Scribner, January 2011
Most memoirs, it turns out, are written for the reader. I hadn't noticed this explicitly until I read Bird Cloud, which feels more like it was written for the writer. Annie Proulx is justifiably famous for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Shipping News and her short story "Brokeback Mountain," which was made into the popular movie. Her writing is sparse and open. Her stories move slowly with an intentional lack of bluster. Passion is deep and burns below the surface. This is true for Bird Cloud, too. We get to know the writer better than we had before, but not as well as we might like. Many times I got the sense that Proulx was interested in remembering a certain bird call, a certain slant of light, a certain person in her ancestry, so she wrote it down for herself and it wound up in this memoir.
There are many things to like about this book. The main story is about the house in Wyoming that Proulx is building; it's intended to be her dream home, after a string of houses and locations that don't quite fit. It's not giving anything away to say that in the end, this house doesn't quite fit either. She can't live there twelve months a year, and there are some unwanted noises and imperfect details that render it not completely suitable. But it's a pleasure to get to know the men in the "James Gang," who build the house and accompany Proulx on several camping/geology adventures. It's fascinating to read about the things that go wrong, like a floor that bleeds red stain for more than a year or the cows that trample the property in all seasons.
Most memoirs, it turns out, are written for the reader. I hadn't noticed this explicitly until I read Bird Cloud, which feels more like it was written for the writer. Annie Proulx is justifiably famous for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Shipping News and her short story "Brokeback Mountain," which was made into the popular movie. Her writing is sparse and open. Her stories move slowly with an intentional lack of bluster. Passion is deep and burns below the surface. This is true for Bird Cloud, too. We get to know the writer better than we had before, but not as well as we might like. Many times I got the sense that Proulx was interested in remembering a certain bird call, a certain slant of light, a certain person in her ancestry, so she wrote it down for herself and it wound up in this memoir.
There are many things to like about this book. The main story is about the house in Wyoming that Proulx is building; it's intended to be her dream home, after a string of houses and locations that don't quite fit. It's not giving anything away to say that in the end, this house doesn't quite fit either. She can't live there twelve months a year, and there are some unwanted noises and imperfect details that render it not completely suitable. But it's a pleasure to get to know the men in the "James Gang," who build the house and accompany Proulx on several camping/geology adventures. It's fascinating to read about the things that go wrong, like a floor that bleeds red stain for more than a year or the cows that trample the property in all seasons.
We get to know all kinds of things about Proulx: her book collection, her children's names, her tastes in home furnishings, her love of gardening, her interest in the natural world. But I never felt connected the way I do reading a "dishier" memoir. I never got a sense of her relationships with people or came to understand why they love her even though she describes herself as "bossy, impatient, reclusively shy, short-tempered, single-minded." I learned a lot; the book is almost exhaustively researched, especially the geography, history, flora, and fauna of the Bird Cloud area in Wyoming. There's a whole chapter on birds and a whole section on the Indians who used to live in the area. The writing is vintage Proulx: even the lighthearted moments are terse, without a word out of place. The following paragraph exemplifies Proulx's writing; it includes both the human and the natural, and all the details are chosen with care, even the sound of the words.
"I am the perennial patient of several expensive dental experts. What is the collective noun for dentists? A crown of dentists? Or a brace of dentists? A pain of dentists is more fitting. There were many long days spent driving tensely to Denver, then back with throbbing jaws. And because I was working on a book about the Red Desert, there were camping trips into the Haystacks, to old Sulfur Springs, to Butch Cassidy's cabin, to Adobe Town, to Maggie Baggs's Nipple, to the Boar's Tusk, to many unnamed places, including the turnoff where grew several yellow prince's plumes (Stanleya pinnata, a member of the mustard family), indicators of selenium in the soil, a few miles beyond a favorite hillside packed with hundreds of fossilized stromatolites."
Anyone who enjoys Annie Proulx's novels and short stories will enjoy the writing and the landscape of this memoir, which is both expansive and detailed.
Anyone who enjoys Annie Proulx's novels and short stories will enjoy the writing and the landscape of this memoir, which is both expansive and detailed.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
