Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2

Annie Proulx is not Anton Chekhov. There, I've said it.

At the recommendation of a good friend, I've read Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx. Ms. Proulx is probably best known as the author of the short story that was turned into the gay juggernaut Brokeback Mountain.

Perhaps this speaks more to my literary reading skills than it does to Ms. Proulx's writing, but I hate reading stories that sort of whimper to an end. Yes, I get it. Life on the plains of Wyoming is dull. The people are simple and plain spoken, but for the most part good hearted and somehow against all the odds contribute to fabric of American society in ways that cannot be understood by the soul-leeched urban dweller. I get it.

First, the strengths: Proulx is a great writer in creating description. "The Wamsutter Wolf" contains perhaps the most vivid, stomach-turning descriptions since 1984. And Proulx's characters are vivid, threatening to walk right off the page. But once off the page, what would they do? Setting and character are not enough. You need plot. Something has to happen. Proulx's stories are very thin on plot, and that is where the ultimate weakness in her writing comes into play.

It could be argued that the fact that nothing much happens in most of the stories is the whole point. Set in Elk Tooth, Wyoming, population six (apparently), there isn't a lot of opportunity for drama. A load of hay catches fire. A wire fence gets cut. Some good old boys get drunk. In the absence of nothing else happening, a town-wide beard-growing contest is probably pretty exciting. But, a collection of slice of life stories should add up to the illumination of a larger theme, and Bad Dirt simply does not tally.

The reason for this: while the characters are vivid, they are created in an air of condescension. Proulx is smarter than all of her characters and she never lets the reader forget it. Proulx does not create humorous characters in the way Chekhov does. Faulkner brought us lower-class, under-educated characters that demanded respect on the page. Proulx's characters are clowns, some verging on idiots, most of whom barely have enough ambition to sustain a pulse.

The themes that Proulx does try to address, such as racism against the Native Americans, is done in a shop-worn story that says nothing new on the topic. The story is of a young Indian woman discovering a silent-film re-enactment of the Battle of Wounded Knee. In researching the battle the woman discovers pride in her ethnicity. I won't spoil the story for those who've not yet read it, but it ends predictably. Other stories don't end so much as peter. "The Contest" is the story of the beard-growing contest. It seems as if Proulx got bored with the story, so the characters did too.

Aside from my vow to complete every book I start, when I finished Bad Dirt I could not answer the question as to why I had read it. If I felt there was a complexity I was missing I'd be inclined to go back to the stories again, but...nah.

Now, at the risk of literary whiplash, I've moved on to Pride and Prejudice. This is my first experience with Austen. Fifty pages in, all I can say at this point is that it's not as grim as I had anticipated.