“Brokeback Mountain” by Annie Proulx

 

He didn’t ask Ennis if he had a watch but took a cheap round ticker on a braided cord from a box on a high shelf, wound and set it, tossed it to him as if he weren’t worth the reach. “TOMORROW MORNIN we’ll truck you up the jump-off.” Pair of deuces going nowhere.

Jon Lewis selected this as one of the 100 Best Short Stories and I’ll admit I was skeptical. I was lukewarm to the film—fine performances, just found the pace slow.

I held off on reading this one due to the celluloid memory.

I was wrong. Proulx has her cowboyin’ down and shooting it through the lens of two confused men trapped in a life they didn’t ask for like pinned butterflies is wise and ultimately sad.

Candidly, my resistance to this story mirrors the resistance the characters encounter in their own lives and in their own psyches as they are at once motivated by and repelled by what is within them.

Smart, rife with craft, and something of jewel to make me admire what I simply did not want to read.