Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses Old Man The Bear (Vintage International)

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		Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses Old Man The Bear (Vintage International)
		Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses Old Man The Bear (Vintage International)

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” —William Faulkner
 
These short works offer three different approaches to Faulkner, each representative of his work as a whole. Spotted Horses is a hilarious account of a horse auction, and pits the “cold practicality” of women against the boyish folly of men. Old Man is something of an adventure story. When a flood ravages the countryside of the lower Mississippi, a convict finds himself adrift with a pregnant woman. And The Bear, perhaps his best known shorter work, is the story of a boy’s coming to terms wit the adult world. By learning how to hunt, the boy is taught the real meaning of pride, humility, and courage.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

网友对Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses Old Man The Bear (Vintage International)的评论

The Bear is perhaps my favorite Faulkner work. This is a master writer at work. More than painting a picture with words, he creates the world of a distant time, a fading environment and timeless characters. A teacher long ago told me "Look. You're a child of the South and if you ever want to understand, you must read Faulkner. She thrust a copy of the Bear into my hands." It was the first book I ever read cover-to-cover. The Bear rises above mere literature to be an experience and I would strongly recommend that anyone, child of the South or not, read this book. Spotted Horses and Old Man are nearly as good as the Bear and are Faulkner classics.

Faulkner's growth as a writer underpins these three novellas. Spotted Horses is something of a too-oblique storytelling mess, giving the reader more questions than answers to Faulkner's intentions. Old Man is doubtless Cormac McCarthy's inspiration for his later, apocalyptic novels, and here Faulkner seems to have come into his own as an impressionistic writer, his long detailed depiction of the convict's negotiation of the flooded river clearly intended to affect the reader emotionally, not intellectually. In The Bear, Faulkner has grown as a social historian, with his long conversation between Isaac and McCaslin surely intended to paint an everyman picture of the South's demise as a bucolic Eden.

Reading these stories reminds of Miles Davis turning his back to his audiences and playing, if not to his band, then solely to himself. Faulkner's stories wander (many, I know, see the challenge in following such stories as part of Faulkner's genius), his inferences are oblique, often to a fault, his characters strangely superficial, serving only as voices for his social and philosophical perceptions. Faulkner isn't easy, and yet there's plenty of depth to make you soldier on through his baroque prose.

The title of this volume is misleading. These are not short novels but sections of novels. There is great writing here but the writing should be considered within the context of the novels of which they are a part.

I bought this little volume because Virginia Wolff said Spotted Horses was her favorite story. It is ok. Her writing is ok. That's all I have to say about that.

Faulkner is great, but his writing style is pretty difficult to understand for the uninitiated. We studied this book in English class and I must admit, I am glad I had my professor on hand to break down some of the finer details I never would have noticed. The stories are great and if you like works with heavy metaphors where the meaning is buried deep in the details, you will love this.

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