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Dec 17, 2009

Jenny rated it:

The cover blurb on my paperback copy proclaims Proulx's work to be in the spirit of Mark Twain, and while I doubt I'd've come up with that myself, it is spot on, especially here. Proulx has a dark sense of humor which blends perfectly with the landscape she paints of the New West. Her characters are incredibly alive, flaws and all. Personal favorite in this collection: "The Trickle Down Effect" wherein the main character is hired to haul hay from Wisconsin to Wyoming, only just past th More...

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Jan 01, 2012

Frederick rated it:

Short stories set in Wyoming. They mostly center around the fictional town of Elk Tooth, with three bars and no Wal-Mart.The best one of the bunch is called "The Wamsutter Wolf". It is about a guy who drifts around from job to job. He finds himself living in a trailer across from a family of true trailer trash. Eventually the husband, drunk, beats one of the kids and breaks his arm. The wife seeks the main character's trailer for refuge, but ends up going back to her useless, violent h More...

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Feb 06, 2011

Shane rated it:

A delightful collection of short stories as good as the first one, Close Range.

Welcome to Wyoming, where the water is bad or missing and farm life is under threat, where lunch is dinner and newcomers don’t quite fit in, and where lambs are castrated with a pair of sharp teeth; where the characters are eccentric and the highest educated may be badgers (one has a university education, believe it or not!) Mercifully, one does not have to pay income taxes to live in this joint called the More...

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Nov 25, 2010

Jenny rated it:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/cd...

Rocky Mountain News

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URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/bo...
Proulx digs into eccentric West
By Jenny Shank, Special To The News
December 3, 2004

Annie Proulx writes of a West that is a touch more colorful than the one you and I inhabit. The first signs of this are the names of the characters who roam her second book of stories set in Wyomin More...

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Mar 10, 2010

Kat rated it:

http://tinyurl.com/5pzfqe

I made the mistake of reading the first Wyoming Stories collection (Close Range) before seeing Brokeback Mountain, which somewhat ruined the movie for me. Here's hoping none of her other stories get made into film, because I did it again.

And I'm doubting these will-- the first collection was sweeping, lonely, grandiose, heartbreaking. Pretty much everything you think of when you think of Wyoming. The second collection has stories are spiteful (Man More...

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Sep 07, 2009

Spike rated it:

Annie Proulx has once again proven herself to be a literary treasure, one of very few writers who can affect a literary style without the pithy navel-gazing dreck found in nearly every lit mag in America. She actually tells stories, and they are interesting! Imagine that. The language is there: each sentence finely tuned to the story's sentiment at the moment. The characters were strong-willed and quirky. Although I liked the names, I had trouble believing so many character could have such names More...

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Sep 06, 2009

Kate rated it:

I read this with the intention of writing a book review for a workshop in grad school, and I resisted reading it. Once I got into it, however, I fell in love with the stories. Each works together to create a picture of the West as it is experienced by outsiders who either do not understand how life works or by insiders who struggle against the confines of small town life. Annie Proulx is herself an outsider, an east coaster, who attempted to move to Wyoming to experience something like peace, I' More...

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Jan 06, 2012

Mr. Kovach rated it:

This book is by one of my favorite writers - Annie Proulx. She is an amazing writer. She wrote another book, called The Shipping News, that is one of my favorites. This book (Bad Dirt) is a collection is short stories about Wyoming (where she lives). It is her second collection of stories about Wyoming (the other is called Close range). I liked the first collection so I decided to read this one as well. I liked it because she writes beautifully and because it is interesting to read about a place More...

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Feb 07, 2011

Karolyn rated it:

I think I'm on to Annie Proulx. I ain't never been to Wy-o-ming, and that's just a way she wants it. Tryin a keep the place all to herself.

I have a romantic image of Wyoming, open plains leading the way to the majestic Tetons, and of course the cowboys. But Proulx leads one to believe the cowboys are only interested in the other cowboys or the warm mammals, the wide open plains are full of wolves and snakes, and the winters are so harsh that no visitor could ever survive.

He More...

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Oct 27, 2009

Mary rated it:

If I were limited to reading the work of one author for the rest of my life, Annie Proulx would be in the running. She covers the entire range of human emotion, including ones we don't necessarily have names for. You can laugh out loud over one sentence or paragraph, then feel like you've been kicked in the gut, all in the same story I keep sticky notes handy when reading A.P. because I know I'll want to refer again to certain lines, such as:

"Take that damn thing off." And More...

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Jan 11, 2012

Sharon rated it:

Bad Dirt by Anne Proulx This book is a collection of short stories about people from Elk Tooth Wyoming, mostly fiction. The local game warden told poachers he had caught to stand in a sink hole, thus he had very little paper work to turn in. Amanda ran the Pee Wee Bar had a hard time keeping the cows out of her garden, they always broke through the fence. To solve her problem she rented Alligators from flordia from spring to fall to keep the cows at bay. The Stifle family who had little money More...

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Jan 09, 2009

Sean rated it:

Annie Proulx is one of my favorite authors, and so I guess I hold her to a higher standard than I do most other authors. About halfway through this collection, I thought to myself that it wasn't as good as Close Range, her first collection of Wyoming stories. Even though I ended up thinking the second half was better, I still finished it feeling slightly disappointed. The collection as a whole left me wanting. It's not bad, per se; in fact, I liked a lot of the stories. The various residents of More...

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Jan 27, 2012

Tony rated it:

Bad Dirt is the second volume of Wyoming Stories. For me it did not reach the same heights as Close Range. In Bad Dirt there are more departures from realism and more use of the folksy yarn, less of the sharp love for the land, less capturing of character. Three stories stand out for me, each focusing on a different demographic. 'What kind of furniture would Jesus pick?' tells of a rancher gradually ground down and reduced to disarray, along with the whole state of Wyoming. 'Man crawling out of More...

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Jun 21, 2011

Susan rated it:

Guess I'm on a Proulx kick for a bit. Love these stories, dark and hilarious. Love the names - Archibald Brawls, Ulysses Bird, Rase Wham, Creel Zmundzinski. Love the descriptions of wind and weather and detailing. Love the titles - "What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?," "Man Crawling Out of Trees," "Summer of the Hot Tubs." Much to say about how past flows into the present. Again the concern for drought and devastation of land in the name of profit. Much, to More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

No one can avoid comparing Bad Dirt to its predecessor; critics uniformly lauded Close Range for its inventive language and sober themes. This time around, Proulx employs straightforward prose to describe her characters' often foolish hopes and dreams. Several reviewers praise the sequel for its forays into magical realism and portraits of Western yokels. It's still bleak, but there is more laughter this time. One story ("What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?") makes even the most c

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Nov 14, 2011

Laura rated it:

I enjoyed this book. A dear Utah friend, Doug, sent it to me when I moved to Wyoming. It fulfilled two needs: Entertaining short, breezy stories and insights to Wyomingites. I enjoyed "Bad Dirt" so much, in fact, I'm contemplating starting an Annie Proulx book club at my public library.
She has a hodge-podge of characters -- a couple from New York who purchased a retirement home outside Jackson, an heiress in Casper who plays polo in Sheridan, plenty of ranchers and even a story a More...

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Feb 14, 2011

Cheryl rated it:

Proulx's Wyoming is a hardscrabble territory for everyone who touches the dirt there: the old-time ranchers, the young guys scrounging for work in the natural resources industries, the environmentalists and even the retirees who buy imported olives. I listened to this book on CD, which in retrospect is not the best form for reading short stories, so I spent a lot of time just trying to orient myself to a new batch of characters every few tracks. But I enjoyed the many intersections of the Old an More...

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Mar 22, 2011

Branden rated it:

the fact of the matter is this: annie proulx is amazing. with the exception of only a few folks, there is basically no one else writing today who can spin a yarn AND turn a sentence like she can. Bad Dirt is, okay, maybe the weakest of the three books of the wyoming stories, but taken as a trilogy the collected stories are so much more than the sum of their parts. and "what kind of furniture would jesus pick?," which is collected here, is really one of the standouts (including "Br More...

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Jan 21, 2012

Jolynne rated it:

If you love Wyoming, quirkiness and the Red Green Show, this is the book for you. I was scared to pick it up at first because some of Proulx's work is just too dark for me. I'm glad to say this hit the same wickedly funny notes that the Shipping News did--sometimes I felt guilty for laughing but I just couldn't help it. My favorite stories were the Wamsutter Wolf, Summer of the Hot Tubs and The Contest.

Annie Proulx's writing is so good, I find myself analyzing it, trying to understand More...

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May 22, 2009

Marielle rated it:

This is a great compilation in the true Proulx tone. Or course we are back out West, this time with Amanda Gibb, the bartender, a bickering married couple from New York, a hole that sucks up bad people, Florida Aligators, a lesbian couple with an old teakettle, and much more. One of the stories that talked to me the most, just for its outright filthy trailer park environment, was the one in which a young man is forced to move out West after his parents kick him out when their house is robbed. More...

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Feb 02, 2008

Rick rated it:

Uneven collection of short stories by one of our finest writers working in long and short fiction. Successful entertainments like “The Hellhole” and “The Contest” are matched with less successful ones like “The Old Badger Game,” along with a few more substantive stories like “The Indian War Refought,” “Man Crawling Out of Trees,” and “The Wamsutter Wolf.” The meatier stories mix people from different worlds (geographic, cultural, or social) on the same grim Wyoming landscape and hang on somethin More...

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Aug 15, 2011

Kated rated it:

I love these stories. I recently travelled in Wyoming and Proulx - as with the Shipping News - has so elegantly and gracefully used words to capture the extraordinary extremes of the Wyoming landscape. There is darkness in these stories, loss, misery, longing, disappointment, but also a great deal of wit, and I laughed aloud several times while reading. These are perhaps not short stories as such, they are vignettes, windows on lives, on thoughts, on incidents, and I will read them again and aga More...

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Jan 09, 2008

Tung rated it:

A book of short stories from a writer I think is one of the most technically gifted writers alive. Her Pulitzer-winner Shipping News is one of my favorite books of all time, and I’ve read all but one of her books. Unfortunately, this book only reflects glimpses of her strengths. The short stories in this collection are uneven, and overall not to the level of sharpness that I am accustomed to from Annie Proulx. The writing in these stories is labored and often overdone. One story is written (I More...

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Mar 05, 2009

Sarah rated it:

i was actually surprised by how much i liked the stories in this book. i’ve read the shipping news, but that’s the only proulx book i’ve read. i wasn’t expecting such wit, or the fantastical side of her stories (magic teakettle? poacher sucking hole?). but i really enjoyed those aspects of her stories.

plus, her writing is just fantastic.

we also have close range, and i plan on reading that one soon.

the teakettle played no favorites.

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Jan 02, 2009

Nelvis rated it:

In rural Wyoming, people pride themselves as hardcore individualists. Thing is, this rampant individualism is contrary to any real sense of community. So you end up with individuals cut off from society. By choice and/or circumstance it comes down to "I" vs. "they" (where "they" is everybody not from 3-generation of Wyoming blood). Isolated like this, the people in Annie Proulx's stories are living (or just surving) existential lives on the very edge of civilization More...

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Nov 12, 2008

Paul rated it:

I only have Brokeback Mountain to compare these stories to, as this was the only story I read in Close Range (Wyoming Stories 1). It's an incredibly powerful story, and one that totally eclipses anything in Bad Dirt. Overall, this collection was disappointing. From the reviews I've read, it's supposed to be the weakest of the three Wyoming collections. Many of the stories, set in the town of Elk Tooth, have a light, humorous, and often magical air to them -- in one, a tea kettle grants wishes wh More...

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Jul 01, 2011

Trish rated it:

Never read anything by Annie Proulx but I can see why she's got such a following. Really clever little stories with a range of colorful characters. I know nothing about Wyoming and this book made me wish that every wikipedia entry about a place could be accompanied by a book like this that gives you insight about the people and the region in a way that facts about chief industries, date of admittance into the union and annual rainfall never could.

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Dec 13, 2009

Kathyladner rated it:

If you love Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry then you will probably love Annie Proulx's Wyoming Stories. Her best short story in the book is the first: The Hellhole - a story that hilariously tells where all people who hunt, hike or camp but don't respect nature should go. Good book to have on the nightstand when you need to read a short story to fall asleep. When you read her dialogue, you really feel like you are in Wyoming or Colorado or Montana.

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Oct 25, 2011

Zoe rated it:

I am not a great short story fan, but Annie Proulx seems to weave all the individual stories into one big country. You start tasting the dust in your mouth, and visualizing the mountains and grazing cattle, the waitress who always calls you "honey" and the cracked lips. Makes you think about the "tenderfeet" who have money and want to buy a piece of history, feel like a Westerner by putting on a pair of $500 boots. It ain't happenin' here.

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Jan 12, 2008

Judy rated it:

Favorite character's names:
Creel Zmundzinski, Warden Orion Horncrackle, Reverend Jefford J. Pecker, A horse called Dull Knife, Plato Bucklew, Crisp Braid, Condor Figg, Wiregrass Cokendall, Apollo Wham, Pliers and Rammy, Ulysses Straw Bird, Hard Winter Ulph.

"The patrons of Pee Wee's prided themselves on their sangfroid. They stayed cool when strangers invaded the bar, but took in every nuance of outlandish behavior and speech for later discussion. No one had blinked when More...

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