Bookworm
Annie Proulx
Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 (Scribner) Annie Proulx's new collection is a stew of tall tales, romantic sagebrush sagas, and genuinely affecting stories of survival on the range. * Language Advisory
By Michael Silverblatt • • 30m Listen: Wyoming Stories 3
(Scribner)
Annie Proulx's new collection is a stew of tall tales, romantic sagebrush sagas, and genuinely affecting stories of survival on the range. She finds this same mixture of high and low, of passion and parody in Western ballads. Take Clementine, for instance: "She is lost and gone forever, and her shoes were number nine."
Read an excerpt from Fine Just the Way It Is.
Language advisory: This interview includes a discussion of Proulx's story "Tits Up in a Ditch." It is a phrase used by ranching people in Wyoming and is not used lightly. It means being in a hopeless situation. It refers to a cow that slips down a bank and lands on its back in a ditch, unable to right itself.
Banner image: Gus Powell