Essay Questions

Who is the main character in the stories “I’ve Always Loved This Place” and “Swamp Mischief” and why does he feel distinctly out of place among Proulx’s short fiction?

While Proulx’s short fiction output is almost certainly best know for “Brokeback Mountain” that story of homosexuality on the range is actually quite fitting among the rest of her canon. This is the author, after all, who has published three short story collections featuring the subtitle “Wyoming Stories.” The third volume of those collections, titled Fine Just the Way It Is, contains the two stories mentioned above and they both make gay cowboys seem like just another once upon a time in the west sort of fable. There are actually two characters who appear in both stories that to some just don’t feel quite at home stuck amongst stories featuring a retirement home for cowboys and a story titled “The Sagebrush Kid.” Those characters are Duane Fork, who is the secretary/butler to none other than the Devil. Yes, the actual Devil and both stories, yes, take place in Hell.

In “Brokeback Mountain” what ignites the process of Alma and Ennis drifting apart eventually seeds toward divorce?

It has been four years since Ennis and Jack spend their summer together on Brokeback Mountain and in that time Ennis has gotten married and produced two little girls with Alma. He has never mentioned Jack, much less opened up about what happened between them. When Jack first shows up, Alma spies the two men hugging each other in a way that goes far beyond the rational Ennis soon offers about them not having seen each other in four years. By the time he makes that excuse, however, Alma has seen more than merely a chest-and-crotch close hug, she has actually witnessed her husband passionately kissing this other man. But it is his absolute refusal to wear a condom while having sex with her and mixture of anger caused by his not taking care of the kids he’s already sired and the thought of where else his penis has been—that really kickstarts the beginning of the end.

What storytelling element has been noted as particularly unusual for Proulx’s short fiction in the stories contained in the collection Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2?

More than a few critics have term the second collection of short stories by the author the least satisfying. And in their critiques, it seems that one reason which invariably rises for this opinion is sudden desire by Proulx to give her characters even more unusual names than normal. Keep in mind that there are some fascinating names in all three collections so it is not as if she peoples her stories with a bunch of Johns and Betties. Still, the very first line of the very story does identify a game warden as Creel Zmundsinski before adding an aging warden named Orion Horncrack into the mix. From that inauspicious beginning—for some critics—the whole name game just goes downhill. Before long, readers are having to keep track of an attorney named Gay G. Brawls, a man named Deb Sipple, a telegraph clerk named Budget Wolfscale and a man named Wiregrass Cokendall who has the audacity to name his son Kevin.