Overlooking the names of her characters and a swipe at magic realism, Proulx's Bad Dirt stories are rich & entertaining

By María Eugenia Guerra

Bad Dirt, Wyoming Stories 2.

By E. Annie Proulx.

New York: Scribner.

2004. 219 pages.

Rather than enjoy the whimsy of the names of Annie Proulx's characters as I did in Close Range , I found myself distracted by the outlandish names of some of the central characters in her new collection, Bad Dirt, Wyoming Stories 2.

I was distracted, too, by Proulx's use of magic realism, shocked actually, when I came across its implausibility in a perfectly good narrative. The only story in which such tweaks worked without having to agree to the departure into artifice was in “Dump Junk,” the story of two estranged siblings who upon the death of their elderly parents come together to clean out the old homestead which is packed with paper, dust, mouse droppings, and objects no longer of use. Proulx characterizes the macabre homecoming and family reunion as “a Paleozoic experience.” The story runs in typical Proulx fashion, making leaps over decades with beautiful digressions and buckled turns.

Proulx's “The Indian Wars Refought” stands alone as the most poignant of the 11 stories in this collection, its 28 pages moving across Wyoming history from the late 1800s forward, a history that includes the story of polo in Wyoming. Polo! The story lends itself to the making of a movie, which actually is what this story is about, the discovery by a young Indian woman of cans of ancient film of a reenactment movie about the Indian wars made by Buffalo Bill. Proulx does here what she does best, moves you through a brief yet plausible history.

Proulx, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Shipping News, is a master of narrative and dialogue and nowhere in this collection of stories is this more evident than in “The Wamsutter Wolf,” which despite its slow start, roars to life in a wrenching drama about trailer park life, domestic violence, and murder. Her depiction of innocent tow-headed children and a mother unable -- sometimes perhaps unwilling -- to protect them from the harm of a cruel, drunken father, pulls at the heart.

Her descriptions of the landscape she calls home run the gamut from achingly beautiful to places of sinister occurrences. The development of her characters is what it always is, pointed, lovely, and fast. I loved one description of a rogue cattle herd that knew no rules: “And them cows are wild. Like they are circus cows or whatever, can jump and run like deer, swim like fish, even the calves. Them cows show no mercy.”

Except for the quirky names, Proulx's latest offering is nearly as masterful as 1999's Close Range.