In a recent interview for Lit Hub, Annie Proulx (rhymes with “true”) said she’s been working on Barkskins for several decades. In some way, she said, she’s been at it “since childhood.” That means some part of her was working on the novel as she was writing The Shipping News, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994, and also while she was writing “Brokeback Mountain,” for which she won the prize you get when Hollywood turns your short story into a successful film.
It may seem a little romantic for her to say that she’s been working on the book since childhood, but after reading the 700-plus pages of seriously researched historical literary fiction about the way a line of lumberjacks (aka “barkskins”) and a line of timber titans shaped US history from the early colonial era up to about three years ago, I believe her…
