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A review by thechaliceofaries
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
4.0
"You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you."
A heart-wrenching short story that packs a pretty powerful emotional punch under 60 pages. I've never seen the movie, but I think I'll have to now because this book shattered me. The gay community (in the western world, at least) has made long strides in its fight for acceptance and equality, but for me stories like Brokeback Mountain are bitter and painful reminders of the suffering they have had to endure and continue to endure in many parts of the world.
"Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don’t want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich--Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine years old and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on gravel."
Annie Proulx's writing style is beautiful, but it's still able to convey with harsh clarity the violence and fear that surrounds gay relationships. I really do think I'm going to need a few days to recover from this. It absolutely breaks my heart that Jack and Ennis' story is not an uncommon one, even today.
A heart-wrenching short story that packs a pretty powerful emotional punch under 60 pages. I've never seen the movie, but I think I'll have to now because this book shattered me. The gay community (in the western world, at least) has made long strides in its fight for acceptance and equality, but for me stories like Brokeback Mountain are bitter and painful reminders of the suffering they have had to endure and continue to endure in many parts of the world.
"Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don’t want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich--Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine years old and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on gravel."
Annie Proulx's writing style is beautiful, but it's still able to convey with harsh clarity the violence and fear that surrounds gay relationships. I really do think I'm going to need a few days to recover from this. It absolutely breaks my heart that Jack and Ennis' story is not an uncommon one, even today.