Brokeback Mountain

Annie Proulx's short story, "Brokeback Mountain," is a beautifully crafted tale of love and longing. Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar meet when they're 20 year olds tending sheep on the titular mountain. The men are grateful for having each other for company on the long and lonely job; unexpectedly, they have sex on a cold winter's night. They both pass it off as a one-time thing and move on with their lives. However, when they meet again four years later, it's clear that they cannot forget each other, leading to years of yearning and ultimately frustration.

Set in 1963, the story uses the mythos of the great American West and cowboys to full effect. Ennis and Jack are two of the last people you'd expect to romance each other, which only deepens the meaning and realism of their relationship. Proulx's writing is spare; it took me awhile to read through and absorb the tale because of all that it implies without stating directly. With Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall on the cover and trailers for the movie playing non-stop, it's hard to not imagine them as the characters, which does not lessen the story and its impact. The ending is somewhat abrupt and perhaps overly tragic - but then all-too-often so is life. As others have noted, "Brokeback Mountain" is not necessarily "gay" lit; the characters and their longing are universal and the writing is simply excellent. Highly recommended.

I first heard of Brokeback Mountain when the movie was in production. It sounded good, so I immediately ordered the book, and boy am I glad I did. Annie Proulx has seriously touched me in ways I never thought a book, or any story for that matter, could. Brokeback Mountain starts out as a tale of two rough and tough farm and ranch hands, sequestered on Brokeback Mountain for the summer herding sheep. Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist immediately hit it off, drinking together and telling stories by the fire. But with night comes the cold, and it only takes one night to ignite their deep passion for one another, one that they must hide from the world. Both vow "I ain't no queer" and "It ain't nobody's business but ours", but after four gut-wrenching years apart, both longing for the other and wanting to hold the other near, the finally meet again, and pick up their ardent affair. By now, it's more than sex, it's a full-fledged relationship that neither can bear to sustain with anyone but the other.

I seriously recommend picking up Brokeback Mountain. The way Proulx writes the dialogue, describes the men, articulates the view of the landscape make the book more real, and at the end, after you've invested yourself in 58 pages, saddens your heart with sympathy for both men, knowing what both wanted, and at the same time knowing they could never have it. Though the book is only 58 pages, by the end you feel like you've known the men for the span of 20 years the book takes place, and that you've been watching and following along with them for that long. Brokeback Mountain deserves way beyond 5 stars, as Proulx delivers at least what I think to be the best book I've ever read, and is a tale that no one should go on without reading.

As you (may) already know, "Brokeback Mountain" is the story of forbidden homosexual love in rural 60's Middle-America where homophobia and bigotry are (very) prevalent. This is an awesome love story because the love of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar is pure, and genuine.

The book is actually a short story, however Annie Proulx is able to take the reader where the story is going because the story is very detailed and definitive.

The book is slightly different from the movie, although I was surprised to see that just about everything in the movie was mentioned in the book. However there are some details in the book that are not mentioned in the movie, for example the mention of pot-smoking between the two men. Also, the book does not discuss the characters of Lureen and Alma as the movie did.

When I first read this book and saw the movie I thought it was an incredibly tragic story. After thinking about it over the past six months (I cannot get this movie out of my mind because it is so thought-provoking), I have decided that "Brokeback Mountain" is also a happy tale. Because true love is so fleeting, and scarce, and these two men were able to find some happiness within each other, however heart-rending it may be.

I know this area is for reviewing the book Brokeback Mountain and not the film, but I had to respond to another reviewer's comments about the movie. I found my way to this page because I was so moved by the film I wanted to read the story upon which it was based. I am pretty picky and tough to please when it comes to both books and films, I'm not particularly liberal, and I rented this movie with no expectations beyond that it was a quirky little "gay cowboy movie."

IT BLEW ME AWAY. I watched it three times. I can't remember the last time a film affected me like this. It stayed with me for days, mostly thanks to Heath Ledger's haunting portrayal of Ennis Del Mar. This is truly one of the best performances I've ever seen on the screen. This movie cuts to the heart as much because of what is not said between characters as what is said. It has startlingly few gay love scenes, and even those are nongratuitous and brief; in fact, the two male leads have more sex scenes with the women characters than with each other. There is more "gayness" in an average episode of "Will & Grace."

I never doubted for a minute that Jack and Ennis were in love, it's in every gesture, every look, and the fact that they continue to see each other for over 20 years despite the risks involved. Remember that men especially in those days were conditioned not to express their true feelings, even when it didn't involve a social taboo. The Jack Twist character only solicits prostitutes because he yearns to be with Ennis but can't. He like Ennis is a homosexual man living in a time and place where he is forced to deny that reality and live a lie. If he was only looking for sex, he wouldn't drive hundreds of miles just because he learns that Ennis got divorced. He is even willing to leave his family to be with Ennis.

Calling this a "gay cowboy movie" does it a great injustice. I don't think Ang Lee could have done a better job. It deserved to win the Oscar not because it's "politically correct" or it tackles a controversial subject, but because it's brilliantly written, directed, and most of all acted. If you haven't seen the movie yet and maybe are hesitating because you think it will make you uncomfortable, see it and you won't regret it. And if you're like me and had thought of Heath Ledger as a pretty-boy actor who did costume movies, you're in for a rude awakening. This film is one of the best I've ever seen, and I can't wait to read the story.

Seeing the trailer for the film, I decided to buy and read Annie Proulx's haunting Brokeback Mountain and I'm still recovering from the sheer emotional tornado this book caused me. It literally blew my mind with its slang but literal prose, its powerful sensuality and sheer brilliance.

The story is a heartbreaking romance of missed opportunities bwtween two rough, masculine cowboys spanning a period of 20 years.

Both Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are desperate for love and one another(They knew they were meant for each other from the first moment they laid eyes on each other) but their lives move in directions beyond and within their control in a way that their all-consuming passion for one another never bears fruit.

It's a sad commentary on a cruel, bigoted, judgemental world.

Proulx's prose brims with such passionate homoeroticism that I had to look more than once at her picture to make sure that she really is a woman. In this regard, she reminds me of Mary Renault, another female author who depicts male gay love with knowing sensuality.

Even though the ending was inevitable, it still comes as a gut wrenching kick, and makes you want to scream, Jack , Ennis why didn't you screw the world and go back to Brokeback Mountain?

One of the best short stories I've ever read. The overall feeling of lost opportunities and unexplored feelings is overwhelming and will stay with you for a long time afterward. What the story lacks in fleshed-out characterizations it more than compensates for in emotional impact.

After finishing this kick to the gut story, I can't stop asking myself, how on earth did Ms. Proulx get into the minds of these two gay men so profoundly, without actually being a gay man? To put it in rather crude terms, this is the story of a bottom and a top and how their coupling creates unity. In many ways, they are so much alike, and yet, they are so profoundly different from each other. Ennis is a monogamous, completely inarticulate top that needs only one partner to be happy. Jack, on the other hand, is a mercurial and restless bottom, who needs to continuously couple. When they are separated, their lives turn into one of meaninglessness, longing and hunting. The story moves at a fast clip, but as told through Ennis' eyes (he is a bit slow on the uptake), life's most important lesson, taking responsibility for your own life, enfolds very slowly. When Ennis finally begins to understand the true nature of his situation, and the fact that he has lost the single most important thing in his life, we are laid bare. In the end, I realized what Ms Proulx knows isn't particularly gay, it's just particularly human. God bless her.

In Ang Lee's 2005 film, "Brokeback Mountain," the doomed love of two cowboys is gradually chronicled over a 2-hour film. The film expands on Annie Proulx's story of the same title.

I recommend that if you've seen the film, you oughta read the short story, available in this new 60-page movie tie-in or in Proulx's earlier short story collection, "Close Range: Wyoming." (The story is from 1997.)

You oughta read the short story because you get to experience the whole tale of Ennis and Jack in a different way. Whereas the film is epic, picturesque, and even a tad long, the story is succinct and often subtle, but full of detail that can easily be missed on the first reading. Proulx is poetic as she immerses the reader in STUNNINGLY written cowboy vernacular as the tale is told mostly thru Ennis (wonderfully realized by Heath "Who Knew He Could Act?!" Ledger).

A good short story makes you pause in the middle of reading it because the prose is so powerful that you just gotta sit and reflect a bit. Seemingly insignificant scenes in the film take on a brand-new literary significance as you read Proulx, and she frames her prose to highlight Brokeback's themes of denial, longing and silence over a relationship between two cowboys that just ain't status quo. In the film, the scrambling of the sheep with another herd seems unimportant, if not comical; in the story, it's a turning point, as the mixing of things that one don't expect to get mixed together begins to haunt the masculine cowboy, and a love for his fellow ranchhand, Jack, escalates.

Though it's just words on a page here, Proulx's prose paints rich images in your head. Somehow the image of Ennis and Jack's shirts intertwined on a hanger lingers a bit longer when you read the text than just by seeing the film. Other than taking your Brokeback experience to a new level, you won't get any more plot points than what you see in the film. (But you will get to read a little bit more about Jack Twist's troubled relationship with his father in the short story.) The short story is easy to read, especially if you already have seen the film. And unlike many short stories, it's not so cryptic that it's hard to understand, and the ending is very satisfactory and carries perhaps the whole point of the story (i won't say it here, don't wanna spoil it!). Once you read it, I promise iyou'll probably want to read it again because it's so rich in detail, language, and theme that you'd swear you just finished reading an entire novel when you're through. And wannabe novelists take note: Proulx is able to convey the entire character of Jack's frigid wife mentioning her in only like two (three?) sentences/phrases.

Regarding this edition: The movie tie-in stretches a single story over 60-plus pages, so the print is kinda big, and you get maybe 2-3 paragraphs a page. There are no pictures or anything specially added, but the cover is the movie poster image with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal (Jack Twist).

On another note, if you happen to collect the yearly O. Henry awards short stories collections, I've seen somewhere this story is in the 1997 annual. Not sure if it's in the Best American Short Stories collection for that year, but I don't think it is (what an oversight!!).

Brokeback Mountain has been dubbed the gay cowboy story, but it really isn't. The two young men who fall in love in this story are not really cowboys at all. They are just two ordinary boys (who look nothing like Heath and Jake) who happened to have been raised within the cowboy culture, so beloved in the west. A culture that happens to have little room and probably little to offer most gay men.

I know many young men like Ennis and Jack although I must say, none of them are openly homosexual. They are polite, charming, laconic, more often than not-not particularly handsome, yet you could easily fall in love with most any one of them.

Many of these young men form strong friendships through the bonding experiences that are such a strong part of the western culture. The great outdoors offer many opportunities for men to bond through their work and play, so even if you don't particularly understand same sex attraction, Proulx makes you understand Ennis and Jack's love for each other. And she makes your heart break when that love must be kept secret, causing the kind of suffering people separated from their true love or their true self can really understand.

Like many, the buzz about the forthcoming movie led me to this book, and it lived up to -- and went beyond -- my expectations. Now bring on the movie!

Annie Proulx deftly and boldly tackles a subject too few are willing to admit: men *can* and *do* fall in love with each other, despite the odds and what society tells them. Kudos to her for presenting the public at large with rough-and-tumble "regular Joes" in such a situation for a change, rather than the stereotypical finger-snapping drag queens, wise-cracking urban fops and primiscuous party boys usually merchandised by the mass media as the image of the homosexual male. And as gut-wrenching as the sad ending is, it touches on the irrationality of this last of socially sanctioned prejudices on the part of a society that finds it easier to hate, rather than tolerate, what it may disagree with, even though it isn't harming anyone.

For its critics, (1) this book is a *short story,* so one shouldn't expect it to go on for longer than 60 pages; (2) the "grammatical errors" and "mispellings" were confined to dialogue written in dialect, as the characters themselves would speak in real life; and (3) if the women in the story were "victimized," they were just as much as the men -- because perhaps women wouldn't be put in such a position if society didn't din in into everybody's head that same-sex attraction is inherently wrong or marriage and childrearing are a "must" for everyone (an obviously arguable point in a culture with a 60% divorce rate).

All in all, thumbs up for Proulx. She tackled a difficult subject and told the story of two lifetimes in the confined space of a short story, with deftness of prose and the daring of a different perspective.