Annie Proulx puts it down. What Melville did with the
thoroughly American harvest of work and souls, the whale.
She does trees. Gritty and surprising, unafraid to be slow-moving,
piercing insight, breathtaking moments. Buy it, Barkskins, the Book. Or reserve
it at your local library: http://bit.ly/2o9AyZn
What does it take to cook something the size and breadth of
a 19th century novel, a “Moby Dick,” a “Les Miserables,” when such
ambitious, glorious wonders of the human imagination are seen by
number-crunching publishers as viable to the 21st century creative
economy as, say, the typewriter?
Bravo to Proulx for envisioning characters like Posey
Brandon, the New Brunswick hellion wench, and the soft-edged Jinot, for
believing there is as much necessary art to a meditation on Indian spiritual
life on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, than in Hugo’s Paris.
Just try to find the elite street in this novel, the back
alley of hipster New York, the naked reach for a niche market. Nope. Not here.
Of course, she is Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of “The Shipping News,” the one who brought us the genre-bending short
story “Brokeback Mountain,” better known as a movie. Still, she doesn’t skimp,
or cut corners. She takes advantage of her star status and writes hell out of
topic that others wouldn’t begin to think would be publishable.
In the latest Paris Review, Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury
tells us that in his country literature has always been safe in its
marginality. That has become as much true in what I see as our increasingly
authoritarian regime. Problem is, the more capitalistic the society, the less
likely you’ll see literature – the kind the Khoury is talking about.
Then along comes Proulx and “Barkskins.” For folks who give a
damn about literature – not just publishing – this is something to celebrate.
Next: Running for
Your Life: Lee’s Miserables
