Just finished the novel “Postcards,” by E. Annie Proulx, author of “Shipping News.” From the back cover: “…the tale of the Blood family, New England farmers who must confront the twentieth century – and their own extinction. As the family slowly disintegrates, its members struggle valiantly against the powerful forces of loneliness and necessity, seeking a sense of home and place forever lost.”
It fell short of “Shipping News,” and was her first novel, I believe. It’s one of those storylines that traces the slow depressing decline of its characters. She has the same powerful sense of character dialect like she had in “Shipping News,” authentic but at times distracting. I like the way her stories operate on two levels, one very grounded in reality that leaves dirt under your nails, and another in a grand sweeping mythology, with names like Loyal Blood, Mink, Mrs. Nipple, Starr, and a hitchhiking Indian that leaves with the main character a journal that he will carry along with him for the rest of his life, jotting down the fragments of his years on the road.
Here is one of the pages that I dogeared, where she writes in bold type, a kind of prose poetry that channels all of the senses: “He passed old trucks humping along on bald treads. He is worried about his own tires. He turns off onto a gravel road but the stones fly up, dust chokes him. Grit in his mouth. When he rubs his fingers against the ball of his thumb he feels hard grit. And turns back onto the concrete. Miles of snow fence. A peregrine falcon balances on a forgotten hay bale. The flatness changes, the earth’s color changes, darker, darker. Prayers and long silences out of the dusty radio. In the autumn rain the houses become trailers among the trees. Oaks come at him, flash, burst into thickets, into woods. H&C Café, EATS, Amoco, GAS 3 MI. AHEAD. Fog. A little night fog. The soil in Indiana a deep brown-black. The cattle sink into its blackness. Southering geese spring up from the sloughs and ponds, scissor over him in the hundreds. The water is streaked with the lines of their angular necks, fractioned by dipping heads and beaks. In the diner hunched over the cup of coffee he wonders how far he is going.”
It fell short of “Shipping News,” and was her first novel, I believe. It’s one of those storylines that traces the slow depressing decline of its characters. She has the same powerful sense of character dialect like she had in “Shipping News,” authentic but at times distracting. I like the way her stories operate on two levels, one very grounded in reality that leaves dirt under your nails, and another in a grand sweeping mythology, with names like Loyal Blood, Mink, Mrs. Nipple, Starr, and a hitchhiking Indian that leaves with the main character a journal that he will carry along with him for the rest of his life, jotting down the fragments of his years on the road.
Here is one of the pages that I dogeared, where she writes in bold type, a kind of prose poetry that channels all of the senses: “He passed old trucks humping along on bald treads. He is worried about his own tires. He turns off onto a gravel road but the stones fly up, dust chokes him. Grit in his mouth. When he rubs his fingers against the ball of his thumb he feels hard grit. And turns back onto the concrete. Miles of snow fence. A peregrine falcon balances on a forgotten hay bale. The flatness changes, the earth’s color changes, darker, darker. Prayers and long silences out of the dusty radio. In the autumn rain the houses become trailers among the trees. Oaks come at him, flash, burst into thickets, into woods. H&C Café, EATS, Amoco, GAS 3 MI. AHEAD. Fog. A little night fog. The soil in Indiana a deep brown-black. The cattle sink into its blackness. Southering geese spring up from the sloughs and ponds, scissor over him in the hundreds. The water is streaked with the lines of their angular necks, fractioned by dipping heads and beaks. In the diner hunched over the cup of coffee he wonders how far he is going.”
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