Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 [Paperback]

I greatly enjoyed Proulx' Close Range collection of short stories,

and Bad Dirt (subtitled "Wyoming Stories 2") is a very worthy

encore. The Close Range stories gave a wonderful flavor to the

rural areas of the state, the people, the land, the warm and the

rough sides, both past and present. Some of the stories were

humorous, others were harrowing, some were a whimsical mix. You'll

find just the same mix (and a bit more) in Bad Dirt. You start off

with a 12-page story about Game & Fish Warden Creel Zmundzinski (who

turns up again in a couple of more stories) that begins in a nice

straightforward fashion, and then takes off into a kind of

humorous Proulx-Stephen King joint venture (or perhaps

Proulx-King-Carl Hiaassen).

Several stories center on the residents and the 3 bars in the tiny

town of Elk City: I very much like reading another of Proulx'

short stories when I feel that I already know the characters well

(one of these is a kind of Proulx-Hiaassen mix involving rental

alligators--it sounds bizarre, but the story works in a truly

delightful way).

The best of the stories is The Wamsutter Wolf, and runs about 35

pages. Buddy Millar lives in a $40/month rental housetrailer

5 miles out from the center of a small boomtown (almost all

trailers). You don't get much for your $40 a month. His only

neighbors live close by in an even grungier trailer--a bully who

beat him up in high school, his wife and passel of grungy young

kids, one of whom is a 4-year-old alcoholic (his father believes

that learning to drink young avoids the problems that come with

learning later). This is a horrifying and harrowing story--

stronger than anything I remember in Close Range. It's very

tough, utterly realistic, and it left me wanting to see it

expanded to about 300 pages as a novel.

Annie Proulx and William Gay (I Hate To See The Evening Sun Go

Down) are the two best short-story writers I've read in many

years--and both write excellent novels as well.

Didn't like it as much as At Close Range. The stories seems less inspired, a little more flippant, a little less likely to grab you, shake you, scratch you, bite you, gouge you than the former collection. Still very well written, and more engaging that most stuff I pick up on a whim or obtain on recommendation from friends or family. Oh - I'm a Wyoming native, I live on the family ranch outside Saratoga (look it up on a map!), and trust me, the other reviews from us 'Pokes are right - these stories (and At Close Range) actually are pretty durn close to Wyoming then and now (especially the geography and landscapes, the climate, the damn WIND, and the very necessary self-reliance of most folks), although I'd have to say your average WY native is maybe just a little bit less colorful and probably a little bit more of a warm, caring, educated person (though we have more than our share of Proulx characters).

This volume of stories about Wyoming contains four fully developed, character-driven short stories interspersed with what feels like seven thinly disguised local anecdotes. Yet in both kinds of stories Proulx demonstrates a Faulkner-like skill at portraying agrarian locals coming head-to-head with modernity. The final (anecdotal) story, "Florida Rental", especially reminded me of Faulkner's "Spotted Horses" sequence from The Snopes Trilogy. And like Faulkner, Proulx seems to have an underlying affection (or at least respect) for all her characters, even the ones she seems to enjoy skewering.

The substantial stories that I enjoyed are: "The Indian Wars Refaught" about a troubled young Sioux woman who reconnects with her sense of identity while sorting archival material related to the battle of Wounded Knee; "What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?," about one Wyoming rancher's decline in the face of changing times, a failed marriage, and sons who've gone their own ways; "Man Crawling Out of Trees" about an elderly couple who moved to Wyoming from the East and how each of them responds in radically different ways to the rugged terrain, taciturn populace, and sense of isolation; "The Wamsutter Wolf" in which the human characters are eerily shown to behave according to wolf pack mores. Of all the stories, these four come closest to matching the standard Proulx set for herself with "Brokeback Mountain." Also worth mentioning here is "Dump Junk," a story that interestingly moves beyond Proulx's very grounded sense of reality into the realm of fantasy.

All in all, this is a pretty satisfying collection of stories.