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Hardcover
Publisher: Scribner
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 deeply 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. -- excerpt from book's dustjacket
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| Brokeback Mountain |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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When I read this book years ago, the sparseness of the story just seemed to rip more gaping holes in my already aching heart! For such a short story it tells such a huge tale of regret and love lost. Just like the best special effects in a movie are the ones you don't even know are there, in this book it's the dialogue that is never said, the intentions that are never acted upon, and the words that only seem to exist between the lines that make this such a haunting, impactful, heart-wrenching story.
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| better than I expected, |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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As a typical macho type, I was not sure I wanted to read this book or see the movie. But seeing as Mr. McMurtry is one of my favorite writers (Lonesome Dove is one of my all time favorite books)and he wrote the screen play, I figured I give this story a try. I am still not comfortable with two men in love, but I have to admit this story touched me, I also went saw the movie and it is also very good. Love is love no matter who it occurs between. I have also learned what a great writer Annie Proulx is and will be looking for more of her work. So in a way I have Mr. McMurtry to thank. an advance copy, and decided to read it because of the glowing cover quote from McMurtry, And he was right!
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| Heart-wrenching |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I must be one of the 10 people who didn't see the movie. So I instead opted to read the book...which to my surprise was a 55 page short story originally published in the New Yorker. I found myself wishing it was at least another 100 pages. I'm a sucker for love stories and not too particular about the genders of the couple. This story was no let down.
What I found remarkable was the deep denial by Ennis Del Mar. He's literally in the throes with Jack Twist and uttering "I'm not no queer". What was more remarkable was Jack's willingness to play along with that charade for Ennis' ego and benefit, lying to him about not being with other men (so that Ennis feels less of a "queer"), yet being honest that all he wants from his life is to go off and start a ranch and live with Ennis. While Jack is the reserved of the bunch, he's clearly the most courageous and dies for it. Ennis, not having taken the risk that would bring him happiness, has no wife, no family, no job, no lover, no love and only a tattered trailer with a post card and intertwined shirts to keep him company while he waits for Jack to visit him in dreams.
These 55 pages slayed me.
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| "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it." |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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First published in the New Yorker magazine in 1997, this powerful short story won the National Magazine Award for Fiction and an O. Henry Award. Exploding the stereotype of the cowboy, author Annie Proulx creates a passionate love story between two young ranch hands who believe their love and relationship are unique. Both are nineteen, and neither will entertain the thought that he might be gay ("I'm not no queer...it's a one-shot thing.").
In vibrant prose filled with unusual images of nature, Proulx depicts the intensity of their love, which first begins in a high pasture on Brokeback Mountain, where they tend sheep to protect them from predators, and sleep in a tent at night. From the outset, nineteen-year-old Ennis del Mar is so elated with the company of the equally young Jack Twist that he "felt he could paw the white out of the moon." When their attraction suddenly bursts into passion, they feel themselves "flying in the euphoric, bitter air, looking down on the hawk's back." And when, at the end of the season, they bring the sheep down the mountain, "the mountain boiled with demonic energy," and Ennis "felt he was in a slow-motion, but headlong, irreversible fall."
At the end of the season, they separate, and over the next twenty years they both live as straight men, seeing each other rarely, and keeping their love a secret. Ennis has never forgotten the time when he was nine and his father took him to see the remains of a gay man who was tortured, then beaten to death with a tire iron. His father laughed about this atrocity, regarding it as appropriate punishment for the man's violation of the "western code."
Proulx concentrates on themes and on the intensity of the men's love story, subordinating everything else, including her imagery and character development, to it. The dramatic ending conjures up images from the beginning of the story on Brokeback Mountain and ties all the details together, while the thematic line "If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it," which is first spoken at the story's turning point, is repeated in the conclusion for emphasis. Inexorable forces act on Ennis and Jack throughout the story, some forces originating in nature and some coming from other men--and Ennis and Jack just "gotta stand it." Mary Whipple
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| wonderful |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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In the very beginning of this book I couldn't get in to it. I was going to put in back on the shelf but I told my self give it a chance and I was glad I did. I really got in to the story. Imagining it all, but sadly I hadn't finished it just yet. I will finish reviewing it when I am done.
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