Annie Proulx

Now a television mini-series airing on National Geographic May 2020 A Washington Post Best Book of the Year & a New York Times Notable Book From the Pulitzer Prize---winning author of The Shipping News and "Brokeback Mountain," comes the New York Times bestselling epic about the demise of the world's forests: "Barkskins is grand entertainment in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoy...the crowning achievement of Annie Proulx's distinguished career, but also perhaps the greatest environmental novel ever written" (San Francisco Chronicle). In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, Ren Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a "seigneur," for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters--barkskins. Ren suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi'kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years--their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions--the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse. Proulx's inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid--in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope--that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination.

Annie Proulx, one of America's finest writers, invites us to share her experience in the building of her new home on a rich plot of untouched, unspoilt prairie and her pleasure in uncovering of the layers of American history locked beneath the topsoil.

Part autobiography, part natural history, Bird Cloud is the glorious story of Annie Proulx's piece of the Wyoming landscape and her home there. "Bird Cloud" is the name Annie Proulx gave to 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie and four-hundred-foot cliffs plunging down to the North Platte River. On the day she first visited, a cloud in the shape of a bird hung in the evening sky. Proulx also saw pelicans, bald eagles, golden eagles, great blue herons, ravens, scores of bluebirds, harriers, kestrels, elk, deer and a dozen antelope. She fell in love with the land, then owned by the Nature Conservancy, and she knew what she wanted to build on it--a house in harmony with her work, her appetites and her character, a library surrounded by bedrooms and a kitchen. Bird Cloud is the story of designing and constructing that house--with its solar panels, Japanese soak tub, concrete floor, and elk horn handles on kitchen cabinets. It is also an enthralling natural history and archaeology of the region--inhabited for millennia by Ute, Arapaho, and Shoshone Indians--and a family history, going back to nineteenth-century Mississippi riverboat captains and Canadian settlers. Proulx, a writer with extraordinary powers of observation and compassion, here turns her lens on herself. We understand how she came to be living in a house surrounded by wilderness, with shelves for thousands of books and long worktables on which to heap manuscripts, research materials and maps, and how she came to be one of the great American writers of her time.

Following on from the publication of the first six titles featuring The Library of Congress' internationally renowned collection of Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information (OWI) photographs, the 'Fields of Vision' series continues with images showcasing the work of Arthur Rothstein, Gordon Parks and Carl Mydans. Providing a unique view of American life during the Great Depression and Second World War, each 'Fields of Vision' volume includes an introduction to the life of the photographer by a leading author or journalist, and 50 evocative images selected from their work. Transporting the viewer to American homes, farms and streets in the 1930s and 1940s, they also offer a glimpse of a new narrative and intimate style that was later to blossom on the pages of 'LOOK' and 'LIFE' magazines. For many Americans of the pre-television age, the diversity and complexity of their country was defined by the lenses of these men and women. Carl Mydans was born in Boston in 1907 and earned a degree in journalism from Boston University in 1930. In 1935 he joined the Resettlement Administration (which became the FSA) as a photographer. Mydans traveled in the South, documenting agricultural workers and rural poverty, and toured New England towns hard-hit by the Depression. His work was distinguished by his ability to tell an entire story in a single image. After sixteen months with the government, Mydans left to work at 'LIFE' magazine, where he stayed until the magazine closed in the early 1970s. He died in 2004.

I Annie Proulx’ mesterlige historier er livet råt og hårdt, landskabet stort og åbent. Som den betagende natur, fortællingerne udspiller sig i, drives bogens personer af en kompromisløs og kraftfuld energi. Her er vanviddet og ensomheden på spil, men også den uforudsigelige og svimlende kærlighed.I denne kritikerroste samling findes fortællingen bag den prisbelønnede storfilm Brokeback Mountain. Som det sker her, oplever vi i flere af historierne humor og skønhed i et møde med smerte og desperation, der vidner om en dyb og elementær menneskelighed."Proulx skriver, så man formeligt mærker vinden, kulden i knoglerne, volden i kroppen, tømmermænd og skægstubbene på hagen – hun kan virkelig skrive sig ind i de her mandekroppe."*****Berlingske Tidende

Twenty years ago, Dan Flores's Caprock Canyonlands became one of the first books ever to treat the flat, arid landscape of the southern High Plains as a place of uncommon beauty and enduring spirit. Now a classic, Caprock Canyonlands has been favorably compared by readers to the work of such icons of nature and environmental writing as William Bartram, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau.Containing the author's stunning photography, a foreword by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Annie Proulx, author of ""Brokeback Mountain,"" an afterword by environmental historian Thomas R. Dunlap, and a new preface by the author, this twentieth anniversary edition makes available to a new generation of readers Flores's knowledgeable and heartfelt narrative of the canyons and badlands of eastern New Mexico and western Oklahoma and Texas. He evokes the history and natural history that shaped the region, drawing upon geology, mythology, botany, art, history and natural history that shaped the region, drawing upon geology, mythology, botany, art, history, and literature.""Caprock Canoynlands keeps its place on our bookshelves . . . for its exploration of a deeply human activity: the search for the beauty of the earth, the depth and strength of our ties to it, and the ways those appear in a particular landscape . . . here illuminated by love.""--from the afterword by Thomas R. Dunlap

The fantastic new collection of stories from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Shipping News’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’. ‘Fine Just The Way It Is’ marks Annie Proulx's return to the Wyoming of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and the familiar cast of hardy, unsentimental prairie folk. The stories are cast over centuries, and capture the voices and lives of the settlers this sagebrushed and weatherworn country has known, from the native Indian tribes to the modern day ranch owners and politicians, and their cowboy forebears. In ‘A Family Man’, an old man nearing the end of his life unburdens himself of the weighty family secrets that were his father’s unwelcome legacy. ‘Them Old Cowboy Songs’ follows Archie and Rosie, a young pioneer couple, and their hardships in their attempt to homestead in the exposed wintry expanses of the prairie, and ‘Testimony of the Donkey’ finds a young international couple, Marc and Caitlin, struggling with much more modern concerns, and confronting uncertainty as their relationship comes to its end. These are stories of desperation and hard times, often marked by an inescapable sadness, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming’s traditional character and attitudes – confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty – with the more benign values of the new west. These are bold, elegant and memorable pieces, and once more confirm Annie Proulx as one of the most talented, unique short story writers in the language.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx, an "unforgettable" (Miami Herald) and "vivid" (Oprah Daily) collection of stories set in Wyoming. Winner of two O. Henry Prizes, Annie Proulx has been anthologized in nearly every major collection of great American stories. Her bold, inimitable language, her exhilarating eye for detail, her dark sense of humor, and her compassion inform this profoundly compelling collection of stories. Proulx creates a fierce, visceral panorama of American folly and fate in these nine dazzling stories about multiple generations of Americans struggling through life in the West. Each character is a pioneer of a sort--some are billionaires, some are escapists, and some just think the rest of the country has it wrong. Deeply sympathetic to the men and women fighting to survive in this harsh place, Proulx turns their lives into fiction with the power of myth, leaving the reader in awe.

Eine unvergessliche, tragikomische Geschichte, erzählt von der mehrfach preisgekrönten Autorin Annie Proulx, in deren herb-poetischer Sprache jene fremde Gegend zum Sehnsuchtsland wird. ?Schiffsmeldungen? fürs Lokalblatt soll Quoyle jetzt schreiben. Quoyle, der ewige Versager und Pechvogel, den es aus dem Staat New York auf die Felseninsel Neufundland im Osten Kanadas verschlagen hat. Quoyle, der immer schon panische Angst vor dem Wasser hatte. Und doch findet er hier in dieser kargen Landschaft, wo seine Vorfahren siedelten, so etwas wie Glück und für sich und seine beiden Töchter so etwas wie ein Zuhause ? Der Roman, der Annie Proulx berühmt machte!

Die Odysse eines Akkordeons durch 100 Jahre amerikanische Geschichte. Ein grünes Akkordeon, 1890 in Sizilien gefertigt, gelangt mit seinem ersten Besitzer nach Amerika. Fast 100 Jahre lang erlebt es eine Odyssee durch den Kontinent, wird gestohlen, verkauft, verpfändet und verschenkt und begleitet die Nachfahren verschiedener Einwanderersippen auf ihrer Suche nach einem besseren Leben. Der Roman, voll Musik und Leidenschaft, voll Schmerz und Gewalt, erzählt von der Geschichte Amerikas und vom Schicksal der Menschen, die es schufen.

A companion volume to the new film chronicling the intimate relationship between two cowboys that spans many years and frequent separations, includes not only the original award-winning story on which the film is based, but also the complete screenplay and two essays on how the story was translated into film. Original. 50,000 first printing. (A Focus Features film, written by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana, directed by Ang Lee, releasing December 2005, starring Jake Gyllenhaal & Heath Ledger). (Performing Arts).

The inspiration behind â??Life of Piâ?? director Ang Leeâ??s â??Brokeback Mountainâ?? is one of the short stories to be found in this haunting collection of Wyoming tales.

A new anthology of short fiction by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author features an array of stories, all set in Wyoming, that feature colorful, eccentric, and moving characters who have a profound effect on the people around them, in such tales as "The Trickle Down Effect," "The Contest," and "What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?" Reprint. 175,000 first printing.

A remarkable collection of short stories set in Wyoming from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of ‘The Shipping News’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’. ‘Bad Dirt’ is filled with the vivid and willful characters for which Proulx has become known. Each story occupies a community or landscape described in rich and robust language, with an eye for detail unparalleled in American fiction. In ‘The Contest’, the men of Elk Tooth, Wyoming, vow to put aside their razors for two seasons and wait to see who has the longest beard come the 4th of July. Deb Sipple, the moving protagonist of ‘That Trickle Down Effect’, finds that his opportunism – and his smoking habit – lead to a massive destruction. And ‘What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?’ is the story of Gilbert Wolfscale, whose rabid devotion to his ranch drives off his wife and sons. Proulx displays her wit in every story of this stunning collection, as well as her knowledge of the West, of history, of ranching and of farming. Her profound sympathy for characters who must use sheer will and courage to make it in tough territory makes this collection extraordinarily compelling.

Bob Dollar, ein ziel- und heimatloser junger Mann, nimmt einen Job an, der ihn in die Weite von Texas und Oklahoma führt. Der Job ist nicht gerade das Gelbe vom Ei, Bob soll nach geeignetem Land für Schweinemastbetriebe suchen, aber immerhin. In dieser gottverlassenen Gegend schließt er Bekanntschaft mit den skurrilsten Menschen und ihren Schicksalen. Das Leben da draußen lehrt den jungen Mann, sich nicht so ungeheuer wichtig zu nehmen, sich mit seiner unguten Geschichte auszusöhnen und sein Schicksal in die Hand zu nehmen. Ein großartiger Roman über das heutige Amerika - voller Leben und Poesie, rauer Schönheit und herrlichem Humor. "Nie zuvor wurde der Mythos des Wilden Westens so gnadenlos demontiert wie in diesen atmosphärisch dicht erzählten Legenden und Lebensläufen." Die Woche "Eine neue Expedition mitten ins Herz der amerikanischen Finsternis - mit einem Lichtblick: Menschlichkeit." BRIGITTE "Ein waschechtes Stück Landeskunde über die raue Gegend des einstigen "Wilden Westens", fabelhaft verpackt in einen Roman." Münchner Merkur

Folks in the Texas panhandle do not like hog farms. But Bob Dollar is determined to see his new job as hog site scout for Global Pork Rind through to the end. However he is forced to face the idiosyncratic inhabitants of Woolybucket and to question his own notions of loyalty and home.

Discover the pleasures of making and drinking cider. From choosing the right apples through reaping the liquid rewards of a successful pressing, this classic guide has you covered. With detailed drawings of cider-making equipment, methods, and set-up, even a novice juicer will enjoy sweet and spicy gallons in no time. Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols provide insightful, time-tested advice enlivened by a smattering of historical anecdotes. Whether you like your cider sweet or hard, you’re sure to find a recipe that satisfies.