The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx is an energetic, darkly humorous, and occasionally magical picture of the modern North American family. When his cheating wife receives her fair desserts, Quoyle—a third-rate newspaper hack with a “head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair, features as bunched as kissed fingertips”—is violently yanked out of his routine job. Quoyle and his two emotionally troubled kids are persuaded by an aunt to visit the bleakly gorgeous coastal region of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. The damaged members of three generations attempt to piece together new lives here on bleak Quoyle’s Point in a house that is vacant save than a few reminders of the family’s shady past.
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
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The temperature in Newfoundland rarely gets above seventy degrees, cod cheeks are a local delicacy, and snowmobiling and boats are the more convenient modes of transportation than cars and other vehicles with wheels. The aunt establishes herself as a yacht upholsterer in adjacent Killick-Claw in this harsh location of violent storms, a declining fishery, and protracted unemployment, while Quoyle gets work covering maritime news for the neighbourhood’s weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents).
Each of the Quoyles faces personal demons as the long winter closes its icy jaws, reeling from catastrophe to minor victory in the company of the obedient Mavis Bangs, Diddy Shovel the strongman, drowned Herald Prowse, cane-twirling Beety, Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio, a deranged cousin the aunt refuses to recognize, the heavily-zippered Alvin Yark, silent Quoyle has mastered the ability to gut cod, escape from a pickle jar, and tie a true lover’s knot by the time of the spring storms.
The protagonist of The Shipping News, Quoyle, is an outcast who encounters several setbacks in Mockingbird, New York. He marries Petal Bear, who brings him joy for just one month. Bunny and Sunshine are the names of Quoyle and Petal’s two children. Petal eventually rejects Quoyle and decides to travel with other guys instead. Finally leaving Quoyle, she “sells” the two girls before passing away in a car accident. When Quoyle locates the girls, he moves with his aunt to a small Newfoundland hamlet where his ancestors had resided.
Quoyle is introduced to Jack Buggitt, Editor of the Gammy Bird newspaper in Killick-Claw, Newfoundland, by a friend from New York named Partridge, who had previously helped Quoyle secure a reporting position. Quoyle takes on the writing of pieces on shipping news as well as stories about car accidents for the Gammy Bird’s front page. Despite having recent forebears with questionable traits, Quoyle and Aunt Agnis Hamm, together with the girls, start to prosper in the Newfoundland maritime town. As the aunt launches a ship upholstery business, Quoyle begins to make friends and raises his two kids in a loving environment.
Proulx employs a variety of strategies to guide readers to Quoyle’s understanding of coastal life, interpersonal relationships, and himself. Particularly thought-provoking was her chapter epigraphs from Clifford Ashley’s 1944 book The Ashley Book of Knots. The different affiliations in Quoyle’s life—some constructive, others destructive—are described as knots. Due to the importance of sailing and the lifestyle, physical knots were important in the book. The habits of Quole’s cousin Nolan and the aunt’s upholstery shop also had tangible knots at play. The plot and topics of the book were fleshed out by a number of symbolic knots—complex relationships and fruitful relationships were tied and undone to produce a memorable and original book.
It’s an exceptional book. Consider the storyline: a dumb guy marries a promiscuous female, they have a few children, she is killed in a car accident, and he moves. It is a snapshot of a person’s life. But for 350 pages, she uses language in the most remarkable ways, breaking every rule. There are only three rules for writing, according to W. Somerset Maugham, and no one can ever agree on what they are. She disregards any and all regulations that anyone may have.
