Annie Proulx
Annie Proulx (Norwich, 22 augustus 1935)De Amerikaanse schrijfster en journaliste Annie Proulx werd geboren op 22 augustus 1935 in Norwich, Connecticut. Haar tweede roman, The Shipping News uit 1993 (Scheepsberichten) won de Pulitzer Prize for Fiction en de National Book Award voor fictie in 1994. Verder won ze de PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction voor haar eerste roman, Postcards (Ansichten). Annie Proulx begon na haar studie haar carrière als journaliste, en ging pas op latere leeftijd romans schrijven. Haar verhalen gaan vaak over het harde leven op het platteland, en worden gekenmerkt door een compact, maar buitengewoon beeldend en vaak komisch spraakgebruik. In 2005 verfilmde Ang Lee haar verhaal Brokeback Mountain dat voor het eerst in 1997 in The New Yorker verscheen. In 1998 ontving zij er de O. Henry Award en de National Magazine Award voor.
Uit The Old Ace in The Hole
“In late March Bob Dollar, a young, curly-headed man of twenty-five with the broad face of a cat, pale innocent eyes fringed with sooty lashes, drove east along Texas State Highway 15 in the panhandle, down from Denver the day before, over the Raton Pass and through the dead volcano country of northeast New Mexico to the Oklahoma pistol barrel, then a wrong turn north and wasted hours before he regained the way. It was a roaring spring morning with green in the sky, the air spiced with sand sagebrush and aromatic sumac. NPR faded from the radio in a string of announcements of corporate supporters, replaced by a Christian station that alternated pabulum preaching and punchy music. He switched to shit-kicker airwaves and listened to songs about staying home, going home, being home and the errors of leaving home.
The road ran along a railroad track. He thought the bend of the rails unutterably sad, those cold and gleaming strips of metal turning away into the distance made him think of the morning he was left on Uncle Tam's doorstep listening for the inside clatter of coffee pot and cups although there had been no train nor tracks there. He did not know how the rails had gotten into his head as symbols of sadness.
Gradually the ancient thrill of moving against the horizon into the great yellow distance heated him, for even fenced and cut with roads the overwhelming presence of grassland persisted, though nothing of the original prairie remained. It was all flat expanse and wide sky. Two coyotes looking for afterbirths trotted through a pasture to the east, moving through fluid grass, the sun backlighting their fur in such a way that they appeared to have silver linings.”
