Alex Hunt is associate professor in the English department at West Texas A&M University.

This excellent collection of essays edited by Alex Hunt illuminates in new and productive ways Annie Proulx’s idiosyncratic and engrossing literary terrain. Collectively, they cover the ground between Novia Scotia and Wyoming that we encounter in Proulx’s work, but more importantly, they cross the challenging divides within her geographical imagination between the rough and fragile places and people she conjures, between the realist and hyperrealist way in which she does so, and between the hard rock of economics and history and the ephemeral but powerful drives and desires that can turn geography into a place of the mind and human culture into an effect of place. Demonstrating the centrality of literature in understanding the complexity of region, The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx will be of interest not only to Proulx’s readers but also to anyone interested in new regional studies and the study of literature and the environment.

• 1 Table of Contents2 AcknowledgmentsChapter 3 Introduction: The Insistence of Geography in the Writing of Annie ProulxPart 4 I. OrientationsChapter 5 1. The Influence of the Annales School on Annie Proulx's Geographical ImaginationChapter 6 2. Proulx and the Postmodern HyperrealChapter 7 3. Drinking the Elixir of Ownership: Pilgrims and Improvers in the Landscapes of Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole and The Shipping NewsChapter 8 4. Postnational United States Regional Hinterlands: Proulx's Ethnic Working-Class Communities in Accordion CrimesPart 9 II. GeographiesChapter 10 5. Born Under a Bad Sign: The Question of Geographical Determinism in the Hardscrabble Northern Badlands of Heart Songs and Other StoriesChapter 11 6. The Corpse in the Stone Wall: Annie Proulx's Ironic New EnglandChapter 12 7. "All the Qualities o' the Isle": The Shipping News as Island MythChapter 13 8. Annie Proulx's Wyoming: Geographical Determinism, Landscape, and CaricatureChapter 14 9. Westward Proulx: The Resistant Landscape of Close Range: Wyoming Stories and That Old Ace in the HolePart 15 III. DirectionsChapter 16 10. Landed Bodies: Geography and Disability in The Shipping NewsChapter 17 11. The Location of Immigration: Itinerant Communities and Cultural Hybridity in Annie Proulx's Accordion CrimesChapter 18 12. Brokeback Mountain as Progressive Narrative and Cinematic Vision: Landscape, Emotion, and the Denial of DomesticityChapter 19 13. Capitalism vs. Localism: Economies of Scale in Annie Proulx's Postcards and That Old Ace in the HoleChapter 20 14. The Ecology of Narrative: Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole as Critical Regionalist FictionChapter 21 Afterword: Red Desert: The History of a Place and Annie Proulx as Environmental Historian22 Bibliography23 Index24 Contributors

Alex Hunt is associate professor in the English department at West Texas A&M University.

This excellent collection of essays edited by Alex Hunt illuminates in new and productive ways Annie Proulx’s idiosyncratic and engrossing literary terrain. Collectively, they cover the ground between Novia Scotia and Wyoming that we encounter in Proulx’s work, but more importantly, they cross the challenging divides within her geographical imagination between the rough and fragile places and people she conjures, between the realist and hyperrealist way in which she does so, and between the hard rock of economics and history and the ephemeral but powerful drives and desires that can turn geography into a place of the mind and human culture into an effect of place. Demonstrating the centrality of literature in understanding the complexity of region, The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx will be of interest not only to Proulx’s readers but also to anyone interested in new regional studies and the study of literature and the environment.

• 1 Table of Contents2 AcknowledgmentsChapter 3 Introduction: The Insistence of Geography in the Writing of Annie ProulxPart 4 I. OrientationsChapter 5 1. The Influence of the Annales School on Annie Proulx's Geographical ImaginationChapter 6 2. Proulx and the Postmodern HyperrealChapter 7 3. Drinking the Elixir of Ownership: Pilgrims and Improvers in the Landscapes of Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole and The Shipping NewsChapter 8 4. Postnational United States Regional Hinterlands: Proulx's Ethnic Working-Class Communities in Accordion CrimesPart 9 II. GeographiesChapter 10 5. Born Under a Bad Sign: The Question of Geographical Determinism in the Hardscrabble Northern Badlands of Heart Songs and Other StoriesChapter 11 6. The Corpse in the Stone Wall: Annie Proulx's Ironic New EnglandChapter 12 7. "All the Qualities o' the Isle": The Shipping News as Island MythChapter 13 8. Annie Proulx's Wyoming: Geographical Determinism, Landscape, and CaricatureChapter 14 9. Westward Proulx: The Resistant Landscape of Close Range: Wyoming Stories and That Old Ace in the HolePart 15 III. DirectionsChapter 16 10. Landed Bodies: Geography and Disability in The Shipping NewsChapter 17 11. The Location of Immigration: Itinerant Communities and Cultural Hybridity in Annie Proulx's Accordion CrimesChapter 18 12. Brokeback Mountain as Progressive Narrative and Cinematic Vision: Landscape, Emotion, and the Denial of DomesticityChapter 19 13. Capitalism vs. Localism: Economies of Scale in Annie Proulx's Postcards and That Old Ace in the HoleChapter 20 14. The Ecology of Narrative: Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole as Critical Regionalist FictionChapter 21 Afterword: Red Desert: The History of a Place and Annie Proulx as Environmental Historian22 Bibliography23 Index24 Contributors

Alex Hunt is associate professor in the English department at West Texas A&M University.

This excellent collection of essays edited by Alex Hunt illuminates in new and productive ways Annie Proulx’s idiosyncratic and engrossing literary terrain. Collectively, they cover the ground between Novia Scotia and Wyoming that we encounter in Proulx’s work, but more importantly, they cross the challenging divides within her geographical imagination between the rough and fragile places and people she conjures, between the realist and hyperrealist way in which she does so, and between the hard rock of economics and history and the ephemeral but powerful drives and desires that can turn geography into a place of the mind and human culture into an effect of place. Demonstrating the centrality of literature in understanding the complexity of region, The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx will be of interest not only to Proulx’s readers but also to anyone interested in new regional studies and the study of literature and the environment.

• 1 Table of Contents2 AcknowledgmentsChapter 3 Introduction: The Insistence of Geography in the Writing of Annie ProulxPart 4 I. OrientationsChapter 5 1. The Influence of the Annales School on Annie Proulx's Geographical ImaginationChapter 6 2. Proulx and the Postmodern HyperrealChapter 7 3. Drinking the Elixir of Ownership: Pilgrims and Improvers in the Landscapes of Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole and The Shipping NewsChapter 8 4. Postnational United States Regional Hinterlands: Proulx's Ethnic Working-Class Communities in Accordion CrimesPart 9 II. GeographiesChapter 10 5. Born Under a Bad Sign: The Question of Geographical Determinism in the Hardscrabble Northern Badlands of Heart Songs and Other StoriesChapter 11 6. The Corpse in the Stone Wall: Annie Proulx's Ironic New EnglandChapter 12 7. "All the Qualities o' the Isle": The Shipping News as Island MythChapter 13 8. Annie Proulx's Wyoming: Geographical Determinism, Landscape, and CaricatureChapter 14 9. Westward Proulx: The Resistant Landscape of Close Range: Wyoming Stories and That Old Ace in the HolePart 15 III. DirectionsChapter 16 10. Landed Bodies: Geography and Disability in The Shipping NewsChapter 17 11. The Location of Immigration: Itinerant Communities and Cultural Hybridity in Annie Proulx's Accordion CrimesChapter 18 12. Brokeback Mountain as Progressive Narrative and Cinematic Vision: Landscape, Emotion, and the Denial of DomesticityChapter 19 13. Capitalism vs. Localism: Economies of Scale in Annie Proulx's Postcards and That Old Ace in the HoleChapter 20 14. The Ecology of Narrative: Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole as Critical Regionalist FictionChapter 21 Afterword: Red Desert: The History of a Place and Annie Proulx as Environmental Historian22 Bibliography23 Index24 Contributors