Book Review
"Bad Dirt": Red-state blues

By Michael Upchurch
Seattle Times book critic

ERIC DRAPER / AP

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In a 1995 interview, Annie Proulx observed that she had made "a conscious effort not to get tagged 'regional writer.' "

As if to prove a point, the prize-winning author has kept on the move throughout her career, setting her fiction in Vermont ("Heart Songs"), Newfoundland ("The Shipping News"), the northern Texas panhandle ("That Old Ace in the Hole"), and the whole length and breadth of the USA in "Postcards" and "Accordion Crimes."

Still, when she published her short-story collection "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" in 1999, it was clear she'd tapped into a region whose hold on her was anything but casual. Proulx may plan to set her next novel in Timbuktu, for all I know — but with "Close Range" and, now, "Bad Dirt," Wyoming has become, irrevocably, Proulx country.

Three of the 11 stories in "Bad Dirt" are outright masterpieces, seven are divertingly sly or macabre flights of fancy, and one is a mini-historical epic that reaches for the heights but doesn't quite get there.

"Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2" by Annie Proulx Scribner, 219 pp., $25

Other readers might quibble with that exact tally, but it's hard to imagine anyone dipping into "Bad Dirt" and not coming out of it pleasurably dusted up. Proulx is on a roll here, coming at this turf from the angle of both newcomer and old-timer. She brings a tough yet big-hearted sensibility to her vision of a rural ranchland Wyoming caught in a downward spiral of "too much work, not enough money, drought."

Those words come from "What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?" — one of the book's masterpieces, and not remotely the joke its title might suggest. Instead, it's a powerful tale about what it's like to see your traditional way of life eroding on every front.

In it, rancher Gilbert Wolfscale is struggling to hang onto his century-old family homestead. Divorce has estranged him from his wife and sons (it's incomprehensible to him that his sons have chosen video-store work and the restaurant business over the family ranch). Now he's running the place on his own: "He did everything in an odd, deliberate way ... and never retreated once he had taken a position. Neighbors said he was self-reliant, but there was a way they said it that meant something else."

A final blow to this longtime Republican comes when saline wastewater pits, the byproduct of coal-bed methane drilling on land next to his, start poisoning his own land. An unlikely alliance of "ecological conservationists and crusty ranchers" gets nowhere protesting against the politicians and gas company officials who favor proceeding with the drilling.

This is red-state America delivered on the page with a prickly complexity. Gilbert is simmering, ready to blow, but has to swallow his losses. Proulx's eye for his strengths and his vulnerability to change is flawless. He's a man who's had the ground yanked out from under him and, as such, he's a genuinely tragic figure.

In other stories, Proulx depicts ne'er-do-wells who are antic creatures but never simplistically cartoonish. In "The Wamsutter Wolf," feckless but kindhearted Buddy Millar gets caught in a trailer-trash mire that only the "wolf" of the title can help him escape. This is a bad-luck tale taken to giddy heights, with a great twist at the end.

The difficulties of being a newcomer to the state are addressed in "Man Crawling Out of Trees," in which a New York couple moves to Wyoming late in life. The wife bears the loneliness as best she can, while her husband delights in long drives through his new surroundings, classical music blasting from his car stereo: "He experienced the most intense pleasure in being alone, in swallowing the landscape in great chunks, drowning in the heavy surf of sound, the transmutation of geology into music."

A string of small episodes gradually convinces him, however, "that there was more to understanding the place than driving back roads and fitting music to abrupt topography." Flawed marriage and the power of place collide with one another, without Proulx ever tipping her hand toward where her deepest sympathies lie.

Several shorter stories — about a beard-growing contest, a hot-tub fad, a hay-finding expedition — serve as light relief, while "The Hellhole" and "Dump Junk" introduce fairy-tale elements into this Western setting. The one story that doesn't entirely work is "The Indian Wars Refought," which covers 100-odd years of Wyoming history in under 30 pages. Proulx's tone, as she tries to get under the skin of the story's Native American characters, feels especially strained.

As a whole, however, "Bad Dirt" hangs together beautifully. Recurring minor characters give the book the feeling of a suite rather than a miscellany of tales. And Proulx's easy mastery of both tragic and humorous notes makes the collection feel more spacious and all-encompassing than its modest length would suggest.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com. He has been the Seattle Times book critic since 1998, and has also published four novels.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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