Brokeback Mountain

Annie Proulx. Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3. Scribner, 2008
1416571663 From Barnes & Noble The characters in Annie Proulx's third collection of Wyoming Stories include cowboys, an Iraq veteran, pioneer homesteaders, assorted wayward hippies, ambitious real estate developers, and the Devil himself. These nine short stories brim with vivid characters and crisp setups from a master of the subgenre. From the Publisher Returning to the territory of "Brokeback Mountain" (in her first volume of Wyoming Stories) and Bad Dirt (her second), National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx delivers a stunning and visceral new collection. In Fine Just the Way It Is, she has expanded the limits of the form. Her stories about multiple generations of Americans struggling through life in the West are a ferocious, dazzling panorama of American folly and fate. "Every ranch...had lost a boy," thinks Dakotah Hicks as she drives through "the hammered red landscape" of Wyoming, "boys smiling, sure in their risks, healthy, tipped out of the current of life by liquor and acceleration, rodeo smashups, bad horses, deep irrigation ditches, high trestles, tractor rollovers and 'unloaded' guns. Her boy, too...The trip along this road was a roll call of grief." Proulx's characters try to climb out of poverty and desperation but get cut down as if the land itself wanted their blood. Deeply sympathetic to the men and women fighting to survive in this harsh place, Proulx turns their lives into fiction with the power of myth - and leaves the reader in awe. The winner of two O. Henry Prizes, Annie Proulx has been anthologized in nearly every major collection of great American stories. Her bold, inimitable language, her exhilarating eye for detail and her dark sense of humor make this a profoundly compelling collection. The New York Times - Ron Carlson This is Annie Proulx, a writer who staked her claim around the spectacular rectangle of Wyoming by marking its "metes and bounds" with Close Range, took insurance on it with Bad Dirt and now appears with Fine Just the Way It Is, a third collection of Wyoming stories, just to make sure. The title could be paraphrased "Even if it's broken, don't fix it." Close Range is a remarkable book, lyric and gritty, and it contains "Brokeback Mountain," a breathtaking love story. But each of these collections bears Proulx's brand of hard drama, hard irony, hard weather, and hard and soft characters blown about and many times destroyed by the powerful mix. Her sense of story is admirable, her sentences are artful, and she writes like a demon. She has nicely disrupted the mythology of the Old West. The Washington Post - Marcela Valdes Annie Proulx turned 73 last month, and age has not softened her one bit. For almost three decades she has dazzled readers with fierce, casually brutal stories set in rural America. And her latest collection of Wyoming tales, Fine Just the Way It Is, excavates new riches from this golden vein. Publishers Weekly Will Patten is a fine actor who fits voice and pace to the tone of each story in this collection. He is often a quiet, dreamy narrator, but when stories slowly navigate toward a terrible, heart-in-mouth tension-as Proulx's so often do-he assumes a breathiness that significantly heightens the drama. As tale-teller, Patten has a slight Western accent; this sounds right, but also enables him to use a range of dialects as appropriate for each character. In a more straightforward manner, he narrates Proulx's amusing (though less successful) tales of the Devil redesigning Hell. Proulx, best known for Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, turns out prose as exquisite as ever in her wrenching tales of Wyoming, past and present. A Scribner hardcover (Reviews, May 26). (Sept.)Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Beth Traylor - Library Journal The National Book Award? and Pulitzer Prize? winner returns to the American West of Brokeback Mountain with this collection, which opens with a former ranch hand telling his granddaughter his life's secrets. It is difficult to distinguish wh.

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Ledger, Heath (Subject) & The Editors of GQ Magazine. HEATH LEDGER "HIP TO HOLLYWOOD" AND "HOLLYWOOD MAVERICK": GQ MAGAZINE ISSUES Rare Fine Copies With Three Color Prints of "Outttakes" from "Brokeback Mountain". New York City, NY: Conde Nast Publications, 2001.
Softcover. First Edition. First Printing. 240 pages. Fine. Rare Heath Ledger collectible item set. Copies of GQ Magazine June 2001 and February 2006 Issues. The first and second appearances of Heath Ledger on the magazine's prestigious cover, they are both now rare. The first feature, "Hip To Hollywood", describes the Australian actor as the sexy and talented successor to Mel Gibson, smiling winsomely for the camera. By the time of his second (and last) cover appearance, "Hollywood Maverick", Ledger, unsmiling and serious in a handsome closeup shot, was already considered one of the most daring and accomplishe d actors of our time, a full-fledged actor willing to take on roles that most of his peers would not go near, notably "Brokeback Mountain". The Magazine Issues come with three 8 X 10 inch digital color prints of the actor. The latter are each encased in protective plastic sheets. The photographs are "outtakes" from "Brokeback Mountain", which did not appear in/was cut from the film's final version. While Heath Ledger agreed to appear full-frontal nude for the scene, his co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal, did not. Director Ang Lee was forced to use body doubles in a very long shot. The photographs show the late, great actor unabashedly nude for a reason, proving that he was willing and able to give a role everything it demanded from him as an actor. Calls to restore the cuts in the DVD version were refused by Ang Lee, making the photographs the only documents we have of Ledger's daring. Now a film legend, Heath Ledger was nominated for Best Actor for his role in "Brokeback Mountain". It appears likely that he will be posthumously celebrated for his role as The Joker in "The Dark Knight" (2008), the Batman film that he completely dominates, and for which he won an Oscar. Both Issues contain numerous other features and breathtakingly beautiful photographs. A "must-have" set for Heath Ledger collectors. <b><i> These Issues have been out-of-print for a very long time and are now very highly collectible. They come with three 8 X 10 inch original color prints of the actor. This is one of extremely few copies of both GQ Magazine Issues still available online and are in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a beauty. Their value will not only keep but keep going up over a very short period of time. A rare set thus. </b></i> The greatest Hollywood actor of his generation. A fine collectible set. (SEE ALSO CHRISTOPHER ATKINS, ANTONIO BANDERAS, WARREN CUCCURULLO, LEONARDO DICAPRIO, AND BRAD PITT TITLES IN OUR CATALOG).

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Ledger, Heath (Subject) & The Editors of Rolling Stone Magazine. HEATH LEDGER "LONESOME COWBOY": ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE ISSUE Rare Fine Copy With Three Color Prints of "Outttakes" from "Brokeback Mountain". New York City, NY: Rolling Stone Magazine, 2006.
Softcover. First Edition. First Printing. 84 pages. Fine. Rare Heath Ledger collectible item set. Copy of the landmark Rolling Stone Magazine March 23, 2006 Issue. The first and only appearance of Ledger on the magazine's prestigious cover, it is now rare. The cover feature is devoted to Heath Ledger's ground-breaking performance as Ennis del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain", and contains his single most famous quote about what it was like to be kissing Jake Gyllenhaal, his co-star, for the role. "It wasn't the butt of a mule. I was kissing a human being with a soul" (Heath Ledger). If that does not defy and transcend all politically correct gender and sexual "orientations", nothing will. The Magazine Issue comes with three 8 X 10 inch digital color prints of the actor. The latter are each encased in protective plastic sheets. The photographs are "outtakes" from "Brokeback Mountain", which did not appear in/was cut from the film's final version. While Heath Ledger agreed to appear full-frontal nude for the scene, his co-star, Jake Gyllenhaal, did not. Director Ang Lee was forced to use body doubles in a very long shot. The photographs show the late, great actor unabashedly nude for a reason, proving that he was willing and able to give a role everything it demanded from him as an actor. Calls to restore the cuts in the DVD version were refused by Ang Lee, making the photographs the only documents we have of Ledger's daring. Now a film legend, Heath Ledger was nominated for Best Actor for his role in "Brokeback Mountain". It appears likely that he will be posthumously celebrated for his role as The Joker in "The Dark Knight" (2008), the Batman film that he completely dominates, and for which he won an Oscar. A "must-have" set for Heath Ledger collectors. <b><i> This Issue has been out-of-print for a long time and is now very highly collectible. It comes with three 8 X 10 inch original color prints of the actor. This is one of extremely few copies of the Rolling Stone Magazine Issue still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a beauty. Its value will not only keep but keep going up over a very short period of time. A rare set thus. </b></i> The greatest Hollywood actor of his generation. A fine collectible set. (SEE ALSO CHRISTOPHER ATKINS, ANTONIO BANDERAS, WARREN CUCCURULLO, LEONARDO DICAPRIO, AND BRAD PITT TITLES IN OUR CATALOG).

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Proulx, Annie. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN Scarce Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition. New York City, NY: Scribner, 2005.
Hardcover. First Edition. First Printing. 55 pages. Fine in Fine dust jacket. The author's novella-length short story. One of the greatest American short stories of the 20th century. The first appearance of the title by itself as a hardcover original. The piece first appeared (sensationally) in The New Yorker Magazine's October 13, 1997 Issue. It was subsequently published as a softcover original in the United Kingdom and then included in Annie Proulx's short story collection, "Close Range". This is the first time it appears specially on its own in hardcover. A lovely production by Erich Hobbing: Small-size volume format. Pale gray hard boards with gilt titles embossed on spine, as issued. Text by Annie Proulx. Printed on thick archival stock paper in the United States to the highest standards. In pictorial DJ with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. How a "woman writer" could write what is now widely considered the finest sexual/romantic story between two cowboys is a tribute to Annie Proulx's genius: Two ranch hands meet on a job and, without thinking about it, quickly fall in love. High-school dropouts, they have lived very rough lives, are penniless, and desperately in need of work. Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist end up herding for the same sheep operation on Brokeback Mountain. Proulx describes the ever-escalating passion of their sexual encounters in the most explicit yet tender manner. The love affair ends when they reluctantly go their separate ways. Four years later, they are reunited as married men with children, and quickly pick up where they left off. How the story unfolds and finally ends is vintage, top-drawer Proulx. It took Annie Proulx a very long time to write and after that, get published. "Heart Songs" appeared when she was 56 years old. Once she found her voice, it resonated with such indelible force among critics and readers in a way that many writers who have been around practically all their lives can only envy, and admire. Her tenacity is part of the reason she can write "Brokeback Mountain" so compellingly. The basis of the award-winning film by Ang Lee, with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. The lavish praise heaped upon the film adaptation is well-deserved as it replicates the story's intense and anguished homoeroticism, and Annie Proulx has publicly endorsed the film version as rendering justice to her story. A "must-have" title for Annie Proulx completists. <b><i> This title remains available in multiple subsequent printings, will probably never go out-of-print, and is now highly collectible. This is one of extremely few copies of the First Hardcover Edition still available online (full number line with 1) and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a beauty. A rare copy thus. </b></i> Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1993 for "Postcards". Winner of the National Book Award (in 1993) and the Pulitzer Prize (in 1994) for "The Shipping News". "Brokeback Mountain" was the Winner of the U. S. National Magazine Award in 1998. One of the finest living writers. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER ANNIE PROULX TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0743275306.

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