Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 - Softcover

Proulx, Annie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743260147 ISBN 13: 9780743260145

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2005

Synopsis

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx returns with another stellar collection of short stories bound to be even more successful than her bestselling, critically acclaimed Close Range.

Annie Proulx's new collection is peopled by characters who struggle with circumstances beyond their control. Born to ranching, drawn to it, or desperate to get out, they inhabit worlds that are isolated and often dangerous. Trouble comes at them from unexpected angles, and they drive themselves through it, hardheaded and resourceful. No one writes better than Proulx about the American west and about lives that may no longer be viable. This is a stunning collection by one of the most vivid and exhilarating writers of our time.

About this title

Review:

"Proulx renews the Western tradition of the short story as the tall tale....[She] does a matchless job of summing up the human comedy of the modern West."
-- Time

"Like Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner, Proulx has found a tone and style of delivery that allow her to be humorous and existentially black at the same time. No other writer in America gets away with this combination."
-- Denver Post

"A masterpiece."
-- People

"Annie Proulx is a genuine character -- a true original. She has a shrewd understanding of people, a strong feeling for landscape...and a wry sense of humor rather like Mark Twain's."
-- Los Angeles Times

From the Back Cover:

Annie Proulx's Wyoming - already familiar to readers of the best-selling collection Close Range - is at once ordinary and extraordinary, an isolated expanse of wasters and dreamers, whose inhabitants say there's no place like home but long for buffets and icebergs, imported olives and French cornichons. It is a state in which men grow beards competitively, in which a magic wish-granting kettle is as likely to bring microwave ovens as murder, in which Bible classes wonder 'What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?'

Bad Dirt is filled with the vivid and wilful characters for which Annie Proulx has become known: Cheri Wham, who married the sociopathic school bully and is raising a herd of beer-swilling children; Dr Playfire, who casts smug aspersions on his patients' paternity; Gilbert Wolfscale, who farms turkeys and adorns them with cranberry Thanksgiving necklaces to outdo the plastic-wrapped supermarket birds and their 'breasts like Las Vegas strippers'.

Annie Proulx has a profound sympathy for her unassumingly innocent characters, whose deepest secrets and desires are revealed with masterful skill. With cleverly wrought complications and magical twists, her latest collection is a work of wonderful imagination and unrivalled storytelling.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743260147
• ISBN 13: 9780743260145
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240