Annie Proulx’s latest collection of stories from Wyoming, Fine Just The Way It Is, also includes two bits about Hell; Wyoming may be better than Hell, but just barely, and only because it is so much less populated. Hell, together with Satan and his sidekick Duane Fork, provide most of the humor in this collection. The other stories are heavy in misery but not overweight. Proulx has a perfect touch with the miserable truth about things: her skill with stories is that she is neither condescending towards her characters nor overdone for her readers. The pitch in all the stories presented in Fine Just the Way It Is is just about perfect, although the one piece set back in the time of a Native American buffalo hunt was steeped in bathos and pathos, as well as blood and tears.
The loveliest story in the collection, with its own rhythm, underlining harmony, and a final succinct coda is “Them Old Cowboy Songs”. “Tits Up in A Ditch” is such pure misery I hate to say I liked it but I did. “Testimony of the Donkey” was well-laid and carefully built up and quietly moving, as if it were a real story told by someone to me at the kitchen table, Shipping News sugar and cream laden tea between us, and with a big question left at the end: illusion or reality?
Speaking of Shipping News, and I always do when I talk about Annie Proulx, it is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. These short stories keep my admiration for her fully stoked.
