essays by Christopher Pullen (in Hunt’s The Geographical Imagination), James
Keller and Anne Goodwyn Jones, and the collection by Jim Stacy.- After their sexual relationship has begun, Jack and Ennis spend an evening
talking by their campfire. Jack tells of being beaten and urinated on by his
father when he was a small child and didn’t make it to the bathroom in time.
When Jack visits Ennis the first time and suggests they run a ranch together,
Ennis tells of his father taking him to see a gay man who had been beaten to
death by a tire iron. Both of these incidents suggest important rejections by
father figures. Students would find it profitable to consider other interactions
with fathers and father figures in “Brokeback Mountain” or compare them to
issues with fathers in stories such as “The Mud Below,” “People in Hell Just
Want a Drink of Water,” and “The Bunchgrass Edge of the World.” What
does Proulx suggest about the impact of a father’s rejection on a young man?
How does she depict it as shaping identity? For what aspects of identity is it
important, and when is it perhaps not important? What if a father figure is
vaguely supportive but ineffectual? Students could consult Keller and Anne
Goodwyn Jones and, for any of these suggested topics, Rood.
RESOURCES
Primary Works
“An Interview with Annie Proulx,” Missouri Review, 22, 2 (1999): 77–90.
Discusses her approach to fiction in great depth.
Matthew Testa, “At Close Range with Annie Proulx,” Planet JH Weekly, 7 Decem-
ber 2005 <www.planetjh.com/music_arts_culture/A_100138.aspx> [accessed
16 December 2009].
Focuses on “Brokeback Mountain” and Proulx’s thoughts on the reception of the
story and the resulting film. Proulx also discusses her interest in Wyoming.
Criticism
Sara Friedman, “Names in Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes and Close Range: Wyo-
ming Stories and Their Hebrew Translation,” Bucknell Review, 47, 1 (2004):
107–123.
Interesting look at the unusual names of people and places found in these two
works.
Alex Hunt, ed., The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx: Rethinking Region-
alism (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2009).
Useful and thoughtful collection. Most relevant to Close Range are the introduc-
tion and the essays by Margaret E. Johnson, “Proulx and the Postmodern Hyper-
real”; O. Alan Weltzien, “Annie Proulx’s Wyoming: Geographical Determinism,
Landscape, and Caricature”; Elizabeth Abele’s “Westward Proulx: The Resistant
Landscapes of Close Range: Wyoming Stories and That Old Ace in the Hole”; and
Christopher Pullen’s “Brokeback Mountain As Progressive Narrative and Cin-
ematic Vision: Landscape, Emotion, and the Denial of Domesticity.”