Big Woods: The Hunting Stories

by William Faulkner

"The Bear," "The Old People," "A Bear Hunt," "Race at Morning"--some of Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner's most famous stories are collected in this volume--in which he observed, celebrated, and mourned the fragile otherness that is nature, as well as the cruelty and humanity of men. "Contains some of Faulkner's best work."


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, 20th Century, Literature, Nature, Southern

224 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 1, 1955

About the author

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".

Reviews

[S©aP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnifico, il mio primo Faulkner. Stupefacente. Ho dovuto accettare il suo stile, il suo stream; assecondare la scrittura con dolcezza (non correre; in qualche caso aiutarmi mormorando ciò che leggevo; trattenere la voracità. Ascoltare). Poco è bastato a intuire l'epopea e a decidere di abbandonarvisi. Avvincente inseguirla, per tutto il libro. E straordinario, alla fine, declinare l'Epica intera insieme all'autore. Sulle sue stesse parole tese, emozionate, emozionarsi. Bellissimo.

ALCUNI POST SCRIPTUM
Si tratta di racconti di caccia, ma il senso di questo libro non ha nulla a che vedere con la caccia. Proprio nulla. Provare per credere (non dico di più. Detesto le recensioni spoiler).

L'edizione (italiana) Adelphi è corredata da un'interessantissima post-fazione. Vi sono bene illustrati la genesi e il senso di questo che resta un libro misconosciuto. Il corpus di scritti era preesistente. Fu ri-elaborato dall'autore con un'idea ben precisa. Fretta commerciale e superficialità hanno poi catalogato questa pubblicazione come semplice raccolta di racconti. Riduttivo.

L'elaborazione e la composizione di questo libro sono figlie di una Poetica, vivaddio. Progetto, ipotesi, stile, pregnanza, tutto si svela alla fine. Ed è grandioso.

La letteratura ridotta a bene di consumo può rovinare generazioni, deviandone progressivamente i processi cognitivi, ma non potrà mai uccidere le forme dell'Arte. L'Arte è inconfondibile.

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Magnificent, my first Faulkner. Amazing. I had to accept the style, and his stream ; to pander to author's writing gently (not rushing; in some cases muttering what I read; retaining voracity; litterarily listening to narration). Little has been enough to sense the poetic afflatus, and to decide to abandon myself to it. A sort of chase, throughout the book. And extraordinary it has been, in the end, declining the whole Epic with the author. Together with his own tense, touched, words, being moved. Beautiful.

POSTSCRIPT
These are tales of hunting, but the point of this book has nothing to do with hunting. Just nothing. Try and see (I will not say more. I simply hate spoiling reviews ).

The edition Adelphi (italian) is accompanied by a very interesting post-faction. There, genesis and sense of this book are very well explained. The corpus of writings was preexisting. It was re-developed by the author with a clear idea in mind. A writing project. Commercial hurry and superficiality, then, cataloged this publication as a simple “ story collection ”. Reductive.

Processing and composition of this book are daughters of a Poetics, thank goodness. Project, assumptions, style, pregnancy, everything is revealed at the end. And it's great.

Literature reduced to commodity can ruin generations, gradually diverting cognitive processes. But it will never kill the forms of Art. Art is unmistakable.

[☾da · Rating 2 out of 5]

کتاب جنگل بزرگ ترجمه ی آقای احمد اخوت شامل ۵ تا داستان کوتاهه.
که همه ی این داستان ها درمورد شکار و طبیعت و ... هستند که به پیشنهاد انتشارات رندوم هاوس توسط فاکنر در این کتاب گرداوردی شدن و در ترجمه ی فارسی تغییراتی در این داستان ها به وجود اومده.
از این پنج تا داستان تا جایی که حافظه ی ضعیفم اجازه بده حدود سه تاش رو در کتاب "برخیز ای موسی" فاکنر خونده بودم و فقط لحن روایت بعضی از اون ها فرق داشت وگرنه داستان همون بود.

در انتهای کتاب توسط مترجم گرامی آقای اخوت ، بخشی با عنوان «یوکناپاتافای من» اورده شده که توضیحاتی درباره ی سرزمینی که فاکنر خلق کرده و شباهت ها و تفاوت هاش با لافایت و آکسفورد در دنیای واقعی ذکر شده.
که به نظر من مهم ترین و بهترین بخش این کتاب همین قسمت بود چون بقیه ی داستان هاش یکم برام تکراری بودن.

به خاطر همین توضیحات درمورد سرزمین یوکناپاتافا که میشه گفت بیشتر
از محل زندگیم توش خاطره دارم🥲کتاب برام ارزش پیدا کرد.

طبق همین توضیحات بخش انتهایی : ویلیام فاکنر طوری شهر جفرسون (مرکز یوکناپاتافا) رو خلق کرده که امروز آکسفورد شهرتش رو مدیون ویلیام فاکنره و مردم اون رو باشباهتش به جفرسون میشناسن :))))
جالبه که در بخش جنوبی نقشه ی یوکناپاتافا برعکس قسمت های دیگه فاکنر کسی رو ساکن نکرده و فقط اسم خودش رو به عنوان مالک انحصاری این سرزمین نوشته ، یعنی جنوب رو فقط برای خود خودش کنار گذاشته :))))

کاش میشد میتونستم با ماشین زمان برم به آکسفورد قرن بیستم و ساختمان زندان و دادگاه و دور میدون و مجسمه ها و راه آهن و خیابون هاش رو از نزدیک ببینم و تک تک ماجراها و خاطراتی که با شخصیت های فاکنر تجربه کردم برام زنده شن :)))

«که زمان موقعیت سیالی است که جز لحظه ای در هستی فرد فرد انسان ها وجود دیگری ندارد. پس دیگر "بود" وجود ندارد همه چیز "هست". اگر "بود" تعین می داشت دیگر اندوهی وجود نمی داشت.» - ویلیام فاکنر در مصاحبه با پاریس ریویو

رست این پیس خالق بهترین سرزمین خیالی ♡

[Roozbeh Gezerseh · Rating 3 out of 5]

پنج داستان از ویلیام فاکنر که همه‌گی در سرزمین خیالی یوکناپاتافا می‌گذرند. داستان‌هایی از ملاکان و زارعان و سیاهان و بومیان آمریکا، داستان‌هایی درباره‌ی شکار و تفنگ و خرس و سگ‌شکاری‌ و کمین‌گاه، داستان‌هایی با بوی باروت و طعم ویسکی و رد خون... گاهی طناز – در عین سیاهی - و گاهی عبوس.
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در جهان عظیمِ داستانیِ فاکنر شخصیت‌ها در آثار مختلف بارها و بارها ظاهر می‌شن: گاهی شخصیت فرعی یک داستان، نقش اول یک داستان در زمان و مکان دیگه‌ایه. در نتیجه هر شخصیت پیشینه، پیوند‌ها و ویژگی‌هایی داره، ویژگی‌هایی که صلب و تغییر ناپذیر نیست و در شرایط متفاوت به اَشکال متفاوت بروز و ظهور پیدا می‌کنه، همون‌طور که در زنده‌گی واقعی. این همون کاریه که بالزاک در نود جلد کمدی انسانی و زولا در بیست جلد روگن ماکار پیش از این به‌نوعی و با اهداف دیگه‌ای انجام دادن. به‌عنوان مثال قهرمان داستان اول – بزرگان طایفه – راوی و قهرمان داستان دوم – لایِن – و یکی از دو راویِ‌ داستان چهارم – شکار خرس - کونتین کامپسون، همان برادر دوم در کتاب خشم و هیاهوست. تصویر ما از اشخاص با کنار هم گذاشتن قطعه‌های پازلی که از آثار مختلف جمع کردیم کامل می‌شه. (محتمل‌تر این‌که این‌قدر این داستان‌ها زیاد و گسترده‌ن که عمرن هیچ‌وقت کامل بشه!)
توی این سایت می‌شه دید هر شخصیتی در جهان داستانی فاکنر دیگه کجاها سروکله‌ش پیدا شده، شجره‌نامه‌ی خانواده‌های مهم‌تر به چه شکلیه، مکان‌های وقوع حوادث داستان‌ها کجاهاست و غیره:
https://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virgin...
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مک‌کاسلین گفت: «درست مثل یه شیر پیر، یا خرسی که توی قفس باشه. اون [سام فادرز] هم تو قفس به‌دنیا اومده و تموم عمرش اون تو بوده. فقط قفسو می‌شناسه. بعد بویی به دماغش می‌خوره. هر بویی می‌خواد باشه. از یه گوشه‌ای بویی می‌خوره دماغش. دفعه‌ی بعد بوی شن داغ و نیزار می‌خوره به مشامش، نیزاری که تا حالا به چشم خودش ندیده. حیوون بیچاره حتمن نمی‌دونه اگه فقط یه بار چشمش به نیزار بیفته دیگه نمی‌تونه قفسو تحمل کنه. بعدش بوی دیگه‌ای به دماغش می‌خوره: بوی قفس. پیش‌تر اصلن متوجه قفس نبوده و بوشو نمی‌فهمیده. از وقتی لحظه‌ای بوی شن داغ و نیزار به دماغش می‌خوره و بعد تموم می‌شه، دیگه فقط بوی قفس به مشامش می‌خوره. این حالت چشم‌هاش به خاطر همین تغییره.» (از داستان بزرگان طایفه – صفحه‌ی 19)

[Kaveh Rezaie · Rating 5 out of 5]

بعد از چند سال دوباره خواندمش...انگار که دفعه پیش اصلا ندیده بودم چقدر عالی است...
داستان‌های

۱- بزرگان طایفه
۲- لاین
۳- سگ شکاری
۴- شکار خرس
۵- مُرّ قانون

وجه مشترک این داستان‌ها، شکار و جنگل و طبیعت است. جناب اخوت به سبک باقی مجموعه داستان‌هایی که از فاکنر ترجمه کرده‌اند، پیش از هر داستان، شناسنامه آن و رد شخصیت‌ها در داستان‌های دیگر را استادانه بیان کرده‌اند.

داستان‌های ۱ و ۲ و ۵ به شکلی در کتاب «برخیز ای موسی» آمده‌اند. داستان ۱‌، تقریبن عینا آمده و داستان ۵ تقرببا همان دعوای "لوکاس" با دامادش "جورج ویلکینز" است. داستان شماره ۲ درباره‌ی همان سگ اسطوره‌ای داستان عجیب «خرس» در کتاب «برخیز ای موسی» است. لاین (Lion). ولی نوع روایت و راوی و اشخاص حاضر در داستان تفاوت دارند.

داستان‌ ۳ با کمی تغییر در رمان «دهکده» یا «آبادی» آمده است.

داستان ۴ هم طنز قشنگ و باحالی دارد.

در پایان هم شرح بسیار خوبی درباره خلق و ویژگی‌های سرزمین داستانی فاکنر، «یوکناپاتافا» هست.

[Haniye safarpour · Rating 1 out of 5]

متاسفانه انتخاب داستان‌های کوتاه و ترتیب اون‌ها علی‌رغم توضیحات اول مترجم، اسم کتاب و موضوع تعریف شده برای کتاب به‌نظرم غلط بود. احساس قوی‌ای مدام بهم میگفت که ترجمه غلط داره.
البته این‌که کلا شکار برام موضوع منزجرکننده‌ای هست و تاحالا داستان کوتاه نتونسته جذبم کنه هم قطعا بی‌تاثیر نیست.
به‌هرحال برای من که اصلا جذاب نبود جز داستان «سگ شکاری» که فکر میکنم بهتر از بقیه بود.

[Ali Noroozian · Rating 1 out of 5]

کتاب پیش رو در برگیرنده ی داستان هایی با محوریت طبیعت وحشی و دنج آمریکا و موضوع شکار میباشد. ویلیام فاکنر تلاش کرده است که نقبی به گذشته ی سرزمین های مدرن و امروزی بزند تا زندگی بومیان منطقه وعادات و رسوم آنها را بررسی کند. در بخشی از کتاب نویسنده با طنز زیبایی به سرخ پوستان و زندگی آنها در کنار سفید پوستان اشاره میکند
"سفیدا انقد با سرخ پوستا خوب تا کردن که نه تنها گذاشتن این تپه خاکی رو که کسی این طرفا نمیخواد برا خودشون بردارن بلکه اجازه دادن اسامی آمریکایی رو خودشون بذارن"
ظاهرا دغدغه ی نویسنده در برخی از داستان ها هویت از دست رفته ی منطقه ای میباشد که موجودیت خود را وام دار مردمان اصیلی است که روزگاری در آنجا زندگی میکرده اند و پنداری که آمیخته شدن سرخ پوستان با سفید پوستان سبب گم شدن و فراموشی این هویت گشته است
"ما این قدر دست آموز شدیم که دیگه خودمونو و نژادمونو فراموش کرده ایم و باید گله وار زندگی کنی��

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

William Faulkner's Big Woods is a reworking of parts of Go Down Moses plus three short stories plus connective text to help bring the pieces together. It begins with "The Bear," a short novel in its own right and one of the best things Faulkner ever wrote.

You might think of it as a recurring dream of spending two weeks camping in the woods each November, with Major De Spain, General Compson, Boon Hogganbeck, Sam Fathers, Ike McCaslin, Uncle Ash, and their progeny over a period of almost a century. Only Ike McCaslin is in most of the stories, and the action is generally filtered through his eyes.

Big Woods is like an elegy for a way of life that has been lost as the woods were cut down for the timber and modern highways replaced the backwoods trails. If you have never read one of Faulkner's works, this is not a bad place to start as it is more or less self-contained. Not that it's an easy read, but it is a worthwhile one.

[Meg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Becoming a Faulknerian . . . The Bear. So that's why Sam Fathers is named that, and now I know who he is. A beautiful book.

[McKinley Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw, earthy, and truly born of the woods of the Deep South with all its glories and failures. A testament to just how impressive Faulkner could be when he was in his element.

Owen’s Review: 5/5 strawberries - Dad used lots of silly accents and said lots of silly words, so I was constantly entertained. Plus it has me all excited for deer season this year, and Dad says I get to go sit in the stand with him more.

[Larry Carr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Big Woods: The Hunting Stories (4 stories) are simply astounding in its ability to connect the past, and nature, boy to manhood, and tradition to change, dissolution and death. The Bear/the boy, the world of Big Woods, is a haunting remembrance piece. I’m fairly certain it was inspirational to McCarthy’s The Crossing. The boy in search of the Bear, in the Louisiana big woods, to hunt but not really wanting to kill. The boy in search of the wolf, into the mountain range of Texas to Mexico, in hopes of preserving life.

Big Woods. “Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you if you don’t corner it or it don’t smell that you are afraid. A bear or a deer has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.” … “Then he saw the bear. It did not emerge, appear: it was just there, immobile, fixed in the green and windless noon’s hot dappling, not as big as he had dreamed it but as big as he had expected, bigger, dimensionless against the dappled obscurity, looking at him. Then it moved. It crossed the glade without haste, walking for an instant into the sun’s full glare and out of it, and stopped again and looked back at him across one shoulder. Then it was gone. … back into the wilderness without motion as he had watched a fish, a huge old bass, sink back into the dark depths of its pool and vanish without even any movement of its fins.”

School of Nature. “If Sam Fathers had been his mentor and the backyard rabbits and squirrels his kindergarten, then the wilderness the old bear ran was his college and the old male bear itself, so long unwifed and childless as to have become its own ungendered progenitor, was his alma mater.”

Death comes for both man and beast. The Bear. “It was the beginning of the end of something, he didn’t know what except that he would not grieve. He would be humble and proud that he had been found worthy to be a part of it too or even just to see it too. … “It fell just once. For an instant they almost resembled a piece of statuary: the clinging dog, the bear, the man astride its back, working and probing the buried blade. Then they went down, pulled over backward by Boon’s weight, Boon underneath. It was the bear’s back which reappeared first but at once Boon was astride it again. He had never released the knife and again the boy saw the almost infinitesimal movement of his arm and shoulder as he probed and sought; then the bear surged erect, raising with it the man and the dog too, and turned and still carrying the man and the dog it took two or three steps toward the woods on its hind feet as a man would have walked and crashed down. It didn’t collapse, crumble. It fell all of a piece…”

The Man. “Old Ben’s scent drifted forward again along the streaming blackness of air, but Sam’s eyes were probably open again on that profound look which saw further than them or the hut, further than the death of a bear and the dying of a dog. Then they went on, toward the long wailing of the horn and the shots which seemed each to linger intact somewhere in the thick streaming air until the next spaced report joined and blended with it, to the lighted house, the bright streaming windows, quiet faces as Boon entered, bloody and quite calm, carrying the bundled coat. He laid Lion, bloody coat and all, on his stale sheetless pallet bed which not even Ash, as deft in the house as a woman, could ever make smooth.” … “They undressed him. He lay there—the copper-brown, almost hairless body, the old man’s body, the old man, the wild man not even one generation from the woods, childless, kinless, peopleless — motionless, his eyes open but no longer looking at any of them, while the doctor examined him and drew the blankets up and put the stethoscope back into his bag and snapped the bag and only the boy knew that Sam too was going to die. … the doctor said. “He didn’t even catch cold. He just quit.” “Quit?” McCaslin said. “Yes. Old people do that sometimes.”

Day Breaks. “Then it was dawn and they all went out into the yard to look at Old Ben, with his eyes open too and his lips snarled back from his worn teeth and his mutilated foot and the little hard lumps under his skin which were the old bullets (there were fifty-two of them, buckshot, rifle and ball) and the single almost invisible slit under his left shoulder where Boon’s blade had finally found his life. It was as if the old bear, even dead there in the yard, was a more potent terror still than they could face without Lion between them.”

Story 2. “And the next spring they heard (not from Major de Spain) that he had sold the timber-rights to a Memphis lumber company. He didn’t know he was going to say it yet he did know, he had known it all the time: “Maybe if you …” His voice died. It was stopped, he never knew how because Major de Spain did not speak and it was not until his voice ceased that Major de Spain moved, turned back to the desk and the papers spread on it and even that without moving because he was sitting at the desk with a paper in his hand when the boy entered, the boy standing there looking down at the short plumpish grey-haired man in sober fine broadcloth and an immaculate glazed shirt used to seeing in boots and muddy corduroy, unshaven, sitting the shaggy powerful long-hocked mare with the worn Winchester carbine across the saddlebow and the great blue dog standing motionless as bronze at the stirrup, the two of them in that last year and to the boy anyway coming to resemble one another somehow as two people competent for love...”

Encroachment. “yet this time it was as though the train (and not only the train but himself, not only his vision which had seen it and his memory which remembered it but his clothes too, as garments carry back into the clean edgeless blowing of air the lingering effluvium of a sick-room room or of death) had brought with it into the doomed wilderness even before the actual axe the shadow and portent of the new mill not even finished yet and the rails and ties which were not even laid; and he knew now what he had known as soon as he saw Hoke’s this morning but had not yet thought into words: why Major de Spain had not come back, and that after this time he himself, who had had to see it one time other, would return no more.”

The Woods. “Then he was in the woods, not alone but solitary; the solitude closed about him, green with summer. They did not change, and, timeless, would not, any more than would the green of summer and the fire and rain of fall and the iron cold and sometimes even snow —; summer, and fall, and snow, and wet and saprife spring in their ordered immortal sequence, the deathless and immemorial phases of the mother who had shaped him if any had toward the man he almost was, mother and father both to the old man born of a Negro slave and a Chickasaw chief who had been his spirit’s father if any had, whom he had revered and harkened to and loved and lost and grieved: might, carry even the remembrance of it into the time when flesh no longer talks to flesh because memory at least does last: but still the woods would be his mistress and his wife.”

Look Back. “he stood on the crest of the knoll itself, the four corner-markers all visible now, blanched still even beneath the winter’s weathering, lifeless and shockingly alien in that place where dissolution itself was a seething turmoil of ejaculation tumescence conception and birth, and death did not even exist. … there was no trace of the two graves any more at all. But those who would have come this far to find them would not need headstones but would have found them as Sam Fathers himself had taught him to find such: by bearings on trees: and did, almost the first thrust of the hunting knife finding (but only to see if it was still there) the round tin box manufacture... quitting the knoll which was no abode of the dead because there was no death, not Lion and not Sam: not held fast in earth but free in earth and not in earth but of earth, myriad yet undiffused of every myriad part, leaf and twig and particle, air and sun and rain and dew and night, acorn oak and leaf and acorn again, dark and dawn and dark and dawn again in their immutable progression and, being myriad, one: and Old Ben too, Old Ben too; they would give him his paw back even, certainly they would give him his paw”.

Story 3. “The Big Woods, the Big Bottom, the wilderness, vanished now from where he had first known it; the very spot where he and Sam were standing when he heard his first running hounds and cocked the gun and saw the first buck, was now thirty feet below the surface of a government-built flood-control reservoir whose bottom was rising gradually and inexorably each year on another layer of beer cans and bottle tops and lost bass plugs; the wilderness itself, where he had served his humble apprenticeship to the rough food and the rough sleeping, the life of hungers: men and horses and hounds, not to slay the game but to pursue it, touch and let go, never satiety;—the wilderness, the Big Woods themselves being shoved, pushed just as inexorably further and further on the Big Woods, shoved, pushed further and further down into the notch where the hills and the Big River met, where they would make their last stand. It would be a good one too, impregnable; by that time, they would be too dense, too strong with life and memory, of all which had ever run in them, ever to die … Oh yes, he would think; me too. I’ve been too busy all my life trying not to waste any living, to have time left to die.” … “ever leaf and twig and switch and even the frozen clods frosted over, waiting to sparkle like a rainbow when the sun finally come up and hit them. … was jest fine. When that big old buck got killed today, I knowed that even if he had put it off another ten years, he couldn’t ’a’ picked a better one.”

Story 4 the Backstory. “ because he wasn’t jest a planter; he was a farmer, he worked as hard as ara one of his hands and tenants—which is why I knowed from the very first that we would git along, that I wouldn’t have no trouble with him and he wouldn’t have no trouble with me, from that very first day when I woke up and maw had done gone off with that Vicksburg roadhouse feller without even waiting to cook breakfast, and the next morning pap was gone, too, Mister Ernest rid up and said, “Come on. Your paw ain’t coming back neither.” “You mean he give me to you?” I said. “Who cares?” he said. “Come on. I brought a lock for the door. We’ll send the pickup back tomorrow for whatever you want.” … “was jest fine—his wife had died about three years ago—without no women to worry us or take off in the middle of the night with a durn Vicksburg roadhouse jake without even waiting to cook breakfast. … “setting in the sun for one more day before we went back home to git ready to put in next year’s crop of cotton and oats and beans and hay; and across the river yonder, behind the wall of trees where the big woods started, that old buck laying up today in the sun, too—resting today, too, without nobody to bother him until next November. And so the hunting and the farming wasn’t two different things atall—they was jest the other side of each other. “Yes,” I said. “All we got to do now is put in that next year’s crop. Then November won’t be no time away atall.” [The return to the woods and hunt] “waiting for next November for us to run him again?” “And git him, too,” I said. “We won’t even fool with no Willy Legate and Walter Ewell next time.” “Maybe,” Mister Ernest said. “Yes,” I said. “Maybe,” Mister Ernest said. “The best word in our language, the best of all. That’s what mankind keeps going on: Maybe.”

Woods Retreat. “Now the land lies open from hills to levee, standing horseman-tall in cotton for the world’s looms, right up to the doorsteps of the Negroes who work it. “cotton patches which as the years passed became fields and then plantations; the very paths made by bear and deer and panther become the roads and highways linking the little towns still bearing the names of the old hunting stands: Panther Burn, Bucksnort, Bear Gun. Now the land lies open from hills to levee, standing horseman-tall in cotton for the world’s looms, right up to the doorsteps of the Negroes who work it and the white men who own it. Because it is too rich for anything else, too rich and strong to have remained wilderness—land so rich and strong that, as those who live in and by it say, it exhausts the life of a dog in one year, a mule in five and a man in twenty.”

Age 80 (70 Nov. visits to the Woods). “Maybe I will even go out on a stand in the morning too, I tell myself, knowing that I will not. Because it will not be the fatigue. It will be because I shall not sleep tonight but instead lie wakeful and peaceful on my cot amid the tent-filling snoring and the rain’s whisper as I always do on this first night in camp, who don’t have enough of them left now to waste one sleeping.”

Higher Power? “I reckon He foreknew man would follow and kill the game. I believe He said, So be it. I reckon He even foresaw the end. But He said, I will give him his chance, I will give him warning and foreknowledge too, along with the desire to follow and the power to slay. The woods and fields he ravages and the game he devastates will be the consequence and signature of his crime and guilt, and his punishment.”

A House but not a Home. “I own a house in Jefferson. That is, it is recorded to me, I pay taxes on it, it is specified as my domicile, since it contains the impedimenta necessary for a human being to get through life with: But it is not my home. It is merely the way station in which I pass the time waiting for November again. Because this is my home: this tent with its muddy floor and the bed neither wide enough nor soft enough nor even warm enough for the old bones; my kin, the men whose ghosts alone still companion me: De Spain and Compson and the old Walter Ewell and Hogganbeck.”

Woods. “whole puny evanescent clutter of human sojourn which after our two weeks will vanish, and in another week will be completely healed, traceless in this unmarked solitude. It is mine, though I have never owned a foot of it, and never will. It is as if I can see the two of us—myself and the wilderness—as coevals, transmitted to me, assumed by me gladly, humbly, with joy and pride, from the old Major de Spain and the old Sam Fathers who had taught me to hunt, the two spans—mine and the wilderness’s—running out together, not toward oblivion, nothingness, but into a dimension free of both time and space where once more the untreed land warped and wrung to mathematical squares of rank cotton for the frantic old-world people”

Summation. “this land where white men rent farms and live like niggers and Negroes crop on shares and live like animals; where cotton grows man-tall in the very cracks in the sidewalk, mortgaged before it is even planted and sold and the money spent before it is ever harvested, and usury and mortgage and bankruptcy and measureless wealth all breed and spawn together until no man has time to say which one is which, or cares..… No wonder the ruined woods I used to know don’t cry for retribution. The very people who destroyed them will accomplish their revenge.”

The Author. “William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. In 1904 the family moved to the university town of Oxford, Mississippi, where Faulkner was to spend most of his life. He received the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.”

“BIG WOODS The best of William Faulkner’s hunting stories are woven together brilliantly in Big Woods. First published in 1955, the volume includes Faulkner’s most famous story, “The Bear” (in its original version), together with “The Old People,” “A Bear Hunt,” and “Race at Morning.” Each of the stories is introduced by a prelude, and the final one is followed by an epilogue, which serve as almost musical bridges between them.”

[Andria Potter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing from a favorite classic author. 5 ⭐

[Meredith Cenzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Faulkner style and themes. Both a coming of age story and a melancholy perspective on how much we're losing as the big woods get smaller. One chapter was previously published as a short story ("The Bear").

[John Pfund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faulkner allowed me to think deeply about my own hunting experiences and relationship to the land I hunt. I would highly recommend this work to others who hunt.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

(*Note: I read The Bear, which is just one of the novellas in this collection) Incredible. If you need to remind yourself why people think this guy is so good, read this. The preface/prologue thing called "Mississippi" is perfect. Quite possibly the best intro I've ever read. If you're not up for the whole story, just read that. The characters, dialogue and timing are as only Faulkner can deliver. The very end may have been the best part. Faulkner's writing, especially at the end, comes close to getting over the top. But after finishing it I was absolutely...more Incredible. If you need to remind yourself why people think this guy is so good, read this. The preface/prologue thing called "Mississippi" is perfect. Quite possibly the best intro I've ever read. If you're not up for the whole story, just read that. The characters, dialogue and timing are as only Faulkner can deliver. The very end may have been the best part. Faulkner's writing, especially at the end, comes close to getting over the top. But after finishing it I was absolutely riveted. I may have even been shaking. I'm not shitting you. If I could give this a higher rating than everything else, I might.

[Laurie Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Faulkner - you got me! Picked this as a means to begin reading Faulkner and was immediately smitten. Thank you Portsmouth Book & Bar! Toughest part was reading slowly and deliberately to soak it up. Actually googled "how to read Faulkner" because I was having trouble initially. But slowing it down and trying to immerse myself in the characters helped. This collection of stories brings you through generations of people and geography, respect for the land and mutual respect for game. This is going to be worth a re-read - highly recommend it.

[Andrea Fiore · Rating 5 out of 5]

"… e mi avvicinai al cervo che giaceva ancora tutto intero e nell’atto di quella magnifica corsa e lo sgozzai col coltello di Sam e Sam tuffò le mani nel sangue caldo e mi segnò il viso per sempre mentre stavo lì in piedi cercando di non tremare, con umiltà e insieme con orgoglio anche se un ragazzo di dodici anni non era certo capace di esprimerlo a parole: «Io ti ho ucciso; il mio comportamento non deve tornare a vergogna della vita che ti abbandona. La mia condotta da ora in poi e per sempre deve essere degna della tua morte»."

[Sara Malacalza · Rating 4 out of 5]

🅡🅔🅒🅔🅝🅢🅘🅞🅝🅔
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Una foresta che lo attende consapevole di essere il suo percorso d'iniziazione alla virilità.
Il ragazzo è giovane, ma sa che deve essere paziente, che deve avere l'umiltà di aspettare, restare in ascolto.
Lo sa. Anche se è poco che la vive.
Ma arriverà anche il suo momento com'è stato per Sam, per il Maggiore de Spain, per Walter... Diventerà uomo, ucciderà la sua prima preda.
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Caccia, foresta. Una muraglia alta e senza fine.
Luoghi fisici e proiezioni metafisiche dove uomini e cani sanno di dover resistere, essere coraggiosi e sanno che ci si può spaventare, ma non aver paura perché il prezzo di questo errore lo conoscono, fin troppo bene, guardando i propri corpi dilaniati, insanguinati e selvaggi.
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Diventare uomini vivendo la morte del grande Lion che con la sua stazza, i suoi occhi gialli era il solo a fronteggiare il Vecchio Ben e le sue fresche e deformi orme.
E il ragazzo lo cerca insieme a loro, consapevole della fragilità, dell'impotenza e della mortalità che li accomuna accolto da quella foresta che funge da rifugio, da casa, da madre che lo aspetta custodendo la sua bussola, osservandolo perdersi e ritrovarsi.
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E mentre, con "sonno incompleto, cuore che batte, un'oscurità che scotta", stivali infangati e barba incolta, si intraprende il percorso di iniziazione, arriveranno prepotenti cravatte, camicie inamidate, binari, piattaforme di carico, segherie ad invadere la bellezza di quell'area incolta, immensa, gradualmente divorata dall'arrivo di "tre francesi, dieci, cento, mille spagnoli, l'anglosassone, il pioniere e l'uomo alto e ruggente" che faranno scomparire la foresta dalla carta geografica.
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Un capolavoro del grande Faulkner ingiustamente poco conosciuto dove attraverso la caccia, abbracciando una foresta e osservando l'uso distruttivo che l'uomo fa della sua natura, si inizia a conoscere se stessi.

[Paul Lusk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok so I really only read The Bear. It is definitely a 5. Don't know about the others. Have since misplaced my copy of Big Woods. Read it probably about 5 years ago and just remembered lately while I was looking around for something to read just how good this is especially when compared to anything else I keep running across.
Maybe read it again someday so until then this review is more a recommendation than a review.
Just to say that this is a engrossing and insightful read . The story concerns an annual hunting trip that is primarily concentrate on encountering and killing a bear that has become legendary in his own time.
This year is the first time young Ike McCaslin has been allowed to accompany his elders . We see through his eyes and are privvy to his thoughts.
This is a young man with a mind of his own who at once respects the traditions of his surroundings and is also open to interpret events for his self.
The story is eventful, entertaining and makes the reader think . Definitely a 5 star experience.

[chloeslowlyreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this in Nobel Prize Winning Authors; I will say, I walked out of that class liking Faulkner a lot more than I originally did. HOWEVER! I still think that to get to his main points (which are beautiful and sometimes synthesized perfectly with a use of the English language that would make Webster cry) you have to sift through incredibly long run-ons that use words you’ve never even heard of. The good news is Faulkner clearly has his favorite words and once you’ve seen and googled the first few, you’re going to see them again. All that being said, I learned to enjoy reading and picking apart these stories with the help of a teacher who happens to very much comprehend Faulkner and a class that was (despite probably never reading a word of any of these stories) very interactive.

[Edvard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful writing, the first story The Bear is the most memorable (his most famous for a reason). But I enjoyed the following stories for showing how the woods changed over the boy's lifetime. Interesting that a collection of stories about hunting can still have a strong conservationist theme, at least that seems to have stuck with me. Read this book while in Finland at the cottage over the summer, and was thus particularly receptive to the description of the woods. Finished the book with a sad but serene feeling, like you get when alone in the woods for any amount of time.

[Rocky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story about an orphan boy, raised by his cousin, and his yearly sojourn with a motley crew of characters in turn-of-the-century Mississippi. Faulkner tells the story of a young boy coming of age, nurtured and mentored by a half black, half Choctaw Indian former slave. Filled with love, hope, camaraderie, and the struggles of becoming a man of character in the old south.

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The old hunter said:
soon we will enter the woods. It is not new to me, since I have been doing it each November for over seventy years—-this last hill, at the foot of which the rich unbroken alluvial flatness begins as the sea begins at the base of its cliffs, dissolving away beneath the unhurried November rain as the seat itself dissolves away.”

[Nicolò Bartolini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il miglior romanzo ecologico del XX secolo. È un estremo insulto ridurlo a questa sola categoria letteraria, infatti penserò ad una recensione molto più oculata. Queste sono solo le prime righe "usa e getta" che mi vengono in mente. Aggiornerò.

[Michelle Padilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this for a college class. The writing reminded me of a child's writing. I had a really hard time staying focused and had to reread quite a bit.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful, rambling run-on sentences longer than most author's paragraphs and waaaaaay more racism than I expected...

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit. Mandatory reading for anyone who lives in the Delta, or for Mississippians who love our woods.

[Cody Douds · Rating 5 out of 5]

DAMN!

[Matt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kindle. Not a fan of writing style. Confusing, meandering, boring!

[Simon Sweeney · Rating 4 out of 5]

4

[Ted Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good.