That Old Ace in the Hole

by Annie Proulx

From Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner Annie Proulx comes an exhilarating story brimming with language, history, landscape, music, and love. Bob Dollar is a young man from Denver trying to make good in a bad world. Out of college and aimless, Dollar takes a job with Global Pork Rind, scouting out big spreads of land that can be converted to hog farms. Soon he's holed up in a two-bit Texas town called Woolybucket, where he settles into LaVon Fronk's old bunkhouse for fifty dollars a month, helps out at Cy Frease's Old Dog Café, and learns the hard way how vigorously the old Texas ranch owners will hold on to their land, even when their children want no part of it. Robust, often bawdy, strikingly original, That Old Ace in the Hole traces the waves of change that have shaped the American West over the past century -- and in Bob Dollar, Proulx has created one of the most irrepressible characters in contemporary fiction.

Genres: Fiction, Westerns, Literature, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Short Stories, Novels

560 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Edna Annie Proulx (Chinese:安妮 普鲁) is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994. Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning major motion picture released in 2005. Brokeback Mountain received massive critical acclaim and went on to be nominated for a leading eight Academy Awards, winning three of them. (However, the movie did not win Best Picture, a situation with which Proulx made public her disappointment.) She won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her first novel, Postcards.

She has written most of her stories and books simply as Annie Proulx, but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ogallala Woolybucket



La ditta assegna a Bob Dollar una zona specifica nella quale fare ricerche: il panhandle del Texas.
E così il lettore apprende che con il termine panhandle, cioè manico della padella, si intende quella parte di uno stato che assomiglia a una penisola, pur non essendo circondato su tre lati dall’acqua, ma è pur sempre collegato al corpo centrale dello stato: a circondare il panhandle sono i confini degli stati limitrofi. Insomma, una propaggine del corpo geografico principale, risultato di confini disegnati arbitrariamente, trascurando quelli naturali.


Fotografia di Peter Brown, autore dello scatto sulla copertina.

Annie Proulx si sposta a sud, dal Wyoming al Texas, restando comunque sempre all’ovest.
E abbandona il tono sommesso ma penetrante di quei suoi racconti tra i quali Brobeback Mountain è diventato celebre, per adottarne uno spumeggiante e tendente al comico – che credo già il titolo lasci intuire e corrisponda a quello del suo altro successo The Shipping News – Avviso ai naviganti.
Racconta la storia di Bob Dollar abbandonato dai genitori all’età di sette anni alle cure di suo zio per raggiungere l’Alaska: il piano era che papà e mamma sarebbero andati in avanscoperta nella wilderness per poi una volta insediati farsi raggiungere dal bambino. Ma invece, scompaiono nel nulla, forse nei boschi, forse nei ghiacci, chissà, di loro non si sa più nulla.
E per raccontare la storia di Bob – che raggiunta l’età adulta, vent’anni o poco più, deve individuare terreni adatti all’allevamento di maiali – aggiunge quelle di un numero sterminato di personaggi.
E a un certo punto sembra quasi voglia raccontarci le vicende personali di tutta la popolazione del Texas (28,64 milioni), ma anche del Colorado (5,685 milioni) e dell’Oklahoma (3,949 milioni): al punto che sembra aver inventato il romanzo scolapasta, o colabrodo, le storie, le divagazioni aneddotiche, i personaggi laterali e secondari sfuggono da tutte le parti, come l’acqua quando si scola la pasta.
C’è una macchia per terra: Proulx ci dice chi ha sputato proprio lì, che malattia aveva, cosa gli ha prescritto il dottore, cosa ha cucinato la moglie del medico proprio quella sera, e il padre della donna, la zia…
Dopo un po’ si tende a percepire un effetto di ottundimento, le ginocchia dell’anima si piegano, gli occhi gemono asciutti…


Fotografia di Peter Brown.

[Wolfman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading That Old Ace in the Hole, one should read the first sentence. “In late March Bob Dollar, a young, curly-headed man of twenty-five with the broad face of a cat, pale innocent eyes fringed with sooty lashes, drove east along Texas State Highway 15 in the panhandle, down from Denver the day before, over the Raton Pass and through the dead volcano country of northeast New Mexico to the Oklahoma pistol barrel, then a wrong turn north and wasted hours before he regained the way,” it reads.

Much like Bob Dollar, Annie Proulx steers her vehicle all over the place, often getting lost, and not regaining the way for quite some time. But she realizes this, and I can tell from the crafty glimmer in her eye in the Peggy Hill-looking picture on the back cover that she meant this meandering first sentence as a joke that you will only get after you have finished reading the book and go back to glance at the first page.

It’s certainly possible to grow impatient with Proulx’s slow, winding navigation of the trials and travails of young Bob Dollar as a hapless pork farm land scout in the Texas panhandle. She takes many detours. We peer deeply into the life of Sheriff Hugh Dough, a minor character, plot-wise. But the trick is to shut up and let her drive. You’re going to get there eventually, and when you do, you won’t care so much about arriving, but you’ll be glad you paid attention on the drive.

Some of the sharpest and ultimately most amusing detours are those through time. In 1878, for example, Martin Merton Fronk, the son of a German immigrant watchmaker, came to the town of Woolybucket in the high plains of Texas on the advice of Doctor Jick to ameliorate a respiratory affliction. Later, in the 1930’s, local cowboy Rope Butt employed a teenage Ace Crouch to help Dutchman Habakuk van Melkebeek fix windmills on his property.

The character names in the book might lose buoyancy at some point if they weren’t kept afloat by equally whimsical and dynamic characters. Francis Scott Keister is a jerk who cheats on his homicidal wife. Freda Beautyrooms is an elderly Methodist who owns some prime land. Richard Head is a rancher. Jim Bob Bill Skin. Advance Slauter. Sheriff Hugh Dough. They all live here, and you’ll get to know them pretty well.

What is Bob Dollar doing in Woolybucket, anyway? He’s putting off figuring out what to do with his life by doing a job that he accidentally slipped into, just like everyone else. He’ll figure it all out someday. When Bob was young, his parents left him with his Uncle Tam, went to Alaska, and were never heard from again. He’s since developed an understandably conflicted sense of adventure and just enough social grace to make him ineffective as a sneaky bastard.

The great thing about Proulx’s severely roundabout storytelling is that she enjoys doing it, and the joke’s on you until you realize it is, at which point you see the little smile curling the corner of her lip, and you fully embrace the panhandle, which is not as desolate or lonely a place as you thought it was.

[Garen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on having read this book and The Shipping News, it is clear to me that Annie Proulx is an author as concerned with place as with plot. Both books are as much, or perhaps even more, about the settings in which they take place, as the characters who inhabit them. Proulx has a fondness for remote areas - rough, bleak and harsh and it perhaps the special bonds of community that form in such places that draws her interest so. That Old Ace in the Hole takes place in the Texas panhandle and for anyone interested in that part of the country, or who comes from there, this book is a must read. The plot is secondary, to my mind, than the history of the place. In spite of that however, the novel does not drag. Proulx possesses such a clever and finely tuned ear that the voices of the characters leap off the page and one often feels as if they are sitting at the feed store with the locals, chewing over the stories of a shared past. Another fine book and one equal, I think, to The Shipping News.

[Oceana2602 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I resent myself a little for not liking Annie Proulx more than I do. I WANT to like her. I read the descriptions of her books and I want to read them. I buy her books. I start reading.

And that's it.

I just can't get into them.

Her use of language is brilliant, her ideas interest me - and yet, I'm unable to relate emotionally to anything she writes. This is the third of her books that felt like that to me. I found myself enjoying her short stories quite a lot, but her novels just can't hold my interest.

Sorry.

But, as much as I'd like to like Annie Proulx, there's 100s of other others and books out there that are waiting to be read, so for now, I'm giving up on Proulx.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not a stranger to Annie Proulx’s fiction; back in 1996 I read The Shipping News, her 1993 novel that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1994 (back when she was E. Annie Proulx). Deep into this book, I had the feeling that in some ways the plot of this book was in many ways the same as that of The Shipping News, , which is not a bad thing at all, except this book is set in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle country instead of in Newfoundland. And this is a book that I very much enjoyed reading; the author is great at quirky characterization.

The main character of this book is one Bob Dollar, who has grown up with his Uncle Tam Bap, who runs a junk shop in Denver. He was left with his uncle at the age of six; his parents left for Alaska, and were never heard from again. Now, in his early twenties, he has not a clue in the world as to what he wants to do with his life.

He wanders into a job with the multinational Global Pork Rind Corporation, and is sent down to the Texas and Oklahoma panhandle country to scout out locations (and people who wish to sell said locations) for intensive hog farming operations. However, as people have deep and abiding objections to hog farms (especially when the wind is in the wrong direction), he is told to have some sort of cover story to account for his presence. Dollar is not much for prevarication or guile; the best story he can come up with is that he is scouting for luxury home locations, which is about as far from intensive pig farms as one can get.

Dollar ends up in the Texas panhandle town of Woolybucket (near Cowboy Rose), and for fifty dollars a month rents an old bunkhouse (no electricity or running water) on the Busted Star Ranch. He starts his scouting by talking to people, and begins to learn about the people who live in the Panhandle country – people who have stayed through good times and bad times (mostly bad times), and new people who have moved in for one reason or another. He begins to hate having to lie to keep his job, as he learns to like the people he is living among, but he doggedly conceives that his duty is to see his job through to the end.

I found this to be a wonderful book; for most of us have gone through a period of not knowing what we should be doing with our lives (some of us are there yet), and in the long run, one can only find out what one wishes to do by trying out all the possibilities. And Annie Proulx’s characters – odd and quirky as they are – are rich in possibilities, as we all are, if we could only see ourselves.

[J.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

To my surprise, I enjoyed this book. It was a Christmas present from my daughter, a book I resisted in the first couple of chapters; as a non-meat-eater in the UK I didn’t really want to read about ‘hog’ farms in Texas. However, I trusted my daughter’s judgement and, yes, she was right, it drew me in and was full of richness of language and a kind of sustaining humour, as well as its underlying statement about pig-farming on a large scale.
Actually I gave up trying to understand the language – for instance, I didn’t know what “the Panhandle” was (apparently a part of Texas that sticks out into Oklahoma) and I still don’t know what a ‘caliche’ road is – but I found that I began to enjoy the wealth of idiom and the incomprehensible names, as if I’d been an observer at square dancing, or a cattle auction (incomprehensible whatever country you’re in!).
The more I think about it, the more I find to appreciate in the author’s handling of her material. Even my being rather reluctantly drawn in, and finally thoroughly engaged with the characters, echoes and underscores what happens to the protagonist, Bob, who is hired by a hog-farming corporation to find new sites in the Texas Panhandle. Of course, when I say he becomes ‘engaged’ in the novel’s action I don’t mean embracing the hog-farming ethic!
It's beautiful, literally in the landscape but also in the picture of the community in which Bob finds himself. It’s harrowing in its descriptions of the hog farms, and duly sentimental as the inhabitants of Woolybucket remember the dustbowl days and the frequent tornadoes. But the message of how these things have formed their land and themselves is strong, expressed in a loyalty and a determination born of long struggle. The settlement history is explored, through a book that Bob is given, which is no artificial detail but is pertinent, as is everything in this novel, to its roundness and its sense of a kind of personal fulfilment in the face of corporate industry.
I found it interesting that Bob, essentially a ‘decent chap’ as we might say in the UK, undergoes something of a psychological change of his own, in terms of lying. Initially he’s told by his employer to lie about why he’s in Woolybucket, which he hates doing, but there’s something of a trail of his fascination with his own lies, which he begins to persuade himself to believe, and embroider upon, all of this finally contrasted with a swinging round towards a persuasion that is genuine in an unexpected way. This book got better and better, with some nice touches too of a resolution of Bob’s personal life and what he can do for the uncle who brought him up.
It's really funny in places, for instance when Bob patiently sits through a quilting session with old ladies and ends up raffling their quilt for them at the local fair. There’s a wonderful section involving a guy who can’t do fractions in Arithmetic, which I can’t spoil! Bob also helps out at the local eatery. Cy, the owner, tells a joke:

“Well, a cowboy walks into a bar, the place is almost empty and he orders a beer. The bartender brings it to him and the cowboy says, ‘Where is everybody?’
The bartender says, ‘Gone to the hangin’.’
The cowboy says, ‘Hangin’? Who they hangin’?’
‘Brown Paper Pete’, says the bartender.
‘That is an unusual name,’ says the cowboy.
‘Tell you what,’ says the bartender, ‘Call him that because he wears a brown paper hat, brown paper shirt, brown paper trousers, brown paper boots.’
‘Dang!’ says the cowboy, “That’s weird. What are they hangin’ him for?’
‘Rustlin’, says the bartender.”

The language of this book might be challenging for anyone whose first language is not English (the joke above is based upon a pun on the word 'rustling' in English), or for someone, like me, who is completely unfamiliar with the US and Texas. You can do as I did and just go with it, because the underlying thrust of humanity is there, universal, essential, relevant to each and every one of us. An astounding book in many ways, and I’m just about to upgrade the rating I gave it!

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am new to 'goodreads' but thought that I would contribute by adding the books that I have read over the past year. It's a bit difficult to write a review months later. I remember enough about all of these books. They were 'good reads' or 'worthwhile reads' in my humble opinion. I am attempting to discuss what stood out for me.

As a school teacher, I came across a wonderful donation option. A book for a dollar - any book, so I filled up a box for my students. For some odd reason, I held onto 'That Old Ace in the Hole". The inside cover hints about a man out of college searching for something. He ends up in the 'pan-handle' - Oklahoma and Texas. I knew little about this part of the country although up some branch and down another branch of the family tree, relatives by marriage come from that neck of the woods. And I have been there - just traveling through.

The book was very, interesting ! In America, it's like each section of the country is actually a country in itself. The options seem fewer, the terrain less varied, but the people - unique and so different from one another. The hog and cattle industry,'bakelite' and people who hold tight to their family history keeping one on a string - not telling everything all at one time. The book was unpredictable. I liked that.

[Anna Savage · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first, this book feels so slight and inconsequential, the language aloof and noncommittal about its own plot and setting and characters, that it's physically hard to keep reading. You pick it up, a few hundred well-crafted words about places and people wash over you, not unpleasantly, and then you put it down and forget about it immediately. The characters have bizarre, colorful names (one of my least favorite elements of this novel; the name choices are over the top to the point of distraction); when you expect characters to fall into stereotypes or behave stereotypically, they never do; and yet somehow, it all feels vague and unformed. Then, slowly, things start to stick. The Evil Fat Boy vignette. Short, vivid dips back in time that jar you out of the story just as briefly as they connect you back to it with new understanding. The protagonist remains, infuriatingly, a mystery, but the characters and events unfolding around him start bursting into sharp relief. Now you have a hard time putting the book down, and continue thinking about it when you do. And then, finally, Bob Dollar himself emerges from his cocoon, and you realize that's what you were experiencing the whole time: the cottony swaddling around this unformed person, and the process by which he sheds it.

[Shankar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bob Dollar is hired by Global Pork Rind as a site scout to find places to set up hog farms. He initially loves this job having been on poorer ones before. His initial brief from his boss is to position his work as one seeking sites to set up luxury homes as hog farms are hated in the territory. ( 'Hogfarms are a 7 letter word for stink'). He finds getting a place to stay with LaVon Fronk who is from the area and loves to share histories of the families in the region.

He uses his stint in her bunkhouse to get as much information of the 'landed gentry' who could be targets for his scouting. Soon he finds the going tough and the opposition to hog farms preventing his pursuit. In addition his employer deputes another site scout in the same territory who becomes his competition unknowingly.

The story is full of details of various families and their lineage and behavioural habits. I enjoyed the slow initial 200 odd pages before the story started to pick up towards the end.

Annie Proulx is a wonderful writer and this book has the same momentum of Shipping News. I intend to read her other works.

I intend to be highly recommending almost all my books so this is no different.

[Leo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second time I've read Annie Proulx but I could have sweared that I've read at least one more. For this book was a complete snoze fest, was not my kind of book at all. But saw some really loving reviews for it, so clearly it's something I'm missing here. But I can't love every book

[Sooz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Annie Proulx is a patient writer. the plot set up may be Bob Dollar's quest to seek out suitable land for a huge hog-raising corporation but once this purpose is established, we are well into the novel before Proulx settles down to fulfill this quest. the two-thirds of the book have little to do with the job Bob has been hired to do. she's not in a rush, but takes her time, asking us to savour this literary visit to the Texan town of Woolybucket.

Annie Proulx is a generous writer. every character -even the most minor- is given a detailed backstory. Proulx even gives the grandfathers of minor character a detailed backstory! and every landscape, every weather system, every meal is described in intimate detail. brand names of growth hormones, tips on quilting, the working parts of the old-fashioned wind mills, the history of the water table in the Texan panhandle .... it's all here.

Annie Proulx is a poetic writer. here's just a taste of what is in store for the reader of That old Ace in the Hole:
' a confetti of torn leaves '
' the dusk sifted down like molecules of pulverized grey silk '
' his face - a stretch of gravity-ruined muscles '

i must admit i had a moment of doubt when i thought her writing all well and good ... but ... was there a point to it? very soon thereafter, Proulx kicks the plot into high gear and takes care of business.

all in all, That Old Ace in the Hole left me feeling very satisfied.

[Tallie · Rating 3 out of 5]

slow to get into but a fast read by the end !

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's plenty that's low-down & dirty here, but the sheer lack of misanthropy surprised me. Is Proulx getting soft? I LIKE it. There's some clunky backstory & stilted exposition, esp at the beginning, but I never much cared because it all engaged me.

I picked up this book just after flying over some unusual buildings in the middle of nowhere & found her descriptions of industrial hog farms matched what I'd seen exactly. A nice young man gets hired to scout for hog farms in the Oklahoma panhandle. The novel is character driven & never goes for the most obvious shocking scenes to make its points. Per usual, her imagery & character details are hardcore & stunning. Her smallest details have backstories, which in turn have detailed genealogies of their own. Almost no one can beat her with a desolate landscape description (McLeod, perhaps, though I like Proulx's voice more).

In this book she's indulged her long-time hobby of funny names with such total abandon that it becomes a meta-textual joke: Tambourine Bapp, Rope Butt, Mr. Dick Head, Coolbroth LaFronk. Waldo Beautyrooms-and dozens more. Yet somehow it works without breaking the spell. I'd recommend this to anyone.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can just picture Annie Proulx writing this stuff in her place in Wyoming, and sort of smiling to herself, thinking "wait 'til they get a load of this one" Her characters and the towns in the Texas panhandle where this novel is set have the most bizarre/weird/interesting names. The main character, Bob Dollar probably has the most "normal " name of anyone. He is trying to find property to buy for a hog farm. People don't want hog farms near them, or at least they do not want to be downwind of one, but they still want their bacon and spare ribs. Bob is pretending to scout property for luxury homesites, but is feeling guilty. He was raised in Colorado by his Uncle Tam (short for Tambourine") after his parents went to Alaska and were never heard from again. His mother was Viola and all the siblings were apparently all named after musical instruments. The cast of characters is quite long, some sweet and helpful, others, not so much. Bob is learning a lot about human nature and about himself.

[Jan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read before 2005 and sometime after it came out in paperback.

Harder to penetrate than her perfect The Shipping News and requires persistence, but worthwhile, and there are some unforgettable aspects.

[Alex George · Rating 5 out of 5]

My avid followers (Danny) may have thought that I've been slacking on the ol readin front of late. But the reality is I've been reading this bad boy over the last like 3 weeks. Not a massively long novel. Big, for sure, and with v small text. But really it was evident from the opening chapters that this was gonna be one to stew over.

Basically this guy, Bob, has a new job where he has to go down to Texas and scout for sites to build hog farms and it doesnt go so well lol. Kinda like a Local Hero type story, tho the story isnt altogether that important.

All about the vibes here. The writing was so ridiculously stunning I wanted to savour every word of it. The sense of PLACE Proulx conjures is so immersive and amazingly done. One of the best descriptive writers I've come across. She knows exactly what combo of words to use to communicate her vibe and is so succinct in executing it.

The characters, the town, the Texas panhandle, and all the stories trickling through it all. It's all so amazingly fleshed out to the point where it feels like life is happening everywhere, even though not a lot is actually happening.

It's a sticky, fly-swatting, bare-faced look at the ridiculousness of everyday. It's a big ol dive into American history and personal history, and how we navigate through that to build our own future. It's an absolute wall thumper of a novel that asks the big question of where you belong in the world, and in the most natural and beautifully crafted way, politely suggests to you that it's right where you are.

A contemporary classic. Deserves far more recognition.

[Carol · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I finished it! Mostly out of respect for the person who sent it to me, who usually recommends good books. So some people like this book, maybe it was just poor timing for me... Anyway, it is about the Texas/Oklahoma panhandle country. I think I would have preferred to read non-fiction about the panhandle. The characters were characatures, treated with a kind of distain. Even the main character was 2-dimensional, there was not much empathy for any of the characters. The plot was weak, although it became more interesting toward the end... In terms of the land, it was pretty cynical until the end when it suddenly became a happy-ever-after ending. At the end of the book is when the interesting story starts to happen. I would prefer to know what happens when they start working to restore the land.... That's when the interesting story begins.... Oh, well...

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would be in heaven if every book was at least as good as this one. This story of a young man with no direction who takes the odious job of seeking out properties to buy for an international pig farm corporation is so full of compelling characters that you wish some of them could have been borrowed by less interesting books to perk them up. This book is rich in its sense of place despite the fact that the place is as flat, colorless and seemingly uninteresting as the Texas/Oklahoma panhandles. The dialogue lively with fantastic dialect and the names of the characters alone will make you laugh and smile. And on top of all this, it drives a powerful message about the connection people have to the land and to each other. This is truly one of the best books I have read in a long time.

[Sharon Huether · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. After Bob Dollar left Denver imbarking on a new career buying up land for Hog farms,he gets to know the people of the Texas Pan-handle in his quest for the hog farms of which they are not interested. Annie Proulx brings these characters to life on the pages of her book. Bob finds himself admiring the antique jewelry these ladies of the pan-handle wear every day, because of his background in antiques.

[Kandice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even when I don't love the story she is telling, Proulx's writing is so familiar and true that I love to read it. It nver fails that I will read a phrase, pause, read it over and over and be amazed that she has stumbled on a such a simply worded truth.

Proulx is a writer I will always read. No matter what the story, her words are compelling.

[Alan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich and detailed, beautifully peopled with fantastic characters. I preferred The Shipping News, but this is a great read. Proulx is a master.

[Melanie Page · Rating 1 out of 5]

I almost tipped over and died reading the first five pages.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the sense of place that Proulx evokes in this novel—and the sweet humor.

[Debra · Rating 5 out of 5]

“You know how far Texas stretches here….it ain’t nothing but yonder.”

I loved this rambling book of panhandle history and panhandle characters.

Although the tale is set in Woolybucket in the Texas panhandle, some of this saga meanders into the Oklahoma panhandle. I am sure that Texans (and some Okies) would disagree, but both geographic areas look alike to me.

My mother grew up in the Oklahoma panhandle (well, almost—it was the county due east of the actual handle–Harper County, to be exact), but again, it all looks the same to me. We lived there for a couple of years when I was three- and four-years-old. I still remember the arid dustiness of that time, huge grasshoppers that would rub your legs like sandpaper when you disturbed them, and always being aware and on the lookout for snakes. I also remember the colorful community members.

As I grew older and we would return to Harper County for holidays and other family events, I enjoyed my grandparents’ tales of some of the eccentrics that inhabited Ditch Valley (their community). Proulx’ novel is chock full of oddly named characters, so much so, that some have criticized her for the bizarre names of her colorful creations. In all honesty, however, my mom’s native land boasted surnames of Little, Wolfe, Clapp, and Rainbolt and first names of Houston, Oney, Bunk, and Gimp.

While Proulx’ landscape was dotted with towns like Woolybucket and Cowboy Rose, my ancestors’ landscape was dotted with Buffalo Flats, Cupid, and Moscow Flats (all ghost towns now. In fact, there are only two real towns that still exist in the county.)

To those critics who say that Proulx’ character names and place names are too outlandish or that her plot is too broad and ramshackle, I respond that this land and its people are too large to be contained in a small novel. This is a saga and worthy of the vastness of the barren prairie.

I loved LaVon Fronk, the unofficial historian of Woolybucket County in the novel. She reminded me so much of Oney (pronounced own-ie), a real live character of Harper County, Oklahoma. Oney kept a daily diary for every year of her adult life where she recorded community events, rainfall, and temperatures. I was fortunate enough to see her library of work (which she kept in a closet in her bathroom). She also kept a small slate chalkboard in her utility room where she used hash marks to record the number of critters she had killed. I think the last time I saw this chalkboard myself she had killed six skunks and five possums and one rattler.

I could continue to ramble about this novel and all the connections I have to it.

How I empathize with Bob Dollar as he drove through the landscape, trying to find an NPR station and waiting until the next courtesy lane would appear so you could pass the rickety old wheat truck. (I smiled at the line “liberal NPR stuff—there’s only about six people in the panhandle wants a listen to that Commie Stuff.”)

How I remember seeing old bison wallows in the fields, fence lines clogged with tumbleweeds, and a lone skyline of a grain elevator.

How I truly wondered why my ancestors settled in this “flat-ass place.”

How I remembered a favorite Uncle who set his stock and livelihood in a corporate hog operation that never materialized. (Thank goodness, because I know he would have hated that existence.)

That Old Ace in the Hole started me on a Proulx marathon and promoting her to favorite author status.

[Judy Vasseur · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to move to Woolybucket and have Brother Mesquite teach me how to ride. Woolybucket doesn't really exist in the Texas panhandle. But in the book, a woman living there 16 years is still considered a new-comer. Residents know each other's business and tragedies...not like here in Brooklyn where I don't know the names of my neighbors after living here 10 years.

I keep wondering what Cy might be serving today at the Old Dog. Something with pineapple? Twice baked potatoes? Onion pie?

"...Plenty a onion pie, what they used a call 'quiche,' which the guys here would not eat if I called it that, but if I say 'onion pie' they like it. It's the word 'pie.' If I said 'shit pie,' they'd eat it."

The book sort of keeps living in my head even after reading the last word on the last page. You get the feeling that the characters continue living their lives.

This story is about aging ranchers, their rundown land, and the aspirations of Global Pork Rind to buy up property for Hog Farms. The corporation doesn't consider pigs to be animals, they are "pork units"

It's also about a young man's journey from being abandoned by his parents to finding a meaningful place in the world to call home. Bob wears expensive loafers but only because his Uncle Tam found them in a donation box at his junk shop, just his size.

The book is also about weather, landscape, food, interesting characters, history. Proulx tracks historical changes from the 1800's to present day. She mentions a zine called "Dishwasher" which I remember reading back in the 80's. All the pay phones are being ripped out in Woolybucket because most people have a cell phone now, to the inconvenience of those (like myself) who refuse to get a cell phone.

Proulx paints pictures with words. The bible-themed quilts the women create, modeling Adam after Cy, the hairiest rancher around. ( why LaVon won't eat at the Old Dog fearing his hair falls in the food ) the sheriff who has a secret bed-wetting problem and a black belt in many forms of martial art but ends up getting both arms broken by a woman.

The road is the color of almonds or grapefruit pith depending on the time of day or the humidity or the weather. Annie Proulx creates a beautiful, tragic, interesting, moral planet and then all of a sudden you recognize it and you realize you've lived there all along.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars

Disclaimer: I listened to this with an audiobook, so my spellings of some names may be incorrect (I do not feel like looking them up).

As a Texas panhandle girl, I was - tentatively - recommended this book by my high school English teacher. Proulx's "The Shipping News" was (and is) my favorite book, and after being stricken by the deep intensity with which she delved into little-explored Newfoundland in "News," I was eagerly curious about her take on the idiosyncratic Texas panhandle. Mrs. Crosswhite's warning that it was, "insultingly accurate" still in my mind, I took up the book 7 years after leaving her AP lit class. This review will have two portions, my take on the prose, and my take on Proulx's analysis of the panhandle.

THE NOVEL:
While "The Shipping News" remains the secure favorite, I still lost myself in Proulx's intense, yet somehow wistful, imagery and her cadre of characters that seem ordinary, or even boring at first glance. Bob Dollar (our protagonist) is a likable and earnest young man, hell-bent on being helpful and seeing things through (decidedly Texan attributes despite his Denver upbringing). Bob's arc is unusual; anyone with experience living near hog farms can understand the panhandle residents' hesitation at their development there, and Bob is in sales for hog farms, no less. He's a protagonist wrapped in the plot devices of a villain, but with the personality of a hero. You simultaneously root for him and hope he fails in equal measure, a fact Proulx does little to disguise. Bob is not the cynical anti-hero (though he receives a degree of redemption). He's a man trying to get by.

My biggest criticism of the novel (and of Proulx in general) is her character's name choice. Many of the Texas residents' first names are fairly accurate (Cy, Ace, Frieda, LaVon, Della, etc), but the last names are ridiculous (Beautyrooms? really?) and his boss Ribeye Klook and his uncle Tam (TAMBOURINE!) are the worst offenders. Many cowboys go by nicknames, so Tater and Muddy Fan are hardly strange. The worst though, are the names of the towns she chooses. Many are accurate (Perryton, Pampa, Miami) but the ones she chose herself are painfully obvious. Cowboy Rose is a name far too glaringly self-aware for any self-respecting cowboy to attach to an entire town. Perhaps Flower Mound confused her.

Additionally, the narrative stretches out in vignettes like tendrils of smoke, leading nowhere. In an already long-winded story, while some of the sidebars were interesting (like Martin Fronck's exploits on his way down from Kansas) they were ultimately, kind of a drag to the pacing of the book.

All-in-all, while it could've done with some tightening up, the rich characters and ever-mounting pressure on Bob led to a warm, sweet, slow read; you wouldn't snap through it on an airplane, but it will keep you company.

THE LANDSCAPE:
As a Texas transplant to Denver (I know I am opening myself up to criticism with that and I do not care) Bob and I had almost opposite trajectories. It was startling to see the immediacy with which Bob found beauty in the place, which many have immediately dismissed as hot, flat, boring, and windy (all of which are accurate to some degree). Proulx took up residency in the panhandle as she wrote the novel (in Pampa, I believe) in order to get to know the residents in a real way, and the work shows in her dialogue and character exposition.

I spent my formative years in the Panhandle while Proulx only visited as a childless adult, and so she may be forgiven for omitting the devotion to Dr. Pepper and high school football which so characterized my upbringing. She is NOT, however, forgiven for her insistence that there is no NPR station and people are not interested in it (High Plains Public Radio out of Amarillo, thankyouverymuch).

Her most glaring omission was her lack of adulation of the sky, one of the great pastimes of the region. The sunrises and sunsets come in such garish shades of orange, yellow, and pink you'd think they were fake. Dusk often finds the sky a deep indigo, and when a bad storm gathers the clouds take on a sinister greenish hue. The daytime sky is often an intense blue, and the stars are spread out over the landscape in crowded and clear multitudes. A Texan's relationship to the sky is not to be dismissed.

Her characters often launch into long soliloquies about their relationship with their land, and while some (like Ace Crouch's conversation with Bob) are elegantly argued, she has a tendency to overdo it. Francis Scott Keyster's outburst in the Old Dog Cafe in which he lectures Bob that people are 'bound as marriage' to their land and refuse to leave was incredibly heavy-handed. Sure, Texas is a bubble which is somewhat difficult for outsiders to penetrate and insiders to leave, but like a bubble, it is invisible. The unwillingness of residents to leave is rarely (if ever) spoken of in such candid terms. While she did use the phrase, "fixin' to" properly, she didn't use y'all with NEAR the liberty as a true Texan would.

She did capture, however, the immeasurable sense of pride the residents feel in their sense of survival, and their ancestor's survival. The landscape is about as harsh as they come, with summer temperatures regularly climbing over 100 degrees and winter storms whose temperatures can dip as low as -40 (with windchill, of course). You truly CAN experience all four seasons in a single day in the Texas panhandle (Colorado residents also love to claim this fact, but they haven't seen anything). Scorpions, tarantulas, and rattlesnakes are close neighbors, and tornadoes and prairie fires are ever-present threats. Many Texans are very proud of, and interested in their history, much like the Woolybucket residents Bob encounters. There's very much a sense of, "if I can handle this wind and this heat, I can handle anything."

The fact of the matter is, Proulx definitely couldn't pass for a panhandle native (nor does she strive to, I'm sure). But as a person often defending the panhandle and its inhabitants, I felt a sense of pride and relief at her awed account of the landscape and its proud people. Many imagine Panhandle residents' personalities as flat and flaccid as the landscape that surrounds them, but Proulx saw through the windswept exteriors that harden your relationship to life. She saw that the Texas love for poetry, art, community, spirituality, and music run as deep and as colorful as the red walls of the Palo Duro Canyon.

[LindaH · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know much about this author or this book going in. I certainly wasn't grabbed by the title. But when I saw in the blurb that That Old Ace in the Hole was about hog farms, I thought it was going to do damage to the pork industry...and that did get my attention. The clincher was that Annie Peroulx won the Pulitzer once, and so I bought the Audible edition.

I was wrong in one way. This book is not about hog farms. I doubt its publication back in 2002 did any damage. But Peroulx writes like I would expect a Pulitzer prize winner to write: engagingly, accurately, feelingly. She's an excellent writer, and I will want to read more books by her. Especially because she knows what she's doing. This was going to be four stars from the get go but the masterful ending kicked it up to five.

Bob Dollar is sent to the Texas panhandle to scout out potential land acquisitions for a corporation that creates and runs hog farms. Pork Units, in corporate lingo. He not only locates likely properties but he meets a lot of colorful and surprising characters. Their stories fascinated me. I have a much better appreciation of life in the Texas panhandle. Bob winds up dealing with some basic issues confronting all of us. It made me think.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars
I am sorely tempted to give this five stars as it was such a joy to read but sometimes the details of life in panhandle got me bogged down. The writing is the type you want to wallow in and her characterisation is superb. Yes, there are some ludicrous names but with so many of the characters the names are often the most straightforward thing about them. The central character Bob is an all round decent guy who you root for the entire way through the book and as the book closes are still eager to know what happens to, indeed I like the way that in the very last chapters there are small unanswered story threads making the book seem a living entity that exists beyond your reading. The plot, such as it is, begins slowly with interludes about specific characters and their history which fans of the pioneer spirit will enjoy; gradually events unfold until the last quarter is filled with all kinds of drama but it is the characters that make this book and the way Annie Proulx brings the panhandle alive so vividly.

[Nathan Chattaway · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engrossing, frequently hilarious and very informative. I first discovered E. Annie Proulx after watching and loving The Shipping News, starring the subsequently-disgraced Kevin Spacey and realising she had written the Pulitzer-winning novel it was based on.
This book doesn't quite evoke the outlandishly mysterious atmosphere that The Shipping News does, probably because many of us are far more acquainted with Texas than we'll ever be with Newfoundland. Not quite, but not far off. The Panhandle region is full of eccentric people and their customs, and Proulx does an excellent job of transporting the reader to that place, in several different eras.
A satisfying plot that brings everything together neatly for the final act. I stopped short of giving this 5 stars only because I felt it got a bit preachy in the middle. Having previously given up on Barkskins, I realise I was perhaps overly sensitive to the author's philosophy going in, and didn't necessarily want to read another thinly veiled manifesto-as-novel. This isn't that - well, not really.

[Kristiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't expect to like this, but I quickly fell in love with the characters and the story. The book had the feel of an oral history, everyone having a different take on events, contradicting one another.
I thought the book was going to end of a cheesy yay Old Town America kick, but I don't think it did. It can be interpreted that way, and was, but I think there was a definite feel of idealism and whether that is good or not, do you believe in something and have hope, or do you lose all hope and believe in nothing. Annie Proulx did a great job and I really enjoyed it.

The idea of using up your resources and throwing them away was well handled and is a little depressing if you give it too much thought, but also beautifully handled. Were the people of Woolybucket any better than the Pork Grind Company? They too drained their land of resources (water) for their own purposes.