Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Proulx, Annie - Dean Bakopoulos (review date September 1999)

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Dean Bakopoulos (review date September 1999)

SOURCE: Bakopoulos, Dean. “Woes of the West.” Progressive 63, no. 9 (September 1999): 43–44.

[In the following review, Bakopoulos offers a positive assessment of Close Range, but comments that Proulx's stories are occasionally overburdened by excessive detail.]

The American West has been a favorite setting for many of the heavyweights of contemporary fiction: Cormac McCarthy, Rick Bass, Jim Harrison, Ivan Doig, and Richard Ford. Women who set their stories in Big Sky country (Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho) have not received the same critical acclaim and publishing hullabaloo as their male counterparts.

Enter Annie Proulx. She has only five books in print—including Heart Songs and Other Stories (1988), Postcards (1992), The Shipping News (1993), and Accordion Crimes (1996), all published by Scribner. Even so, Proulx has already won the PEN/Faulkner...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Loree Rackstraw (review date September 1989)
   2. Frederick Busch (review date 12 January 1992)
   3. William Green (review date 18 July 1993)
   4. Sandra Scofield (review date 1 August 1993)
   5. John Whitworth (review date 4 December 1993)
   6. John DeMont (review date 25 April 1994)
   7. Verlyn Klinkenborg (review date 30 May 1994)
   8. Ronald Rompkey (review date September 1994)
   9. Jane Gardam (review date 25 March 1995)
   10. B. A. St. Andrews (review date spring 1995)
   11. Ellen Akins (review date 30 April 1995)
   12. Sybil Steinberg (essay date 3 June 1996)
   13. Bharati Mukherjee (review date 9 June 1996)
   14. Ellen Akins (review date 23 June 1996)
   15. Celia McGee (review date 24 June 1996)
   16. Phoebe-Lou Adams (review date July 1996)
   17. J. Z. Grover (review date September 1996)
   18. John Sutherland (review date 7 October 1996)
   19. Caroline Moore (review date 12 October 1996)
   20. Helen Carr (review date 18 October 1996)
   21. Mark Shechner (review date winter 1997)
   22. Vicky Greenbaum (essay date December 1997)
   23. Louise Flavin (essay date spring 1999)
   24. Merle Rubin (review date 3 June 1999)
   25. Dean Bakopoulos (review date September 1999)
   26. Rita D. Jacobs (review date spring 2000)
   27. Hilary Mantel (review date 11 May 2000)
   28. Erin McGraw (review date summer 2000)
   29. John Noell Moore (review date September 2000)
   30. Michael Kowalewski (review date winter 2001)
   31. Karen L. Rood (essay date 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright