not in the genre sense. It is however a love story. A sad/tragic one given the state of who we are/have been as a species/society, but also touched by small moments of grace and companionship, which is all we ever wish for in the end.

I'll definitely be doing this again and getting a print copy, just as soon as I recover.

I read this in the collection Close Range: Brokeback Mountain and Other stories, which I reviewed HERE.

I knew this exquisite story well from the film, and the two are very similar.

It is a story of unexpected and irresistible passion, longing and loss - understated and never graphic.

Jack and Ennis meet, lust and love one summer, and meet up over the years, despite starting more conventional families. "The brilliant charge of their infrequent couplings was darkened by the sense of time flying, never enough time, never enough." But the '60s (and even '70s) weren't as swingin' as we're led to believe, certainly in their communities, so "nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved". In the interim, "What J remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was... the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger."

It happens to concern homosexual love between cowboys, starting in the 1960s, but it could just as easily be any taboo relationship.

The harsh beauty of the mountains, coupled with love and longing, reminded me a little of Cold Mountain, which I reviewed HERE.

From my sista Shile: Only 3 why?

"if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it."

This is a tragic short story about the forbidden love between 2 Wyoming cowboys, Ennis and Jack. They meet one summer as young men working on a sheep farm in Wyoming, Brokeback Mountain. Thus starts a forbidden love story that spans 20 years. Proulx spare prose gives the reader brief glimpses into the lives of these men over the years as they try to create conventional lives while they still ache for each other. Ennis is stronger than the other and voices the quote at the top of this review. Jack cannot stand their separations and believes in a dream of their being together. I ached for him as he ached to figure out a way for his dream to come true.

Proulx's prose is spare but evocative. So much is said and felt in so few words. I was very moved by this story and by it's ending.

Normally, I would never read something like this. No, I am not homophobic (my older brother is gay); but I do get uncomfortable when reading about two men kissing. So, needless to say, I wasn't expecting much from this very short novella.

Let me be the first to say how utterly wrong I was. This novella is not merely about two men who fall in love; it is about love itself. The love story these men share is intense, stormy, beautiful, and heart-wrenching, and I found myself thankful that I have only ever loved one woman my entire life--I duped her into marrying me later--and, therefore, have never had my heart broken.

Put away your preconceived ideas and give this story a chance. If anything, it will only take you a few hours to read. But if you like it, I am sure you will leave this story with a greater insight to what it means to be in love with someone.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This novel is surprisingly short . . . which makes it difficult to rate the book unbiasedly :-/ I found myself replaying the (exceptional) movie in my mind the entire time.

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. . . . Now please excuse my while I imagine this scene over and over again ..


#neednewovaries