Short Stories Response

Proulx:
Wow. I mean, I've read Brokeback and seen the movie and Annie Proulx writes amazing stories but she never fails to sucker-punch me. Her writing is, to me, the epitome of showing and not telling. Her descriptions of the Wyoming landscape create pictures of this place, even if you haven't been there. It's gorgeous scenery, but hard, awful things can happen there. And because of the desolation there, it makes them seem harder and more awful than things that happen in urban or more populated areas. My family and I drove through Wyoming on our move back to Michigan from California and it was an amazingly beautiful yet terrifying place. It allows for nothing to be hidden because it is so open and vast. And yet, it is so terrifyingly small and contained.

The contrast between the Dunmire and Tinsley families is as vast as those Wyoming plains. The Dunmire boys are without a mother for most of their lives and do pretty muich what they want, when they want. Ras Tinsley is not doted on, but is smothered by an over-protective mother and when he is able, he leaves home. But Proulx turns things on their end and makes the Dunmire boys, Jax in particular, almost the hero. But with Proulx's writing, it makes it believable. In a part of the country where it seems as though there are no rules, there are still basic ones that man and men have to live by.

I was able to get more involved with this story that the ones by Evanson and Field. This one, to me, had better flow and more "human" characters. I liked the narrative better and the style of writing.