Lately I've found my weblog entries expanding as I write. Several unfinished "essays" have been "in progress" since early November. With an eye toward more regular posting, I'm resolving to post more often, and to post smaller. For New Year's Day I'm presenting a single serving of the material I've been collecting on Annie Proulx. I had originally intended to post those choice quotes from Heart Songs, and accompany them with a list of her other books and links to informative Web sites. I've spent several hours on this so far, and the little project continues to grow. Today, I'm presenting the fiction links.
Ms. Proulx's novels and short stories have been both popular and critically acclaimed, so my praise is redundant. Postcards, her first novel, won the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award, and her second novel, The Shipping News, won the 1993 National Book Award and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. As a Proulx fan and devoted squeezebox player, I was waiting at the bookstore for Accordion Crimes when it was published. However, I think I like her short story collections best of all. Heart Songs and Other Stories (1988) is a vivid reminder for me of what rural New England was really like when I lived there. I've never been to Wyoming, but after reading Close Range : Wyoming Stories, I feel as if I have.
There are more books I haven't read yet, including That Old Ace in the Hole : A Novel and Bad Dirt : Wyoming Stories 2. Since I moved to Pocahontas County, my book shopping has dropped off a bit. Fortunately for me, fiction like Proulx's is never dated.
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