Brokeback Mountain
by Annie Proulx
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Book Summary Information
Author: Annie ProulxEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2005-11-01
ISBN: 0743271327
Number of pages: 64
Publisher: Scribner
Book Reviews of Brokeback Mountain
Book Review: A classic short story, now a classic movie
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, "Brokeback Mountain" is a love story. Yes, it's gay. It's also about two conflicted men sublimating their homosexuality to heterosexual convention. About friendship. About male bonding. And, yes, about cowboys, the West, prejudice, being true to oneself (or not), the consequences of feigned affection and the consequences of failing to fully honor real affection. All of this Annie Proulx crams into 64 pages (in this edition).
Reviewers who feel ripped off by the conciseness of this short story miss the achievement of the brevity and might also be best served by considering length of time (since it can take deceptively long to really absorb this story) than mere pages.
The writing is excellent. So is the movie adaptation, which I can't imagine disappointing any reader. The most striking difference to me between the 2005 movie and the original story was the movie's seeming clarity about what caused Jack Twist's fate, something the short story seemed to me much more ambiguous about.
So what's all the fuss about? Putatively, that someone made a mainstream "gay movie" significantly progressed beyond "Philadelphia" & that someone made a "gay Western." But neither is enough to explain the fuss. The real triumph of the short story (& the movie), the real reason for all the fuss, is that it touches a nerve/nerves in so many people. It's iconic, archetypal, mythic. Among other things, it shows that both gay love & heterosexual love present the same problems, i.e. every heterosexual moved by the story affirms the similarities between gay love & heterosexual love, which is liberating.
The story also moves so far beyond some of the more obvious aspects of the gay scene &, in so doing, serves the cause of equality. The homophobic can point to the objectification of physical perfection in parts of the gay community, to bath houses, saunas & gyms, to rent boys, to circuit parties & clubs to bolster their prejudices in exactly the way that some people could point to adult bookstores, prostitutes, sex clubs, adult theaters, bars, etc., to deplore all sex. But the real lesson of "Brokeback Mountain" is that all of those things are mere shadows when it comes to actual love, be it gay or straight.
Others have commented, but it bears saying again, that Proulx packs an extraordinary number of memorable one-liners & fragments into this story, which is a work of art in the way a fine sculpture is a work of art. "If you can't fix it, you've got to stand it" and "I wish I knew how to quit you" are only two of many.
The intense emotion of this story may be hidden for some in the inarticulateness of its main characters, but their taciturnness is entirely correct, both as men &, especially, as cowboys. It also stems from the upbringings of both men who are, for different reasons, both emotionally stunted.
From a political point of view, "Brokeback Mountain" clearly favors the notion that love is not a choice. It's certainly no choice for Jack & Ennis who, surely, would've walked away sooner if they could, if only for practical reasons.
Having studied the progression of the Western in college through various phases that have included romanticism, idealism, pragmatism and cynicism & in which we've seen changing types of heroes, it delights me that the Western has now evolved to the movie of this short story.
Having said, it can only really be in America that this has had the impact it's had. Having just spent time in Britain, where no one seems terribly disturbed by civil partnerships & where they are now listed daily right under "forthcoming marriages" in The (London) Times, I (a registered Republican, no less) cannot comprehend why we can't just get on with it & allow the same equality to homosexuals that we're so proud of having given women & minorities (who should have had it all along, & whose equality should thus not be a source of pride but rather of shame for not doing it generations earlier). Ralph Peters has written that any society that oppresses women ultimately also oppresses its men, since no one is really free in a society that fails to give all equal freedom. Equal rights for homosexuals is a logical extension of this argument. It might also reduce the occurrence of tragedies like that of Jack & Ennis though, as heterosexual life proves, they will never completely go away.
Read the short story, then see the movie. Neither disappoint.
Summary of Brokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, "Brokeback Mountain" is her masterpiece.Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer.
Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that's what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.
The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for Fiction for its publication of "Brokeback Mountain," and the story was included in Prize Stories 1998: The O. Henry Awards. In gorgeous and haunting prose, Proulx limns the difficult, dangerous affair between two cowboys that survives everything but the world's violent intolerance.
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