Customer Reviews
"Who needs Hell when you've got Wyoming?" - By: Michael Murphy, 28 Sep 2008 
Annie Proulx's trilogy of Wyoming short stories "Close Range", Bad Dirt" & now "Fine Just The Way It Is", is a magnificent testament to a landscape & its people. In the latest collection, three outstanding Proulx Wyoming 'specials' - drawing on early pioneering struggles, hardship during the Great Depression years & lifein present-day Wyoming - open a window into the lives of Wyoming people, past & present.
A sad story, setin the 1880's, "Them Old Cowboy Songs" records the gruelling pioneering experience of young newly-weds. Annie Proulx doesn't do 'sentimental' : what she does doin her distinctive unsparing prose, is stark reality treatment of the West, uncompromising portraits of Wyoming folk hard-pressed to scrape to-gether a living. Some homesteaders struggled through hard times but others had "short runs & were quickly forgotten". Small wonder then, as one old-stager put it, Wyoming "people thought they was doing all right if they was alive". Another 'hard-times' story, "The Great Divide", spans the years 1920-1940. It's 1932, Depression biting. For Hi Alcorn - a string of failures already behind him - money has to come from somewhere!!!.....
A special brand of Wyoming hell is reserved for Dakotah Listerin a strong, memorable contemporary story, "Tits Up In A Ditch". Joining the Army promises respite for the young recruit from the setbacks & rebuffs piled on her life at home. Discharged from military servicein Iraq, Dakotah returns home to Wyoming to the realisation that her past sufferingsin life - at home &in Iraq - palein comparison with what her future holdsin store.....
In Proulx's Wyoming, landscape can be as powerful a player as any character - clearly illustratedin the contemporary story, "Testimony of the Donkey", set against the backdrop of Wyoming's stark scenic grandeur. Another well-told modern story, "Family Man", recounts the recollections of old 80+ ranch-hand Ray Forkenbrock, seeing out his daysin a nursing home, surrounded by ranch-widows competing for "the favours of palsied men with beef jerky arms" whoin turn "could take their pick of shapeless housecoats & flowery skeletons" : but something much more weighty rankles Ray - a family secret of an "old betrayal" he's kept bottled up inside himself for years.....
Two stories are setin Hell - yes HELL! Outwith the bounds of Wyoming alto-gether! OUTSIDERS! Wandering like stray mavericks into country where they don't rightfully belong - & looking sheepishly out of place among prime stock! Range wars have broken out for less! Anyhow, Is 'Old Nick Hell' necessary when Proulx's topnotch Wyoming 'specials' mete out their own brand of Wyoming hell?
Fine Just the Way It Is - Tits-Up in a Ditch - By: Jessica, 15 Sep 2008 
First things first - the Amazon title states that this is a paperback. Well, the one they sent me is hardback. For the price, you'd kind of expect it to be hardback.
Nine stories, 220-odd pages. A greater range of stories thanin the past. But all featuring Proulx's dry, ironic wit & cut-down, seemingly sparse prose.
From 'Family Man', the first story:
"It was the time of year when Berenice Pann became conscious of the earth's dark turning, not a good time, she thought, to be starting a job, especially one as depressing as caring for elderly range widows...She had believed the sex drive fadedin the elderly, but these crones vied for the favours of palsied men with beef jerky arms."
So,in a couple of sentences, you know exactly where you are & what you are dealing with. You know, also, that it is the present day - no family looking after these elderly people, only visitors. And what we get is a huge clash of values, a mutual incomprehensibility between the generations.
What we also getin this short collection are ghost stories, winsome tales of the devil, tragic little family histories, so small that here is the only place they will be recorded, a story of life before Wyoming ranchers, and, finally, we get 'Tits-Upin a Ditch', just about the longest storyin this collection & certainly the most brutal, cruel & beautifully written. Totally contemporary, linking ranching metaphors with war, the fate of women across cultures, & final betrayal by family. From Wyoming to Iraq & back again.
Basically, the collection is worth it just for that last story. But overall, there are some real gems here, conjuring up the bleak beauty of these western states, the bleak beauty, cruelty, stupidity, fatefulness & even, occasionally, the humour of the situations & the people trapped within.
