Best book by Annie Proulx ?

Ah, Soz and Tico....you have forced me to reconsider AHWOSG!

There was a particular passage in The Shipping News that was so beautifully crafted that I had to read it a dozen times.

Read it, Kara!

Eggers is just a bit older than me and I do wonder if the book will be as fabulous to someone who wouldn't necessarily share the many many cultural touchstones scattered throughout the book. But it's really great.

Gus, I know exactly what you mean. I did that too.

I looooved Shipping News. Didn't notice cold, but maybe I'm used to some coldness in writing.

Didn't like one book by Proulx much, but who am I to quibble, expecially since I don't remember what it was. Maybe the one about the accordion, which I remember as labor over construct. Or, it could have been my mood.

Yes, Osso, I remember that disconnect with Proulx. Accordian..something.

She is capable of miscues, but not in Shipping News, which was an amazing piece of work. Gus, I wonder what lines you speak of. Perhaps the ones I read over and over, too....

Soz, I will read it. I've just been waiting for encouragement.

I have trouble keeping in mind the word best when considering the writings of Annie Proulx, unless I am to paraphrase Macbeth, "If it (a Proulx work) were read when 'tis read, then 'twere best it were read quickly."

A friend, having dissected Shipping News in her reading group, sent me a copy. It's the only Proulx book I've read. I've glanced through others, but couldn't be bothered.

An excellent critique of modern fashionable literature is B.R. Myers' A Reader's Manifesto. Myers wrote a representative article for the July/August issue of The Atlantic Monthly; a portion of the article can be seen at
A Reader's Manifesto.

Most of the article is available only to Atlantic subscribers, but here is a bit of what Myers has to say of Annie Proulx, from the much he had to say about her work.

"... Of course, one can hardly blame Proulx for thinking, "If it ain't broke, why fix it?" Her novel Postcards (1992) received the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Shipping News won both the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Her writing, like that of so many other novelists today, is touted as "evocative" and "compelling." The reason these vague attributes have become the literary catchwords of our time, even more popular than "raw" and "angry" were in the 1950s, is that they allow critics to praise a writer's prose without considering its effect on the reader. It is easier to call writing like Proulx's lyrically evocative or poetically compelling than to figure out what it evokes, or what it compels the reader to think and feel. How can Close RangeThe New York Times the critic Richard Eder quoted with approval a flashy excerpt from Close Range about a car trip that the characters themselves do not appear to find remarkable at all.) Proulx's sentences are often praised for having a life of their own: they "dance and coil, slither and pounce" (K. Francis Tanabe, The Washington Post), "every single sentence surprises and delights and just bowls you over" (Carolyn See, The Washington Post), a Proulx sentence "whistles and snaps" (Dan Cryer, Newsday). In 1999 Tanabe kicked off the Post's online discussion of Proulx's work by asking participants to join him in "choosing your favorite sentence(s) from any of the stories in Close Range." I doubt that any reviewer in our more literate past would have expected people to have favorite sentences from a work of prose fiction. A favorite character or scene, sure; a favorite line of dialogue, maybe; but not a favorite sentence. We have to read a great book more than once to realize how consistently good the prose is, because the first time around, and often even the second, we're too involved in the story to notice. If Proulx's fiction is so compelling, why are its fans more impressed by individual sentences than by the whole?"

<sputter>

What?.

I'm a fan and I'm certainly impressed by the whole. With qualifications. I haven't read all of her fiction, but I consider both "Shipping News" (novel) and "Brokeback Mountain" (short story) to be modern masterpieces.

I've read other short stories that I was far less impressed with, and I think I kind of get the razzle-dazzle criticism (though it's an odd criticism, in and of itself). But there are most definitely times when Proulx's technical virtuosity is entirely in service of a strong story and/ or subject matter, with extremely compelling results.

I loved "The Shipping News"....couldn't put it down...but I've heard reactions similar to yours from other acquaintances. My second favorite of hers is the short story "Brokeback Mountain," that still haunts me whenever I think about it. The movie was outstanding, but the short story says things that even the movie couldn't get across.

I liked Shipping News and Accordion Crimes, and am not sure what else I've read, would have to look at the contents of the short story books. I seem to remember a novel by her about two sisters on a farm, but the memory is hazy and it might not be Proulx who wrote it.