Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain"

[dirac]

The New Yorker has thoughtfully reprinted the story in anticipation of the movie’s release. I hadn’t read it before. A sad, touching little piece. Kind of like The City and the Pillar boys in ten gallon hats meet Same Time Next Year.......

In 1963, when he met Jack Twist, Ennis was engaged to Alma Beers. Both Jack and Ennis claimed to be saving money for a small spread; in Ennis’s case that meant a tobacco can with two five-dollar bills inside. That spring, hungry for any job, each had signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment—they came together on paper as herder and camp tender for the same sheep operation north of Signal. The summer range lay above the tree line on Forest Service land on Brokeback Mountain. It would be Jack Twist’s second summer on the mountain, Ennis’s first. Neither of them was twenty.

[Leigh Witchel]

Thanks for the heads up, dirac. It was a good read.

[dirac]

Associated Press interview with Annie Proulx about the short story and the picture.

AP: You've said 'Brokeback Mountain' began as an examination of homophobia in the land of the pure, noble cowboy.

Proulx: Everything I write has a rural situation and the Wyoming stories, in the collection 'Close Range,' which includes 'Brokeback Mountain,' did contain a number of those social-observation stories, what things are like for people there. It's my subject matter, what can I say.