I bought this book at a discounted price (only 1 dollar) during my vacation in Cambodia in the summer of 2012. I don’t know why I waited a long time to read it. What can I say? The best summary about this beautifully written short story belongs to Walter Kirn’s review in New York Magazine:
“A stand-out story… ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is the sad chronology of a love affair between two men who can’t afford to call it that. They know what they’re not – not queer, not gay – but have no idea what they are.”
Yes, both Ennis and Jack refused to identify themselves as gay or queer. Ennis even said he loved having sex with women. Both got married, had kids, but somehow the bond that formed during those nights spent together on Brokeback Mountain still haunted them ever since. Ennis missed Jack so much; Jack wanted to have more chances, more time, more love makings with Ennis rather than just one or two copulations in four years. They were trapped in an unsung love and the fear of being repudiated, even tortured, by the society, at that time still didn’t accept that men could fall in love with men, too.
Were Ennis and Jack gay, or were they bisexual? Does this question even matter, when, in my opinion, this story isn’t just about repressed sexuality? It’s simply about the love between two human beings, which transcends sexual orientation, labels or what we come to define as LGBTQ.
And don’t let me start talking about the ending, which nearly broke my heart and brought tears to my eyes:
“The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack’s sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.”
The only thing I didn’t like about this story is that it was too short, which means there wasn’t enough space for character development. There were many parts in which I felt the change in the characters’ attitude, feelings or thoughts were too abrupt. Even the progress of Ennis and Jack’s love story felt a little bit rushed. With an amazing idea like this, I would love to see it written into a novel, and I don’t mind reading more pages and more words if it means I could experience the story in a deeper and more thorough way.
How director Ang Lee took this 55-page short story and turned it into an Oscar-nominated 2-hour movie is beyond me. And R.I.P. Heath Ledger :((((
Final verdict: 9/10
And I didn’t notice before, but today, May 17, is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia 2021. So I don’t think there is any more befitting day to post this review rather than today!
Little Corner of My Mind 