I have to admit that when I first read this story, I had difficulty understanding a few scenes or passages, since it was written in the vernacular of the back country. But regret and fear of discovery are languages we can all understand.

We live in a global community where tolerance and acceptance are not always uniform. Many people who make lifestyle choices that may not be acceptable to their respective communities still suffer both physical and mental retaliation and ostracism. Although we have come a fair distance in North America, and in many other parts of the world, we still have a long way to go.

This story, and The Hours by Michael Cunningham, helped me understand that we have to stop succumbing to society's views of "normal, acceptable and popular." Years ago, I made it a point never to follow fads - it is just too easy to "follow the herd" and adopt the current thinking or mode. The first time I heard the phrase "march to the beat of your own drum," I liked it. It hasn't been easy, and very often I still err on the side of caution, but for the most part, I try.

Such a heartbreaking story, but worth the read. (The movie was a fairly decent adaptation, but a few key elements were changed. Broke my heart, too.)

Lo leí en apenas unas horas. La película es súper fiel a la historia en la que se inspiró y esto me sorprendió. La forma de escribir de Annie Proulx es maravillosa, algo que no había visto antes, pues en unas pocas frases te describe una serie de situaciones de forma directa y concisa sin adentrarse tanto en los detalles y sin quitarle profundidad a la trama o a los personajes.

Le película, en mi opinión, es una obra de arte cinematográfica, con una de las historias más conmovedoras que haya visto. Y, debo decir, está a la altura de portentosa historia que nos relata Proulx en sus pocas páginas.

Absolutamente maravilloso.

n  «Ojalá supiera cómo renunciar a tí.» n

Me sorprendió mucho la forma tan linda de escribir de Annie Proulx. Es poético y muy específico al mismo tiempo. Todo en esta historia corta ocurre rápido, como el paso de los años. Eso sin embargo no nos va a impedir sufrir. Están avisados.

Esta es la historia de Jack Twist y Ennis del Mar, dos cowboys pastores de ovejas (¿o sheepboys?) que se conocen por accidente gracias a un trabajo en Brokeback Mountain. Entre ellos surge una atracción que los toma por sorpresa, y supongo que también al lector si no sabe de qué trata el libro (o la película). Ambos son hombres recios, de pocas palabras y pocos sentimientos, y viven en un pueblo donde una relación homosexual podría costarles la vida.
A pesar de que entre ellos surge un vínculo absoluto, no van a exteriorizar jamás lo que sienten. Aunque al terminar el trabajo en Brokeback Mountain cada uno vuelve a su vida, con el paso de los años seguirán encontrando la forma de verse de forma esporádica (y clandestina) pero intensa.

Durante una gran parte de la historia no terminé de congeniar ni con Jack ni con Ennis, quizás en gran parte por lo huraños que son tanto entre ellos como con la vida en general, o por esa forma de expresarse tan peculiar que demuestra la ausencia de educación de ambos. El contraste entre la narración y los diálogos es marcadísimo (y por momentos dificil de entender... al menos en inglés).

Tiempo después ese abrazo adormilado se consolidó en su memoria como el único momento de ingenua, encantadora felicidad en sus duras vidas separadas.

Cerca del final, sin embargo, ocurre algo que me hizo cambiar de opinión de forma abrupta. Me quedé maravillada por el modo en que Annie Proulx manipuló mis sentimientos, haciéndome encariñar en tres segundos con dos personajes que me resultaban relativamente indiferentes.
Es una historia muy bella realmente, me alegro de haberla leído.


Reseña de Libros junto al mar

3 stars (:
Its really impressive how some authors could write a whole story in just a few pages..
Unfortunately, I have seen some spoilers before reading the book and knew the ending, but it still affected me :( ..
Eventhough I had some serious problems with this book, I liked it :D..
I havent seen the movie, but I have a feeling that if I do, I will like it more than the book :)..
Sorry..

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.

This is a short story, sixty four pages, but Annie Proulx crafted a heck of a story in sixty four pages. The characters, even the minor ones, are described so vividly that ever detail is burned into your mind. The same with the setting, the back ranges of rugged Wyoming and the small cowboy towns, place you right in the middle of Ennis and Jack's existence. The story, as most people know from the movie, is about the love these two young men find with one another. Even though they are both married with children, nothing is quite right in their lives, until that summer herding on Brokeback Mountain when everything changed.

I've now read The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, and I'm looking for the next thing to read from Annie Proulx.

I think it’s taken me this long to read Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain because the movie left such an indelible imprint on my mind that I didn’t want to have the story told again until its memory had faded a little - otherwise the two tend to blur together and I’m also a reader who craves novelty so I don’t like to read the same story over and over.

And the movie has made its mark on popular culture, for good reason - it really is an amazing work of art. But for anyone who isn’t familiar with the story, it’s about two Wyoming ranchers - Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist - who fall in love and have a tumultuous and doomed affair that lasts several years until society’s prejudices put an abrupt end to it.

One of the many remarkable things Proulx accomplishes is how much she’s able to put into a short story. There’s not a bit of fat to it and yet you get as much as you would from a full-length novel. There’s so much passion and intensity in the scenes, from when Ennis and Jack first tumble together, to the scene where Ennis’ ex-wife Alma confronts Ennis, to Jack’s increased frustrations at not being able to be with Ennis completely - the story starts with the two men meeting as young men not yet twenty years old in 1963 and ends in the early ‘80s; suffice it to say, attitudes towards homosexuality were not the same as they are today.

The dialogue is exceptional, not least because it conveys the characters perfectly, as well as sounding real. As good as Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal’s performances are in the Ang Lee movie, it doesn’t feel like they had to imagine much - the characters are there on the page. Ennis’ laconic speech, often giving way to physical expression, and Jack’s fiery words. “This ain’t no little thing that’s happenin here” is a standout line, but there’s a reason the line that’s entered popular culture, now and forever, is “I wish I knew how to quit you.” In the context of the story, it’s devastating, but also beautifully captures what love is and what it does to us. It’s pure poetry.

I always suspected this story would be good but I wasn’t prepared for how powerful it is. That ending… This really has to be one of the best romance stories ever written. One thing I didn’t remember from the movie - and the movie is such a faithful adaptation of the source material that it all came flooding back as I was reading - is the explanation for why Ennis only hugs Jack from behind, and it’s such a tragic indictment of the time and world they lived in.

I couldn’t have been more impressed with every single aspect of the story - I loved reading this emotional freight train and wish I’d read it sooner. It’s up there with John Steinbeck’s shorter works like Of Mice and Men. I can’t recommend it higher - it’s the pinnacle of literary art. I try not to use this word often because it should mean something but this story completely deserves it: Brokeback Mountain is a masterpiece.

Annie Proulx transports us to Wyoming and gives us a sense of what it's like to live there. Then, she weaves a story of the love between two men. It felt like a tragedy, all the things unspoken and the road not taken. Beautifully done and heartbreaking.

From my sista Shile: Only 3 why?

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


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

Well I thought this was just fantastic. It finds a home on my "sad and lovely" shelf because that's just what it is. I actually wrote a comprehensive review of this but I read it over and decided to go with a heart-over-head decision, and am instead just gonna write a brief post of my impressions immediately upon finishing, because in the end it's the feeling of it less than the thing itself that is most powerful.

I'm left with this feeling of nostalgia mixed up with longing and sadness and half-remembered joy, freedom, but a locked-in feeling too, and it all feels a little like waking up from a dream where life is perfect to a world where it isn't, and you want to think more about the dream but by the time you have your morning coffee it's gone, who knows where, faded fast and you didn't even know it. And of course you're sad because you came so close to unspeakable joy and you couldn't quite get your fingers around it, but maybe you look at your world a little differently too, things seem a little stranger and a little farther away. You think it's gone for good but someday farther in the future than you would've guessed, a smell on the wind or a similar dream or the light falling a certain way sparks up that feeling again, that nostalgia-longing-joy-sadness, always strong and fleeting, sometimes so sudden it damn near knocks the wind right out of you, it's like going to a foreign country and meeting a long-lost relative you thought was dead. It's hard to put this feeling into words, this dream comedown or longing for a time to which you can never return; I myself have never even talked about it with other people and can only assume they've felt it too. Brokeback Mountain is steeped in this feeling, and for the life of me I can't figure out how Annie Proulx got it just right but I don't care to analyse too much more than that. It's a feeling that's not particularly pleasant, in fact it can hurt more than meaner and more solid types of hurt, but I'm glad I've experienced it on occasion all the same, and I'm left with the nagging suspicion that somehow life would be much worse without its presence.

"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.