The peculiarities of a realist

Fine just the way it is: Wyoming stories by Annie Proulx

The realism of Annie Proulx’s fiction is an extraordinary phenomenon. Realism in a novel has never been the same thing as plausibility, and her novels and short stories are full of bizarre and unforeseen events. The violent extremity of a great deal of her narratives sometimes verges on the territory of urban myth rather than anything recognizable as everyday life, and she enjoys characters considerably beyond the ordinary territory of the grotesque. A roll-call of her characters’ names suggests some of the fantastic strangeness of her fictional world: Freda Beautyrooms, LaVon Fronk, Rope Butt, Ruby Loving (a man), Hefran Wardrip, and a whole family named after musical instruments, of whom we hear of aunts Viola, Lutie, Banjie, and uncles Xylo and Tam (presumably –bourine). We are not, it seems, in Kansas any more.

And yet she is a densely realist writer.