Customer Reviews (63) 
Too Many Metaphors, Too Little Story
On the plus side Annie Proulx is a master observer of nature, people and life. Her metaphors of clouds, weather, landscape are as magnificent as a Bierstadt or Moran painting.On the negative side, metaphors grow wearying, whole paragraphs in places. I got to skipping over them. I believe Proulx inserted so many metaphors and similes simply because there was not enough story to fill out 353 pages. It's a short story stttttretttttccccchhhhheddddd out. She no doubt did some deep, deep research on ranching, farming, restaurant mgt, hog farms, Oklahoma/Texas history, and on and on, and you can be sure she put EVERY word of research in this book. Some passages go on for pages.
Her descriptions of people are very vivid, but border on Twilight Zone types, describing people in which the baby was thrown away at birth and the afterbirth was raised. Their names, lifestyles, habits, looks are just too freaky. A little is funny, but when whole populaces are freaks, you begin looking for escapes, such as putting the book DOWN!
I had read Proulx's short stories and they were good, albeit, Twilight Zone-y again and Proulx has an irritating habit of building up stories to a bang-up ending, then drops the ball and the story peters out like a slow leak in a balloon.
This story didn't start to even MOVE until page 55, but it's like having one of those neighbors. You ask how they are and you get their whole life story. Only this story the old lady Lavon tells us the life stories of EVERYONE in Woolybucket. And of course they are all freaks with weird names. I'm slogging through, a littlebit at a time. As for the writing style, I'd bet the ranch on it if a new author approached a publisher with a story constructed and written like this, it would be REJECTED. But Proulx, having a big track record with "Brokeback Mountain" and Shipping News could turn in a grocery list and it would be published.
One star for lack of enough story for the page number, Twilight Zone characters, weird names. Five stars for great metaphors, descriptions and similes= 3 stars
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I finished the book and as most of Proulx's stories, there is no climax, it just dribbles to an unremarkable ending. This book's ending was about 12 or 20 pages of local rodeo with extreme detail to the action. It led to nowhere I guess, because I just skimmed those pages. And, get this, the last sentence leads you to believe there will be a sequel! Do I have to read a whole 'nother book to find out what happened to all (Soooo many!!) the characters?
True Literature
A wonderful story and so well written.At times i could have been reading poetry... beautifully written.
Sequel?
I love reading Proulx's stories. This one felt a bit slow and unsure; but now that I've said so, have to consider that it was intentional. Annie, if you read these reviews, please give us a follow up: I feel like I just read a prequel to an even better novel.
Slow and Muddy as the Platte in Summer
Annie Proulx is best known for storming onto the literary scene in 1993 with her novel The Shipping News, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. The book became a wildly successful bestseller, and was made into a commendable movie staring Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore.
So it couldn't have hurt Proulx too badly when The Atlantic Monthly published the article "A Readers' Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness of American Literary Prose," in which B.R. Myers attacked a handful of well-respected authors, for their empty, affected literary styles. He singled out Proulx for purple prose and meager storytelling.
Proulx's new novel, That Old Ace in the Hole does not suffer from The Shipping News' fancy style for its own sake. For the most part, its language is straightforward and clear and only rarely resorts to such contrived writing as, "In the fallen windmills and collapsed outbuildings he saw the country's fractured past scattered about like the pencils on the desk of a draughtsman who has gone to lunch."
The novel's main character is Bob Dollar, a recent college graduate who is hired by Global Pork Rind to drive from Denver down to north Texas and spy on the locals, searching for an aging rancher who's willing to sell a big plot of land on which to locate a new hog farm. As the local north Texans know (but naïve, young Dollar does not) hog farms are some of the most noxiously polluting business ventures that exist. They pollute earth, air, and water with toxic hog waste and gas, and this seems to be the novel's chief message.
Proulx's callow main character has a personality that matches his profession; he's a watcher without much personality of his own. It brings to mind David Copperfield, serving Dickens' novel as a passive eye who wanders through episodes in the lives of a motley bunch of quirky English characters, but doesn't really have an effect on people himself. Like Dickens' passive main character, Bob Dollar just listens to the eccentric locals' constant, informative anecdotes and gradually amasses a good deal of knowledge about the land around fictional Woolybucket, Texas. From these locals, we learn a lot about ranching, about windmill maintenance, mule teams, cattle drives, historical cowboys, cockfights and the oil business. In fact, one has to admire Proulx's prodigious research.
Also admirable is Proulx's sense of local dialect. She has a good ear for the north Texan drawling, g-dropping accent which is not just southern and not just western, but a little of both, like Texas itself. And we do get a strong feel for the locale. We're given a high, flat prairie that was once a land of opportunity but is now past its prime, suffering a transition from local color to global homogenization.
We're given a picture of region where aging ranchers are ready to pass their land down to their children who don't want to continue ranching. So the elders sell the land to the highest bidders, whether they're oil and gas companies, real estate developers or, worst of all, corporate hog farms.
So That Old Ace in the Hole has a strong sense of place informed by dozens and dozens of fact-filled historical anecdotes. But unfortunately, the novel does not treat us to much of a main story. I'm probably old-fashioned and a philistine, but when I read a novel, I expect to be drawn into its story--its character dilemmas, its conflicts and crises. If I'm treated to lots of well-researched facts and extended digressions along the way, all the better, but there had better be some vivid, fully-drawn characters who have something to gain and something to lose. That Old Ace in the Hole, unfortunately, is filled with half-drawn characters with not too much at stake. Instead of a rich, delicious meal, we're given tray after tray of half-warmed appetizers.
Only after reading three-quarters of the longish book are we told that Bob Dollar hates his job working as spy for Global Pork Rind. Before then, this possibly ripe source of conflict is never even alluded to. It's hard to care for a character who keeps quiet and doesn't seem to care much about anything himself. Proulx tells Bob Dollar's story largely in retrospect, as if from far away. And because the bulk of the book consists of a series of short anecdotes told by peripheral characters, the reader isn't allowed to experience the stories directly, as they happen. Which makes for an often tedious read.
It's worth noting that the novel begins in Denver and, in a later chapter, returns to Denver. Proulx gets her landmarks right, mainly setting these scenes on West Colfax Avenue. But she doesn't capture Denver's feel. Denver and its inhabitants come across as quirky, dusty curios, like objects sold in a thrift store. There's a tinge of black humor in the futility of the people who live on or around West Colfax (reminiscent of Samuel Beckett) and some funny moments, but a traveler relying on this novel to get an accurate feeling for Denver would see it as a dismally boring, dusty place populated with uneducated misfits, conspiracy theorists and angry youth addicted to slasher movies. And none of them can spell good. For more writings visit www.maninquotes@blogspot.com
Proulx is an Excellent Writer!
Poulx characters are so well defined you feel you know them. Her descriptions put you there as well.I could almost smell those nasty hog farms. Bob Dollar was a lovable character wanting to keep his promises to his employer but comflicted over possibility of hurting people he met in the community. The characters in the community were excellent creations and felt like real people. What I love most about Poulx after reading Shipping News and this story is the lasting impression of the stories. It was been years since I read Shipping New (before the movie came out) and I still have images of the house on the hill, the quanky boat. It's remarkable!
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