March Letters

By Marcia Allass
March 1, 2006

Our ST Respondent has gathered the comments our readers have sent in about the latest issues of ST and presents them here. We encourage all of our readers to chime in with a comment or two; and though we love praise and worship, we want to hear the constructive criticisms, too.

Brokeback Mountain and Tristan & Isolde — From Arcadia to Here, and All the Gaps Between (Culture Vultures, February 2006)

Hey, just wanted to make sure I let you know that I appreciated your article on Brokeback Mountain and Tristan & Isolde (though I haven't seen the latter and probably won't until it's on DVD; I wasn't even aware of the opera or the myth until the trailers for the movie started showing). I bought the Script to Screenplay book as well, same day I bought the overpriced booklet of the story on its own (that might seem redundant and a waste of money, but I wanted it to lend out to folks). I have yet to get around to reading the screenplay and the essays by Annie Proulx and the screenwriters, but they looked promising from what I skimmed while standing in the book store. I originally read "Brokeback" in the Close Range: Wyoming Stories collection last summer. I own that too. A little obsessed? Yeah, I guess. I've only seen the movie once though, opening night in December at the one theatre it was playing at in Toronto. I'll probably see it again before the Oscars.

— Kris in Ontario, Canada

Thanks very much, Kris! I managed to read the short story (a couple of years ago), see the movie (at the beginning of 2006) and read the screenplay (after I saw the movie). I do this for things I'm not even obsessed with because when you read or see different versions of the same story, you really see different facets of the core story, each with emphases that are partly due to the nature of the in which each is told, partly due to the hand of the "translators", the people who adapt the story in different forms. In the case of "Brokeback Mountain", even the difference between being included in a collection of stories about rural Wyoming offers a different reading experience than reading it on its own in its own little paperback. The former shows the story in the context of the place, the latter shows the story to be of an exceptional experience. So as you're about to read the screenplay and see Brokeback Mountain a second time, I wish you happy
readings!

— Suzette Chan