"Brokeback Mountain" text
Hugh Young
Hugh Young
Ennis Del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the
trailer, hissing in around the aluminum door and window
frames. The shirts hanging on a nail shudder slightly
in the draft. He gets up, scratching the grey wedge of
belly and pubic hair, shuffles to the gas burner, pours
leftover coffee in a chipped enamel pan; the flame
swathes it in blue. He turns on the tap and urinates in
the sink, pulls on his shirt and jeans, his worn boots,
stamping the heels against the floor to get them full
on. The wind booms down the curved length of the
trailer and under its roaring passage he can hear the
scratching of fine gravel and sand. It could be bad on
the highway with the horse trailer. He has to be packed
and away from the place that morning. Again the ranch
is on the market and they've shipped out the last of
the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the
owner saying, "Give em to the real estate shark, I'm
out a here," dropping the keys in Ennis's hand. He
might have to stay with his married daughter until he
picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense
of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream.
The stale coffee is boiling up but he catches it before
it goes over the side, pours it into a stained cup and
blows on the black liquid, lets a panel of the dream
slide forward. If he does not force his attention on
it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time
on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing
seemed wrong. The wind strikes the trailer like a load
of dirt coming off a dump truck, eases, dies, leaves a
temporary silence.
On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 01:12:11 GMT, hu...@buGARzz.neBAGEt.nz (Hugh Young)
said:
>
>http://www.newyorker.com/printables/archive/051212fr_archive01
>
>Sadness ahead!
>
Calum Bennachie
"Hugh Young" <hu...@buGARzz.neBAGEt.nz> wrote in message
news:43a0c2c5...@news.buzz.net.nz...
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/printables/archive/051212fr_archive01
>
> Sadness ahead!
Especially when the link doesn't work: "Sorry, but we can't find the URL you
tried to access".
Calum
brazen
"Calum Bennachie" <bennachie@[deletethis]paradise.net.nz> wrote in message
news:43a107bc$1...@clear.net.nz...
Gay
canon paora
Awful writing. Some people claim to have cried reading it.
Here's a review that more or less sums up the reason why I don't
appreciate it as much as other people.
http://www.cosmoetica.com/B262-DES202.htm
Hugh Young
said:
>http://www.smackage.com/images/12-09-05/BrokebackMountain.txt
>
>Awful writing. Some people claim to have cried reading it.
I did. Or am I lying when I so "claim"?
>Here's a review that more or less sums up the reason why I don't
>appreciate it as much as other people.
>http://www.cosmoetica.com/B262-DES202.htm
Here's what he says about BBM:
the final tale in the book, Brokeback Mountain, has got to be one of
the worst short stories I’ve ever read- at least from a writer that
has demonstrated actual writing talent, within this very book. It’s a
tale of two closeted queer cowboys
<Notice that he's not saying "queer" as a reclaimed epithet. And
they're not closetted. They identify as strait MSM. Ennis has sex only
with Jack.
(Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist) who get funky during a summer of sheep
herding in 1963, and their subsequent decades long sexual romps on
annual ‘fishing trips’, even as both marry and reproduce.
<It's a love story, dammit, and part of the poignancy is that they
never use that word.
Of course, written not long after the attack on a teenaged
homosexual, Matthew Shepard, in Wyoming, there is the inevitable
queerbashing, which leaves Jack dead, and Ennis grieving, when the
truth is confirmed, when he goes to his lover’s parents’ home and
finds one of his old shirts placed inside one of Jack’s shirts still
with Ennis’s dried blood on it.
<That's to say, his own dried blood, from when Jack punched him.
<Nothing to do with gay bashing. It's saying how much Jack loved
Ennis, that he kept the shirts enfolded all those years.
The symbolism is almost too much to not hurl- ooh, the secret man
within the outer man, and what a bond! Yet, the whole story is so full
of stereotypes,
<Yeah, all gay cowboys are like that.
heavyhanded in its approach, and the introductions to the characters
are so bad that one wonders if the only reason this tasteless and
utterly emotionally clueless story ever got published was because the
publishers of Scribner’s wanted to have a laugh at Right Wingers’
hypocrisy via stereotypes.
<It was first published in the New Yorker.
It is really, really bad, yet has been praised by PC Elitists who miss
how utterly cardboard the characterizations are, especially their
first sex scene, because one dare not criticize a story that says
gaybashing is wrong. Here’s a sample of the two queers’ attraction:
<As above.
‘A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the
door closed behind them. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized
each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out
of each other, saying, son of a bitch, son of a bitch, then, and
easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came
together, and hard....’ Yes, this amateur gay porno scene is the
extent of the emotional depth the two characters exhibit.
<Exactly. They're a couple of inarticulate guys. But the emotional
depth they experience...
Is it any wonder simple-minded and PC Hollywood has taken to this
story in the book the most? It is currently in filmic production with
acting young guns Heath Ledger as Ennis and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack.
It would be one thing if Proulx’s characters were all merely clichés
or stereotypes, like O’Connor’s or William Faulkner’s ill-crafted
inhabitants, but Proulx vacillates between realism and attempted
magical realism to such a degree that none of these tales seems to
have an emotional nor narrative center of gravity, despite often
wonderfully crafted images or sentences.
<The reviewer's homophobic. Take it away.
brazen
> <The reviewer's homophobic. Take it away.
Homophobic? Oh, lay off Hugh - they thought the writing was crap. I didnt
think a lot of it either.
Gay
Hugh Young
<g...@brazenremovethemtoo.com.nz> said:
>
>"Hugh Young" <hu...@buGARzz.neBAGEt.nz> wrote in message
>news:43a37b73...@news.buzz.net.nz...
>> <The reviewer's homophobic. Take it away.
>
>Homophobic? Oh, lay off Hugh
I said why. He has no sympathy for the relationship at all. All he can
see is two queers butt-f.....n.
- they thought the writing was crap. I didnt
>think a lot of it either.
I just read it again, from the point of view of the writing. It's
really good. A lot of dialogue that gets you into the inarticulateness
and emotional logjams of the two guys, and a bit of description of the
landscape that shows the hostile physical environment, perhaps (but
this is me) as a metaphor for the hostile social environment.
Certainly no "magical realism" whatever that is. It could have been
written 70 years ago, but for the sex.
Hugh Young
said:
> Of course, written not long after the attack on a teenaged
>homosexual, Matthew Shepard, in Wyoming, there is the inevitable
>queerbashing,
Actually, it was also written not long after a black man was killed in
very much the way she describes, being dragged behind a car.
brazen
> On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:33:19 +1300, "brazen"
> <g...@brazenremovethemtoo.com.nz> said:
>
>>
>>"Hugh Young" <hu...@buGARzz.neBAGEt.nz> wrote in message
>>news:43a37b73...@news.buzz.net.nz...
>>> <The reviewer's homophobic. Take it away.
>>
>>Homophobic? Oh, lay off Hugh
>
> I said why. He has no sympathy for the relationship at all. All he can
> see is two queers butt-f.....n.
Thats not homophobic its him not reading between the lines the same way as
you. You can hardly call a difference of opinion (or appreciation)
homophobic.
And "queer" is a word the characters use themselves, so you can hardly
criticize the reviewer for using it.
As I said, I didnt care for it myself, so I hope the film is better.
Gay
Calum Bennachie
"brazen" <g...@brazenremovethemtoo.com.nz> wrote in message
news:43a48f82$1...@news.orcon.net.nz...
I found the text interesting, if clumsy in some places, and the subtext also
interesting. Some of the descriptions require a certain amount of knowledge
on the reader. Some may have trouble with wondering what colour malachite
is. (http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/carbonat/malachit/malachit.htm,
but is she applying the deep dark green or the light pale green?)
Similarly, "shattered krummholz". (No help with this one, but yes, I've
seen some, although I wouldn't necessarily describe it as "shattered". Go
Google yourself.) From my experience, wind blowing through it does not give
a "bestial groan".
"Dawn came glassy orange, stained from below by a gelatinous band of pale
green." Gelatinous band? Surely that would imply some sort of quivering,
as a jelly quivers on the plate. But I have yet to see a quivering dawn
(and yes, contrary to the thoughts of some, I have seen many, just not
recently). A slow fade, as in "The sooty bulk of the mountain paled slowly
...", but then a joyous leap as the sun clears the horizon.
And if they are "two uneducated, rough-spoken, uninformed young men", would
one of them use the word "commutin"? Wouldn't it be more in character to be
"travellin"?
So while there is some clumsiness of writing, I still found the story
interesting. For an interview with the author, see
http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid23486.asp
Calum
Hugh Young
<g...@brazenremovethemtoo.com.nz> said:
>
>"Hugh Young" <hu...@buGARzz.neBAGEt.nz> wrote in message
>news:43a4613...@news.buzz.net.nz...
>> On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:33:19 +1300, "brazen"
>> <g...@brazenremovethemtoo.com.nz> said:
>>
>>>
>>>"Hugh Young" <hu...@buGARzz.neBAGEt.nz> wrote in message
>>>news:43a37b73...@news.buzz.net.nz...
>>>> <The reviewer's homophobic. Take it away.
>>>
>>>Homophobic? Oh, lay off Hugh
>>
>> I said why. He has no sympathy for the relationship at all. All he can
>> see is two queers butt-f.....n.
>
>
>Thats not homophobic its him not reading between the lines the same way as
>you. You can hardly call a difference of opinion (or appreciation)
>homophobic.
>
>And "queer" is a word the characters use themselves, so you can hardly
>criticize the reviewer for using it.
But they both use it to say they're NOT queer (and in the sense they
mean it, they're right), so he's denying the whole point of the story.
>As I said, I didnt care for it myself, so I hope the film is better.
It's getting full houses, big box office (in the top ten despite being
in only 100 theatres) and rave reviews, especially from queers.
Hugh Young
Hugh Young
said:
>
>http://www.newyorker.com/printables/archive/051212fr_archive01
>
>Sadness ahead!
There's the predictible homophobic reaction in the States. Michael
Medved complains that it condones adultury. Someone on the IMDb
responded with a list of Best Film Oscar winners that condone
adultury, such as "From Here to Eternity".
And I liked the line, "You can see a film about a woman and a gorilla
in love, but not two men."
brazen
> On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 01:12:11 GMT, hu...@buGARzz.neBAGEt.nz (Hugh Young)
> said:
>
>>
>>http://www.newyorker.com/printables/archive/051212fr_archive01
>>
>>Sadness ahead!
>
> There's the predictible homophobic reaction in the States. Michael
> Medved complains that it condones adultury.
Lol, that *is* a bit desperate! Not really a surprise given him being a
kneeler himself.
I read his movie review and while he obviously does not like the topic "an
outrageously obvious agenda" and "thematically disturbing" he does credit it
as being "passionate" and "expertly crafted" and "Director Ang Lee infuses
every frame with conviction and tenderness".
Bet if it had a man and a woman, or better still a Jewish man and woman, he
would've loved it.
Gay