Annie Proulx: That old Ace in the hole

By MARGIE THOMSON

Proulx specialises in writing about disappearing ways of life and unlikely, uncertain heroes who, were they flesh-and-blood real, would be greatly surprised to find anyone particularly interested in them, but in whom she uncovers unthought-of ambitions, hopes and simple, hokey likeability.

To this she adds her own brand of sometimes dark, sometimes wry comedy, born of her acute observation of life.

With The Shipping News - which won her the Pulitzer and several other biggies, and is now enjoying a second life as a movie - she set her story in a Newfoundland fishing community; in Accordion Crimes she took on the immigrant experience throughout the 20th century, and the gradual shucking off of old practices and identities as newcomers move toward the heart of American life.

Now in her latest novel, set in 2000, she examines the demise of small family farms and farming communities in the Texan and Oklahoma panhandles as the corporations move in - in particular, for the purposes of this story, the olfactory and environmental travesty of hog farms.

Her story is deceptively simple. Young Bob Dollar, unsure what direction to take in life, and with a tendency to feel adrift in the world since being abandoned by his parents when he was 8 years old, gets a job as a location scout for international conglomerate Global Pork Rind. He moves from Denver to a tiny Texan town named Woolybucket, where he disguises his true intent with a lie that he's searching for sites to build luxury accommodation.

He's no natural scoundrel, however, and even as we (and he) learn more about the nature of the hog farms he represents and are horrified by them and the implications they carry for both people and ecosystem, we like Bob and hope he will get shot of his employer.

But Bob has a big personal issue with responsibility and is committed to seeing the job through.

Proulx's real subject is the panhandle landscape - physical and social - and its peculiar "alchemical recombination of its geography, history and people", as she explained to an American interviewer.

Thus Bob, not a successful salesman, instead has a natural leaning towards history, and loves to get those Texans talking about each other, about the old days, about the joys and perils of forging a life in a difficult physical and social environment.

He becomes a conduit for a multitude of stories and characters who come into focus, delight us for a few pages, and then flicker out of sight as the next one comes into view, rather like images from a moving vehicle. Some of the chapters could well be standalone stories, but under Proulx's touch they easily constitute a whole: they intermingle, begin in one place, disappear, and then pop up in a different time and place, as part of someone else's story.

Proulx is a ferocious researcher - she has said she has boxes of material still unused from her research for this novel, which once you've read it will seem extraordinary, as it feels so rich and packed - yet the percolation of research through her own vivid imagination and earthy, witty intelligence brings a finished product that is the opposite of stodgy.

In perfect control of her vast material, Proulx easily flies it into the realm of pure, satisfying entertainment. Her fictional world feels real, but better than real - a crystalisation of the mangy old everyday world into something that gleams, glitters and delights.

She seems to have pure affection for her odd cast, and revels in their every idiosyncrasy, whether that be ignorant bigotry ("homeaseashells," one character sputters, "Woolybucket County don't need no damn fags"), their brutal, unsentimental turns of phrase ("There's backbitin women with tongues like knives," says LaVon Fronk) or its opposite, cowboy sentimentalism ("They say an old cowboy just ain't no good/ His campfire has went out/ Though he done all he could," muses cowboy poet Rope Butt).

Proulx has excelled herself. Funny, earthy, sharp as a razor, this is published in the nick of time to be easily one of the best books of 2002.

* Annie Proulx will be a guest at next year's Auckland Readers and Writers Festival.

* Fourth Estate $49.95