Unfortunately, I returned the copy of Close Range to the library the other day. There was one quote, at the beginning of a story, that really struck, it was not from Brokeback Mountain, but from one of the other stories. It was the opening paragraph of the particular story, and it talked about nature and time and how people's lives happen against this much larger backdrop, that doesn't know and doesn't care. Although it wasn't from the actual short story Brokeback Mountain, it fit it very well. I wish I had the book here with me so I can quote it verbatim. I didn't even know that Ms. Proulx had written another Wyoming Stories collection, called Bad Dirt. I came across it's title on the internet the other day, so today I went to the library to get it, and right next to it, guess what I found? A third Wyoming Stories collection, called Fine Just the Way it Is. I had no idea about that one, so what a pleasant surprise! So now I'm reading those, but damn how I wish she'd written Brokeback Mountain as a novel, and not a short story. It really deserves to be a novel on its own.
