Close Range: Wyoming Stories is a 1999

1999 in literature

The year 1999 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*June 19 - Stephen King is hit by a Dodge van while taking a walk. He spends the next three weeks hospitalized...

 collection of short stories written by E. Annie Proulx

E. Annie Proulx

Edna Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News , won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994, and was made into a film in 2001...

. The stories are set in the desolate landscape of rural Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

 and detail the often grim lives of the protagonists.

The best known story from the collection is Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain (short story)

"Brokeback Mountain" is a short story by American author Annie Proulx. It was originally published in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997, and was subsequently published in a slightly expanded version in Proulx's 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The story won an O....

, which was previously published as a 64-page novella in 1998. The story was the basis for Ang Lee

Ang Lee

Ang Lee is a Taiwanese film director. Lee has directed a diverse set of films such as Eat Drink Man Woman , Sense and Sensibility , Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , Hulk , and Brokeback Mountain , for which he won an Academy...

's 2005 film, Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is a 2005 romantic drama film directed by Ang Lee. It is a film adaptation of the 1997 short story of the same name by Annie Proulx with the screenplay written by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry...

, starring Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger

Heath Andrew Ledger was an Australian television and film actor. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger moved to the United States in 1998 to develop his film career...

 and Jake Gyllenhaal

Jake Gyllenhaal

Jacob Benjamin "Jake" Gyllenhaal is an American actor. The son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal and screenwriter Naomi Foner, Gyllenhaal began acting at age ten...

.

The volume includes 11 short stories:

• "The Half-Skinned Steer"
• "The Mud Below"
• "Job History
  Job History
  Job Historyis part of a short story series, Close Range: Wyoming Stories written by Annie Proulx. It takes place in the author's home town of Cora, Wyoming. The story follows the life of the main character Leeland Lee and his unsuccessful attempts to find a successful career...
  
  "
• "The Blood Bay"
• "People in Hell Just Want a Drink of Water"
• "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World"
• "Pair a Spurs"
• "A Lonely Coast"
• "The Governors of Wyoming"
• "55 Miles to the Gas Pump"
• "Brokeback Mountain
  Brokeback Mountain (short story)
  "Brokeback Mountain" is a short story by American author Annie Proulx. It was originally published in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997, and was subsequently published in a slightly expanded version in Proulx's 1999 collection of short stories, Close Range: Wyoming Stories. The story won an O....
  
  "

External links

• Don't Fence Me In: Book review by the New York Times