Brokeback Mountain - by Annie Proulx (Paperback)

About the Book

Two handsomely produced editions of this award-winning story coincide with the release of the major independent film directed by Ang Lee and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger.

Book Synopsis

A standalone edition of Annie Proulx's beloved story "Brokeback Mountain" (in the collection Close Range)--the basis for the major motion picture directed by Ang Lee, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana.

Annie Proulx has written some of the most original and brilliant short stories in contemporary literature, and for many readers and reviewers, "Brokeback Mountain" is her masterpiece.

Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working as sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer.

Both men work hard, marry and have kids. Yet over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important bond in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it.

The New Yorker won the National Magazine Award for Fiction for its publication of "Brokeback Mountain," and the story was included in Prize Stories 1998: The O. Henry Awards. In gorgeous and haunting prose, Proulx limns the difficult, dangerous affair between two cowboys that survives everything but the world's intolerance.

Review Quotes

"'Brokeback Mountain' does some of the best things a story can do. It abolishes the old West clichés, excavates and honors a certain kind of elusive life, then nearly levels you with the emotional weight at its center."
-- Gail Caldwell, The Boston Sunday Globe

"A stand-out story...'Brokeback Mountain' is the sad chronology of a love affair between two men who can't afford to call it that. They know what they're not -- not queer, not gay -- but have no idea what they are."
-- Walter Kirn, New York

"Proulx's understanding is at its most remarkable in the astonishing 'Brokeback Mountain.' [She] knows what she could only know...by the infrared that allows a very few writers clear sight in the dark of the imagination."
-- Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Annie Proulx is the author of eleven books, including the novels The Shipping News, Accordion Crimes, and Barkskins, and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, a PEN/Faulkner Award, and two O. Henry prizes. Her story "Brokeback Mountain," which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. She lives in Vermont.