Reading Order
Brokeback Mountain Reading Order
Brokeback Mountain (1997) by Annie Proulx is the short story — originally published in The New Yorker — that became one of the most famous American short stories of the late 20th century and that was adapted into Ang Lee's 2005 film. The story follows Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, two young ranch hands who spend the summer of 1963 herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming, fall in love, and must then negotiate twenty years of a relationship that the world they live in has no name for and no tolerance of. Brokeback Mountain is published in the collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999), which is the essential reading context — the story is surrounded by other Wyoming stories that establish the landscape, economy, and culture that shape Ennis and Jack's lives. The story is remarkable for its compression (it covers twenty years in roughly 30 pages), its restraint (Proulx withholds as much as she reveals, letting the reader feel the weight of what is not said), and its landscape writing (Brokeback Mountain itself is one of the great fictional places in American short fiction, simultaneously real and symbolic). The 2005 Ang Lee film with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal won three Academy Awards and is a major American film, but the story is more powerful in its compression than the film can achieve in expansion.
Where to start
Close Range: Wyoming Stories — the 1999 collection that contains Brokeback Mountain and eight other Wyoming stories. Reading Brokeback Mountain in the context of the other stories enriches it considerably. The Scribner paperback is the standard edition.
Complete Brokeback Mountain Book List
- 1Buy
Close Range: Wyoming Stories
Annie Proulx·1999·The essential collection — contains Brokeback Mountain plus eight other Wyoming stories; the full context for the story's landscape, characters, and world; the companion collection is the proper way to read Brokeback Mountain. - 2Buy
Fine Just the Way It Is
Annie Proulx·2008·Proulx's third Wyoming story collection — the companion in her Wyoming fiction; the later stories return to the same landscape and deal with some of the same social and economic pressures that shape the Brokeback Mountain world. - 3Buy
Bad Dirt
Annie Proulx·2004·Proulx's second Wyoming story collection — the companion in her Wyoming fiction; the stories between Close Range and Fine Just the Way It Is, returning to the same Wyoming landscapes and social world. - 4Buy
The Shipping News
Annie Proulx·1993·Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in her fiction about specific American landscapes; where Brokeback Mountain is Wyoming, The Shipping News is Newfoundland; both are place-rooted stories about people whose lives are shaped by the particular world they inhabit. - 5Buy
Postcards
Annie Proulx·1992·Proulx's debut novel — the companion in her American landscape fiction; Loyal Blood's flight across America is the road version of the same American geography that shapes Ennis and Jack's Wyoming. - 6Buy
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin·1956·Baldwin's novel about an American in Paris and the man he loves — the earlier American literary treatment of the same territory of love that cannot be acknowledged; the companion in American fiction about gay love and the violence its concealment requires. - 7Buy
Call Me By Your Name
Andre Aciman·2007·Aciman's novel about a summer love affair in Italy — the companion in the tradition of fiction about a brief, defining love that shapes everything after it; Elio and Oliver's summer is the Italian, more lyrical version of Ennis and Jack's summer on Brokeback Mountain. - 8Buy
Winter's Bone
Daniel Woodrell·2006·Woodrell's novel about the Ozarks — the companion in the tradition of American fiction rooted in a specific impoverished rural landscape; Ree Dolly's Ozarks are the Missouri version of the Wyoming world that Proulx writes about — a place where people are shaped by economic necessity and a specific culture's codes.
Brokeback Mountain — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Brokeback Mountain about?
Brokeback Mountain is the story of Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, two young Wyoming ranch hands hired to herd sheep on Brokeback Mountain in the summer of 1963. Over the course of that summer, they fall in love — or rather, something happens between them that is love, though they have no word for it and no framework for understanding it. After the summer, they go their separate ways, each marrying women, each having children. They meet occasionally over the following twenty years — a few days at a time, camping in the mountains — and the story traces those meetings and the gap between them: what their lives are and what they might have been.
Is Brokeback Mountain a short story or a novel?
Brokeback Mountain is a short story — approximately 30 pages — that was first published in The New Yorker in 1997 and later collected in Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999). It is often sold as a standalone volume, particularly after the 2005 film adaptation, but the proper reading context is Close Range, where the other Wyoming stories establish the landscape, economy, and social world that shape Ennis and Jack. The Ang Lee film (2005) expanded the story into a 134-minute film, inevitably adding scenes, dialogue, and backstory that Proulx's compressed story withholds.
How does the story end?
Without giving too much away: the story ends with Ennis alone, having learned something devastating that the reader partly expects and partly does not. Proulx's ending is characteristically restrained — she reports what happened without lingering on it, and the emotional weight is in what Ennis does afterward: he pins two shirts together on a hanger in his trailer and keeps them there. The ending is one of the great endings in American short fiction because of what it implies about how much of the story Ennis has spent not saying and how much he will continue not to say for the rest of his life.
How does the Ang Lee film compare to the story?
The Ang Lee film (2005) with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal is a major American film — one of the few literary adaptations that is comparable in quality to its source — but it is necessarily different from the story. The film expands what Proulx's story implies: the scenes on the mountain, the details of Ennis's and Jack's marriages, the various meetings across the years. Proulx's story works by compression and restraint; the film works by accumulation and performance. Both are successful, but they create different kinds of emotional experience. Proulx herself has said she is satisfied with the adaptation.
What should I read after Brokeback Mountain?
After Brokeback Mountain, the rest of Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999) is the essential companion — the other stories establish the world the story inhabits. Bad Dirt (2004) and Fine Just the Way It Is (2008) are the subsequent Wyoming story collections. For The Shipping News (Proulx's Pulitzer-winning novel) see her other major fiction. For American fiction about love that cannot be acknowledged, James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and Giovanni Aciman's Call Me By Your Name are important companions.
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