^^^^^^^^^^^^
Indeed, and as we often remind ourselves, AP provides us with the “long bones” of the story and we, the reader, are expected to supply the appropriate “soft tissue”. Quite apt in this case.
Agreed. But she does, even with the long bones, provide room for lots of possible interpretations.
Taking into consideration Ennis’ implied homosexual inexperience (not to mention his shared patriarchal heteronormative privilege), in conjunction with the absence of any sort of instruction manual, it is still possible, I believe, for the reader to eliminate certain apertures (aural and olfactory for example) as the locus of penetration.
While she doesn’t specify apertures, she does leave sufficient space for a reader to work out for him/herself into what part of Jack Ennis is entering.
You suggest that the reader could possibly eliminate the aural and olfactory apertures (to which I’ll refer in a moment), but omitted the visual.
Although it’s new to me, me being who I am (I really must get out more), I do believe that the phrase “fucked in the eye” is used, according to the Urban Dictionary, to describe “the feeling that someone has literally removed your eyeball, and inserted their genitalia into your gaping socket for their own enjoyment, with minimal concern for yourself.”
Well, that sort of “fits” with what’s, presumably, going on.
As far as ear or nasal penetration are concerned (I mention penetration because that describes what happens when someone enters something [e.g. He entered the room; he entered Jack]), there are, apparently, some who actually indulge in such antics.
(I refrain from going into details, for obvious reasons.)
And I doubt an instruction manual is needed, human nature being what it is.
*Who would have thought Proulx was covering all bases with her skeletonic writing...
Furthermore, Jack’s exclamation of the distinctly non-quotidian “guns goin’ off” at a rather climactic moment in the scene negates the assumption that the exclamation is either nugatory or in compliance with “Isolan” aquatic trope deployment (much less fluviographic poetics) though the latter is, perhaps, best addressed separately.
I don't think anyone would assume his exclamation was “nugatory.”
But considering what’s (presumably) being fired (unless the chamber was empty, of course) from Jack’s “gun” (and we’re not told if anything was fired anyway), it could be any number of possible liquids and/or semi-liquids (tears, nasal discharge, saliva, earwax and so forth...) or solids (where
was the rifle at this moment?).
Indeed, Jack’s apparent oral communication facilities imply, (in the absence of any evidence that he is a student of Demosthenean elocution techniques,) his oral aperture to be free from obstruction.
I detect a setup, here.
Proulx clearly writes that Jack’s “gun’s goin off” was “choked.”
By process of apertural elimination, this leaves the reader with scant choice but to settle upon the decidedly prurient prone “asshole”.
I tend to disagree; it seems that there’s more to Proulx’s writing than meets the “eye.”
She’s just too, too vague and elusive to provide her readers with an accurate picture of what’s actually going on.
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* I recall a rather unorthodox method of entering someone in Warhol's
Flesh for Frankenstein.