Close Range: Wyoming Stories: Amazon.de: Annie Proulx: Englische Bücher

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Dieser Titel ist in englischer Sprache.
Schon mit dem allerersten Satz der ersten Geschichte in dieser bemerkenswerten Sammlung zeigt Annie Proulx das, was sie berühmt gemacht hat: Rasierklingenscharfe Bilder, die in einer so phantasievollen und komprimierten Sprache vermittelt und ausgedrückt werden, daß es schon an wahre Poesie grenzt, und einen Sinn für Charaktere, die so genau beschrieben sind, daß ein einziger Satz ausreichend ist, um ein ganzes Leben zu schildern -- dabei noch das latente Versprechen, daß etwas äußerst Unerwartetes am Ende des Weges lauert.

Im Laufe der Jahre, seit den Zeiten, als er als reservierter junger Zupacker im wollenen Anzug den Zug nahm, um Cheyenne hinter sich zu lassen, bis zum heutigen Jahr, als hinkender alter Mann, hatte Mero jeden Gedanken aus seinem Kopf verbannt, der ihn an den Ort erinnerte, an dem er begann: Eine sogenannte Ranch auf fremdem Boden am südlichen Rande der Big Horns.

"The Half-Skinned Steer" berichtet über die Reise des alten Mero Corns zurück nach Wyoming, auf dem Weg zur Beerdigung seines Bruders. Während der Fahrt in den Westen werden Details seiner ereignisreichen Reise mit Erinnerungen an seine Jugend auf der Ranch gespickt -- vor allem eine unglaubliche Geschichte, die er in früheren Zeiten gehört hatte, über eine trübe Tasse namens Tin Head und einen geschlachteten jungen Ochsen. Proulx glänzt wieder einmal mit einer Mischung aus einsamen Landschaften, makabren Geschehnissen und geschädigten Menschen, die sich am Ende zu einer nahezu perfekten Geschichte zusammenaddieren. Es überrascht wohl kaum, daß "The Half-Skinned Steer" in John Updikes Kurzgeschichtensammlung Best American Short Stories of the Century aufgenommen wurde.

Proulx erzielt ähnliche Ergebnisse mit vielen der anderen Geschichten in Close Range, einschließlich einer anderen preisgekrönten Erzählung, "Brokeback Mountain". Das ist die bittersüße Geschichte einer zum Scheitern verurteilten Liebe zwischen zwei Cowboys, die "kaum anständig zusammen sein können" und doch wissen, "wenn wir das am falschen Ort tun, dann sind wir tot." Proulx lockert wohlweislich die ganze Mischung etwas auf. In "The Blood Bay" gibt sie sich ihrem Geschmack für das Schaurige mit einer düster-amüsanten Nacherzählung einer breitgewalzten, schwachpointierten Geschichte aus dem Old West hin, während "Pair a Spurs" die tragikomische Wiedergabe einer Scheidung nach Wyoming-Art ist. Die Autorin ist in jeder Hinsicht ein wahres Unikum; ihr Heraufbeschwören des Westens ist so eigenartig und überraschend wie das eines Cormac McCarthy oder eines Ivan Doig. Close Range ist eine von Proulx' Glanzleistungen. --Alix Wilber

Amazon.com

With the very first sentence of the first story in this remarkable collection, Annie Proulx demonstrates what makes her great: images sharp as paper cuts conveyed in language so imaginative and compressed it's just this side of poetry; a sense of character so specific it takes only a sentence to establish a whole life; and the underlying promise of something utterly unexpected waiting just up ahead.

In the long unfurling of his life, from tight-wound kid hustler in a wool suit riding the train out of Cheyenne to geriatric limper in this spooled-out year, Mero had kicked down thoughts of the place where he began, a so-called ranch on strange ground at the south hinge of the Big Horns.

"The Half-Skinned Steer" chronicles elderly Mero Corn's journey back to Wyoming for his brother's funeral. As he drives west, details of his eventful trip are interspersed with recollections of his youth on the ranch--most notably a tall tale he heard told long ago about a sad-sack rancher named Tin Head and a butchered steer. This is vintage Proulx, a combination of isolated landscapes, macabre events, and damaged people that adds up, in the end, to a near-perfect story. It's no surprise that "The Half-Skinned Steer" made it into John Updike's Best American Short Stories of the Century.

Proulx achieves similar results with many of the other stories in Close Range, including another prizewinner, "Brokeback Mountain," the bittersweet story of doomed love between two cowboys who "can't hardly be decent together," yet know "if we do that in the wrong place we'll be dead." But Proulx is careful to add some leavening to the mix. In "The Blood Bay" she indulges her taste for the gruesome with a morbidly amusing retelling of an Old West shaggy-dog story, while "Pair a Spurs" is the sad-funny rendering of divorce, Wyoming style. The author is a true original in every sense of the word, and her evocation of the West is as singular and surprising as that of Cormac McCarthy or Ivan Doig. Close Range is Proulx at her best. --Alix Wilber

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Excellent craftmanship! 5. Juni 2000

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Taschenbuch

Annie Proulx manages to weave exquisite beauty into these stories which feature the roughest of cowboys and the harshest of landscapes. I was turned on to Proulx through the story "Brokeback Mountain", which appeared in an anthology of the best contemporary short stories, and I rushed out to buy this collection. The rest of the stories are equally beautiful. Proulx is a fine writer, creating unbelievably vivid stories with the lightest of hands. She is truly a master of language. Not one word is wasted. I generally would never pick up a book of cowboy stories, but Proulx has won me over. Her writing is superb, like poetry in motion. I too, am surprised at the Wyoming native who feels that Proulx has not represented Wyoming correctly. These are stories about individual people, and they are fiction. They do not represent all people from Wyoming. Rather, they capture the beauty of Wyoming, while weaving breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking, but always unique tales. Proulx is a superior writer, and I highly recommend this collection of short stories.

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Wyoming it ain't 26. Juli 1999

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

I've lived in Wyoming most of my life, except for college in Princeton and the first part of my career in New York City and San Francisco. I wouldn't say I'm just another redneck in America's Outback. So when I say Annie Proulx's "Wyoming" stories aren't a true reflection of the character and the landscape of a state (or a state of mind, if you will), then you can trust my perspective. Wyoming has always been a place on the way to someplace else; Ms. Proulx is like so many people before her who have lingered here long enough to affect a rather jaundiced view of this place, but not long enough to understand it. I can understand why Ms. Proulx's "Wyoming" is so appealing to uninformed and effete Eastern media and readers; it plays to their fantasies about this place.

But add Ms. Proulx's overwrought prose and her dark view of this or any world, and you're going to get a verbose, tangled, inaccessible and ugly portrait. That's OK for her nearly unlovable human characters, but new Western literature is also about surroundings, and in that, her writing fails.

A reader who is truly interested in this landscape and wants to see it the way folks live in it is better advised to pick up Ron Franscell's "Angel Fire" or C.L. Rawlins' "Gravity National Park."

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Tragic and wonderful 21. Februar 2006

Von amaterasu

Brokeback mountain is the most tragic lovestory I ever came across.
To be honest, another reviewer mentioned that puppy-loving gay cowboys are unrealistic; a view which I think may be dominated by some slight homophobia. I personally do not see why a gay person should not like dogs or not be a cowboy (although I'm hetero, do not like dogs, and am certainly no cowboy). Sure, if someone's got troubles with gay people, then this love story is probably not very appealing, although for me, the fact that the story was concerned with 2 men was not of any great importance. I have to admit that I saw this story as some "Romeo and Juliet" Shakespearian tragedy: 2 people who love each other, but cannot be happy together due to their circumstances: the society they live in would never condone their relationship.
Tragic and wonderful