Close Range: Wyoming Stories
1999 short story collection by E. Annie Proulx
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Close Range: Wyoming Stories is a 1999 collection of short fiction by Annie Proulx,[1] beginning in 1997. The stories are set in the desolate landscape of rural Wyoming and detail the often grim lives of the protagonists.
First edition cover | |
| Author | Annie Proulx |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Scribner |
Publication date | May 10, 1999 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 288 pp |
| ISBN | 0-684-85221-7 |
| OCLC | 40595315 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3566.R697 C58 1999 |
The collection was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The best known story from the collection is "Brokeback Mountain", which was previously published as a 64-page novella in 1998. The story was the basis for Ang Lee's 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain.
“The Half-Skinned Steer” was selected by novelist John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century (1999).[2]
Stories
- "The Half-Skinned Steer"
- "The Mud Below"
- "Job History"
- "The Blood Bay"
- "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water"
- "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World"
- "Pair a Spurs"
- "A Lonely Coast"
- "The Governors of Wyoming"
- "55 Miles to the Gas Pump", a brief vignette about a rancher's wife who discovers the corpses of missing women in the attic
- "Brokeback Mountain"
Reception
Observing that “Proulx doesn't use language; she goads it,” Irish Times literary critic Eileen Battersby ranks the collection as a whole less impressive than Proulx’s first volume, Heart Songs (1988). Battersby reserves special praise for “Brokeback Mountain,” calling it a “masterpiece.”[3]
“The elements of unreality, the fantastic and improbable, color all of these stories as they color real life. In Wyoming not the least fantastic situation is the determination to make a living ranching in this tough and unforgiving place.”—Annie Proulx on Close Range: Wyoming Stories.[4]
Julie Scanlon, writing in the Journal of Narrative Theory, comments on the limits of Proulx’s literary realism:
It would be over-generalizing to state that Proulx’s style is unequivocally realist…Proulx’s fictions can shift into magical realism on occasion. For example, stories in Close Range contain talking tractors and a seemingly magical pair of spurs, which are presented without a blink of recognition that they are fantastical. (“The Bunchgrass Edge of the World” and “Pair a Spurs”)[5]