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My Girlfriend Was Offended By Brokeback Mountain!

No, not the movie. The lady is a fully paid-up member of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy (although she's let her membership in People for the American Way lapse), so no overly-lengthy shepherd kiss-fest is going to give her the vapours.

No, she was shocked at the short story. Disgust filled her before she reached the first page. Actually, she was appalled as soon as she opened the cover of the unmanfully short paperback and found not a semi-naked Heath and Jake in full-clinch step-back mode, but instead the engorged price of $9.95.[1]

(That's almost sixteen cents per page. I'm glad she didn't see that the hardcover version goes for $14.95, though there's a 32% discount at Amazon. This for a story that you can find for free with some simple Googling.)

Me, I'm a good little capitalist, and this octavo nearly inspires me to same-sex marriage myself. Heck, if I happened to find the marketing genius, whoever he or she is, who figured out how to sell a New Yorker short story at ten bucks a pop, I'd be tempted to get down on bended knee.

[1]: Did I mention she's been teaching me romance-novel metaphors?

Comments

The part that especially boggles the mind is that the short story was already available in print in Close Range, at roughly the same price and with 200 pages of other short stories to go with it.

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