Understanding Annie ProulxA writer's critique of the American Dream Understanding Annie Proulx introduces readers to the writings of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author best known for the novels Postcards, The Shipping News, and Accordion Crimes. Karen L. Rood surveys Proulx's life, career, and five book-length works of fiction to identify and discuss their major themes. In addition to examining the lyrical prose, wealth of detail, and distinctive characterization that have brought Proulx widespread praise, Rood identifies and analyzes the novelist's primary thematic concern--the way ordinary people conduct their lives in the face of massive social, economic, and ecological change. Rood chronicles Proulx's childhood, development as a writer, and relatively late entry into fiction writing. (Proulx published her first story collection at the age of fifty-seven, after nearly two decades of writing nonfiction books, articles, and pamphlets.) Suggesting that these early years served as a long and valuable apprenticeship for Proulx's mature fiction, Rood demonstrates how the novelist's graduate studies in history, extensive research experience, and knowledge of rural life have formed her worldview and enriched her writing. In separate chapters Rood provides critical appraisals of Proulx's two short-story collections and three novels. She discusses how in these works Proulx warns her readers about the dire consequences, for both the globe and those inhabiting it, of the headlong rush toward modernization. She also traces Proulx's ambitious attempt to define American life in all its aspects, underlining the vast disparity between Americans' idealized vision of their past and the real history of violence and prejudice that has shaped the nation as it is today. |
Contents
Understanding Annie Proulx | 1 |
Heart Songs and Other Stories | 16 |
Postcards | 39 |
The Shipping News | 60 |
Accordion Crimes | 89 |
Wyoming Stories | 153 |
Conclusion | 192 |
Notes | 193 |
ALICIA OSTRIKER 155 | 155 |
The Fisherwomans Daughter | 161 |
Talking About Mothers | 187 |
SUSAN BEE MIRA SCHOR MYREL CHERNICK | 199 |
NANCY HUSTON 211 | 211 |
ELLEN MCMAHON 225 | 225 |
JOY WILLIAMS | 231 |
JOAN SNYDER | 247 |
Bibliography | 199 |
207 | |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | xi |
ELIZABETH SMART 13 | 13 |
Excerpt from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath | 19 |
Excerpt from On Being a Grandmother | 27 |
Feminism and Motherhood | 33 |
JANE LAZARRE 61 | 61 |
Anger and Tenderness | 81 |
ALICE WALKER 99 | 99 |
SUSAN RUBIN SULEIMAN 113 | 113 |
ALICE WALKER 139 | 139 |
STORIES | 259 |
TILLIE OLSEN | 265 |
GRACE PALEY | 273 |
ROSELLEN BROWN | 281 |
LYNDA SCHOR | 301 |
MARGARET ATWOOD | 311 |
ANNIE ERNAUX | 325 |
TONI MORRISON | 337 |
CONTRIBUTORS | 345 |
PERMISSIONS | 353 |