 First edition cover | |
| Author | Annie Proulx |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short stories |
| Publisher | 4th Estate |
Publication date | 14 September 2008 [1] |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (paperback); (hardback) |
| Pages | 240 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0-00-726973-0 (first edition) |
Fine Just the Way It Is is a 2008 collection of short stories by Annie Proulx. [2] [3] [4]
 | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2010) |
The story is set in a Wyoming "Old Folks' Home" for old cowboys, ranchers and their womenfolk. Old cow-poke Ray Forkenbrock has skeletons in his closet he must talk about before he dies. [5] The past is inescapable. Mid-way through relating his early life to his granddaughter, Forkenbrock realizes that one of his fellow residents is the woman he first had sex with 71 years before; a day later that same woman falls to her death in the Grand Canyon. [6] Forkenbrock had discovered, at his father's funeral, that he was not his father's only son called Ray. He was in fact one of four: his father had four families, the children all named the same to avoid mistakes. [7]
Satan's personal assistant, one Duane Fork, busies himself spreading dust and sulfurous smells for his boss's return from a Milan design fair. [8] The Devil is piqued by an article in The Onion reporting that a Tenth Circle of Hell had been added to accommodate Total Bastards.
Rose and Archie are a young married couple—Archie is only 16—setting out to make a life for themselves. At first, things are idyllic: they are very much in love. But then Archie gets laid off from the ranch where he has been working and heads to Cheyenne to find a job, leaving Rose behind in their cabin with a baby on the way. He has to hide that he is married because the tyrant he works for would fire him if he knew, since married men tend to want time off to go visit their wives. He tries to write a letter to Rose but does not have the money for a stamp. Meanwhile, Rose is alone and miserable. There are complications with her pregnancy, and no way for her to get help. She finally buries the baby. Archie, after a fall in a bog, comes down with pneumonia and cannot work, so his boss fires him. Another hand tries to help Archie get home but they get caught in a blizzard and freeze to death. In the spring, a friend of Archie and Rose comes by and finds her mutilated body.
A childless Wyoming couple transfer their affections first to a piglet, then to a chicken, and finally to a sagebrush they fancy to have the appearance of a child. [5] It is tended and protected, and even fed bones and stray scraps of meat from their dinner-table. Even after the couples' passing, the shrub – now grown to the height of a fair-sized tree – is used to human attention, and meat. It consumes livestock, then soldiers, then a local medico, railroad men, surveyors, and most lately a botanist come to investigate its unusual height and luxuriance. [2]
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (January 2011) |
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (January 2011) |
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (January 2011) |
| | This section is empty. You can help by adding to it. (January 2011) |
On November/December 2008 issue of Bookmarks, the book received a 
(3.5 out of 5) based on critic reviews with a summary saying, Though the San Francisco Chronicle had "the disturbing sense that she’s reveling in her characters’ pain," the St. Petersburg Times countered that "Proulx writes with clear-eyed, ironic affection about life in the real West, not the sentimental version". [9]
Delia Falconer described the stories as a "patchy collection, much less satisfying than Close Range ". [3] The stories set in Hell have also been criticized as—while being witty and well-written—ill-fitted to a book of Wyoming stories. [5]
Writing in The New York Times , Ron Carlson described the collection as "a third collection of Wyoming stories", following Close Range and Bad Dirt . [2]
Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She carried out notable work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. She has been referred to as "the unsung heroine of British electronic music", having influenced musicians including Aphex Twin, the Chemical Brothers and Paul Hartnoll of Orbital.
Larry Jeff McMurtry was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. His novels included Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Oscar nominations. He was also a prominent book collector and bookseller.
Edna Ann Proulx is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.
A man-eating plant is a fictional form of carnivorous plant large enough to kill and consume a human or other large animal. The notion of man-eating plants came about in the late 19th century, as the existence of real-life carnivorous and moving plants, described by Charles Darwin in Insectivorous Plants (1875), and The Power of Movement in Plants (1880), largely came as a shock to the general population, who believed it was impossible for plants to consume animals or move under their own power. Authors began to exaggerate these abilities for dramatic effect, causing the proliferation of fiction about such plants.
Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 neo-Western romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee and produced by Diana Ossana and James Schamus. Adapted from the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx, the screenplay was written by Ossana and Larry McMurtry. The film stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, and Michelle Williams. Its plot depicts the complex romantic relationship between two American cowboys, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, in the American West from 1963 to 1983.
Postcards is E. Annie Proulx's 1992 novel about the life and travels of Loyal Blood across the American West. Postcards has been likened by David Bradley to a Great American Novel. It is the predecessor to Proulx's award-winning The Shipping News. Postcards cuts between stories of Loyal's travels and the stories of his family back in Vermont, to whom he sends irregular postcards about his life and experiences. Loyal never leaves a return address, so is unable to hear back from his family and therefore misses all the news from home, including the death of his father and mother, the sale of the family farm, and the marriage of his sister to a virtual stranger.
Close Range: Wyoming Stories is a 1999 collection of short stories by Annie Proulx, beginning in 1997. The stories are set in the desolate landscape of rural Wyoming and detail the often grim lives of the protagonists.
Ennis Del Mar is the fictional main character of the short story "Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx, the 2005 Academy Award-winning film adaptation of the same name directed by Ang Lee, and the 2023 play by Ashley Robinson also adapted from the short story. Ennis's story is depicted by his complex sexual and romantic relationship with Jack Twist in the American West, over two decades from 1963 to 1983. In the film, he is portrayed by Heath Ledger, who won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the Best International Actor Award from the Australian Film Institute and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor, Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance. In the play, he is portrayed by Lucas Hedges.
Jack Twist is a fictional character in the short story "Brokeback Mountain" by Annie Proulx, the 2005 Academy Award-winning film adaptation of the same name directed by Ang Lee, and the 2023 play by Ashley Robinson also adapted from the short story. In the film, he is portrayed by American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who received a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. Jack's story primarily follows the complex sexual and romantic relationship he has with Ennis Del Mar in the American West from 1963 to 1983.
"Brokeback Mountain" is a short story by American author Annie Proulx. It was originally published in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997, for which it won the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 1998. Proulx won a third place O. Henry Award for the story in 1998. A slightly expanded version of the story was published in Proulx's 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The collection was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Delia Falconer is an Australian novelist best known for her novel The Service of Clouds. Her works have been nominated for several literary awards.
The Help is a historical fiction novel by American author Kathryn Stockett published by Penguin Books in 2009. The story is about African Americans working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s. A USA Today article called it one of the "summer sleeper hits". An early review in The New York Times notes Stockett's "affection and intimacy buried beneath even the most seemingly impersonal household connections", and says the book is a "button-pushing, soon to be wildly popular novel". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said of the book: "This heartbreaking story is a stunning début from a gifted talent."
That Old Ace in the Hole is a 2002 novel by Annie Proulx.
The Magic of Blood is a short story collection by Dagoberto Gilb. It received the 1994 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the 1993 Whiting Writers' Award. The collection was released to rave reviews by several reputable critics, as well as authors, for its brutal realism and genuine portrayal of the marginalized masses. His book contains 29 stories separated into three distinct sections, which epitomize the perspective of the working classes and Chicano culture. Gilb's prose is simplistic in nature and his writing belongs to a proletariat genre, which explores the existence of labor, love, families, friends and the immigrant community in America.
"Job History" is part of a short story series, Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx. It takes place in the writer's hometown of Cora, Wyoming. The story follows the life of the main character, Leeland Lee, and his unsuccessful attempts to find employment. Radio news reports throughout the story relate to Leeland's struggles and disappointment. His lack of education and the unavailability of jobs in his hometown cause him to move often. His determination is commendable, but in the end his efforts are futile and he lives his life in discontent.
Wonderstruck (2011) is an American young-adult fiction novel written and illustrated by Brian Selznick, who also created The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007). In Wonderstruck, Selznick continued the narrative approach of his last book, using both words and illustrations — though in this book he separates the illustrations and the writings into their own story and weaves them together at the end.
Brokeback Mountain is an opera by American composer Charles Wuorinen, with a libretto in English by Annie Proulx, based on her 1997 short story "Brokeback Mountain". They began work on it in 2008 under a commission by Gerard Mortier of the New York City Opera. He took the project with him to the Teatro Real of Madrid, where the opera was premiered on January 28, 2014.
Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 is a collection of short stories by Annie Proulx published in 2004. It was not as well received by critics in comparison with Proulx's 1999 Close Range: Wyoming Stories.
Barkskins is a 2016 novel by American writer Annie Proulx. It tells the story of two immigrants to New France, René Sel and Charles Duquet, and of their descendants. It spans over 300 years and witnesses the deforestation of the New World from the arrival of Europeans into the contemporary era of global warming.
The Power of the Dog is a 1967 novel of Western fiction written by American author Thomas Savage.