Western Book Roundup
Oprah Picks Wroblewski’s “Sawtelle” and “Brokeback” Porn Aggrieves Proulx
It's getting to be all David Wroblewski all the time around here at the Roundup, but heck, this is big news: Oprah has named The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by the Westminster, Colo. writer as her next Book Club selection. Check out my interview with him, which I conducted a few weeks before the book was published, and my review of it for the Rocky Mountain News here. Patti Thorn, Books Editor at the Rocky, has the post-Oprah announcement scoop with Wroblewski.
Earlier this month, Robert J Hughes of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Annie Proulx about her new story collection. Proulx said that this would be her final collection of Wyoming stories, because she wants to avoid the "regional-writer" label. She also remarked on how the film version of "Brokeback Mountain" affected her life: "'Brokeback Mountain' has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life."
Also in the Roundup: Book news from Idaho's Joan Opyr and Kim Barnes and Oregon's Floyd Skloot, and Missoula mourns the death of crime novelist James Crumley.
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Western Book Roundup
Wyoming Reads, Wroblewski Takes His Time on Film Deal
It seems like every week I have some new information to mention about bestselling Colorado writer David Wroblewski, so here's today's tidbit: Rachel Deahl of Publishers Weekly reports: "…48-year-old debut author David Wroblewski has made an unusual request—he's asked would-be producers to pitch their film ideas to him in person so he can choose who’s most deserving of the film rights. The unusual (and demanding) move, if nothing else, will make a quick acquisition unlikely." This seems to be characteristic of Wroblewski, who took over a decade to craft his hit novel. He continues to be more concerned with quality than speed. (Via Texas Pages.)
The September 11 edition of The Economist reported that libraries and reading are thriving in Wyoming. (Via The Book Bench.) The article featured Burns, Wyoming's library, noting, "This town of just 300 people has a public library containing 11,500 books."
Also in the Roundup: Casper College hosts the 22nd annual Equality State Book Festival, The Wasatch Journal sponsors a Western short story contest, and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association's annual trade show hits Colorado Springs.
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New West Book Review
Annie Proulx’s Wyoming Is “Fine Just the Way It Is”
Fine Just the Way it Is: Wyoming Stories 3
by Annie Proulx
Scribner, 240 pages, $25
In an award-studded writing career now in its third decade, Annie Proulx has made the remarkable transition from east-coast-based Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist to much lauded Wyoming short story writer, and she's brought her devoted readership along with her. Who says the short story is dead? In Proulx's formidable hands, the short story is thriving, a form that is by turns muscular and lithe, perfectly suited to portraying rough lives cut short that she makes so entrancing and heartbreaking.
Proulx's third collection of Wyoming stories, Fine Just the Way it Is, includes several tales that are masterpieces on par with her best-known tale, "Brokeback Mountain," and one, "Tits-Up in a Ditch," that has to be in early contention for status as a classic of America's Iraq war period. Proulx's prose has never been better, infused with a specificity of landscape and emotion and marked by distinctive yet clear diction, such as in one story when a cowhand who was being unusually chatty and helpful realized it and "grouched up."
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Edra Blixseth and the other top owner of the Yellowstone Club near Big Sky have retained an Arizona-based company to manage the private club and complete its long-overdue construction projects, according to an item on PR-inside.com.
Over the past year and more, the Yellowstone Club, the world's only private skiing and golf community, has been in and out of the news, thanks to the public divorce of owners Tim and Edra Blixseth as well as legal battles between owners and Tim Blixseth. Also, the club missed loan payments to creditor Credit Suisse and teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Earlier this year, Edra won control of the club and vowed to get its overdue construction back on track and to keep its business out of the public eye.
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News of Note
Wyoming’s Economy Riding High on Oil and Gas
Wyoming's oil and gas industry is responsible for one in five jobs in the state and about one-third of the state's total economic output, according to a report detailed in today's Casper Star-Tribune
Business editor Tom Mast rounds up the highlights of the report, most of which confirm that while the direct economics of the industry are predictable, the "downstream" effects are even more staggering than one might expect.
As one investigator says, "It shows vulnerabilities associated with oil and gas in that it's such a large portion of Wyoming's economy."
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Sheridan - Think of Wyoming as the giant ocean that it once was, with vast stretches of water between islands and atolls. Imagine traveling by boat. The more time and money it costs to reach each island, the more isolated it becomes – unless it has something singular to offer. The plain jane atolls affording nothing but tidal pools and coconuts eventually are ignored all together.
The high cost of fuel, circa 2008, has the same isolating factors on Wyoming as the oceans of yore.
Never mind the irony about how much fuel we produce. Wyoming communities, especially the small ones, depend on cheap oil. Wyoming relies on the outside world for practically everything. The more it costs to deliver those goods, the more they're going to cost the populace.
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New West Book Review
“Still”: Robb Kendrick’s Cowboy Tintypes
Still: Cowboys at the Start of the Twenty-First Century
By Robb Kendrick
University of Texas Press
232 pages, $50
The West's open range cowboy era that has been so romanticized in American myth, film, and books endured only for a short period during the 19th century, before fenced land became the norm, but photographer Robb Kendrick has devoted his career to capturing contemporary cowboys who look as though they've stepped right out of those legendary times. Kendrick doesn't costume his subjects to fit a role, unlike famous frontier photographer Edward S. Curtis (as Marianne Wiggins notes in her astute introduction), but he does have a great eye for men and women whose dress, faces, and demeanor make for an iconic look when he captures their image in a tintype, a photographic process that reigned in America from after the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century.
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energy
Controversy Looms Over Oil Shale
New regulations intended to steer the removal of vast resources of oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have drawn praise from supporters and fierce criticism from opponents, underscoring the controversy that hangs over an energy source that gets more and more attention as fuel prices climb.
Environmentalists blasted the proposed regulations as an attempt by the Bush administration to ramp up energy development in its waning days. In Colorado, where the oil shale is in less supply but is considered easier to reach, Sen. Ken Salazar has accused the administration of trying to “set the stage for a last minute fire sale” of oil shale leases. He has joined his brother Rep. John Salazar and Rep. Mark Udall, a fellow Democrat, in calling for a year-long moratorium before allowing any oil shale development. Gov. Bill Ritter, also a Democrat, has also opposed the new regulations.
Supporters say the new rules are necessary if development of oil shale, believed to be years away from being commercially viable, is ever going to happen.
“I think it’s going to be a while for all of these (alternative fuel sources) to be significant players,” said Jerry Boak, director of the Colorado Energy Research Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be pursuing them.”
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Western Book Roundup
Nonprofit Bookstore Opens in Bend and New Missoula Lit Mag Launches
Idealistic optimism in the book world is not dead: David Jasper of the Bend Bulletin reported that Kilns Bookstore, a nonprofit enterprise, opened in Bend over the holiday weekend. (Via Shelf Awareness.) Jasper writes, "The opening comes just more than a month after The Book Barn, a 35-year-old shop in nearby downtown, closed due to declining sales and stiff competition from online retailers such as Amazon."
Rick Bass recently reviewed Stephen Trimble's new book, Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America for the Boston Globe.
Denise Hill at the NewPages blog noted the arrival of the premier issue of a new literary magazine called The Oval, published by University of Montana undergraduates.
Also in the Roundup: the Virginia Quarterly Review publishes a new story by a Casper author, the Colorado Book Award finalists are announced, and Denver's David Sirota tours.
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New West Book Review
Lonely Hearts: Steven Wingate’s “Wifeshopping”
Wifeshopping
By Steven Wingate
Houghton Mifflin, 208 pages, $12.95
The men in Steven Wingate's engrossing, entertaining debut story collection Wifeshopping are looking not just for love, but for marriage. They're not adverse to commitment, but they are particular, seeking the ideal woman for whom to forsake their days of youthful flings. This ultimate woman never quite materializes for Wingate's protagonists, who reject their girlfriends and fiancées because they don't like used clothes or don't agree that they should get rid of a stranger's mementos found buried in the backyard. But more often, their women reject them for being too pompous, for proposing marriage too early or for trying to rush them out of their rituals of mourning for past loves. Wingate, who lives in Lafayette, Colo. and teaches at the University of Colorado, sets his stories across the country, from Denver to Thermopolis, Wyo., to Rockport, Mass., to Miami (and vividly evokes each of these varied settings), but the problems that plague his characters are the same everywhere—they're not-quite-perfect guys trying to create something lasting and meaningful with not-quite-perfect women.
Steven Wingate will discuss his book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on July 30 at 7:30 p.m., and at Poor Richard's Bookstore in Colorado Springs on August 7 at 5 p.m.
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