A review by kim_hoag
Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2, by Annie Proulx

4.0

Proulx is one of my favorite authors: she writes of the Western land and people of which she knows, like Kent Haruf but not quite so emotionally breathy. Her drama often stretches to the Quixotic drama of which I've spoken before, but she can still be almost as intimate as Haruf. This is a collection of some of her short stories which demonstrate her broad spectrum of writing. I've never been a fan of short stories; I like to get deeper into characters and plots. Proulx, however, manages to make them enjoyable. She takes a little incident and whips it into something more substantial, then ends it before it can waste away. Such a one is “The Contest” where the men of a town all decide to have a beard growing contest. You meet the contestants and become intimate with their desires and reasons with great wit but nothing so deep that you can't pull out of, and that's the pleasure of reading her stories. After reading them you'll swear you'll find sand in you bed and an old, beaten, red pick-up in your drive the next morning.