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The Bear by William Faulkner is our August 2023 Short Story/Novella Read.

This discussion will open on August 1

Beware Short Story Discussions will have Spoilers

Which version of this is everyone reading? I recently read the story as part of Go Down, Moses, but an abbreviated version was previously released as "The Bear," and released in Saturday Evening Post and that was based on an earlier story, "Lion." written a few years earlier. I will reread the shortened Post story, "The Bear," and "Lion," both of which are in The Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner.

Thank you for letting us know what collection it's in, Sam. I was looking through many and couldn't find it. Unfortunately that one isn't available cheap enough for me so I'm getting it from the Go, Down, Moses, you mentioned. Than one is only $3.99 for Kindle.

For those who don't mind reading online, I found this free version on a secure link

I don't know what version this is but it's 24 pages long.

I have it in a collection that contains four stories, Big Woods: The Hunting Stories. It includes:

�� The Bear
�� The Old People
�� A Bear Hunt
�� Race at Morning

I am confused about this one. So, "the Bear" and "the bear hunt" are two different stories. But are there several different versions of "the bear"?

This one:

is very short. Last word is "all".

This one:

seems somewhat longer and last word is "said"
Seems to be the same as Sue's link

Start is "He was ten. But it had already begun, " in all cases.

I think you are correct JBlueFlower. The version in Go Down Moses is yet another version which is drastically longer. I decided since I'm behind in my reading, and since the version listed in this nomination is 20 something pages, I'm going to go with the one I linked to since it is also of similar length. I will still be interested to hear what others think of the very long version in GDM and any other versions they read.

I read the much longer version by accident. The first 2 chapters were good - a coming of age story that revolved around hunting. However the middle chapters are a confusing history of the boy's parentage. The last chapter wraps up the story about the boy. I rated the whole thing only 2 1/2 stars because of the middle chapters.

I found it in Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses / Old Man / The Bear

I found two sources for The Bear

Book:
The local library system has this book:
Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner
ISBN 0394400445

Audiobook:
YouTube has this available:


I will try audiobook today. If I have difficulty understanding, I will go to library to read the story.

I'm having trouble finding "The Bear by William Faulkner" at any of my libraries or even a digital copy.

Ah. I saw the just comments above. Thanks for the free websites versions of the story. Much thanks

I have tongue-tied fingers. I meant I just saw the comments/posts above. Still, much much thanks!

I think there are a few versions of The Bear circulating; the one linked here is a shorter one. The 'expanded' version contains Ike's family background and Leo the dog's motive, and it's available as mentioned by Karen in Big Woods

This is from the publisher notes of Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses / Old Man / The Bear:

"The Bear" first originated as a 1935 short story, “Lion," about a dog who tracked a bear. The central character of "Lion,�� however is not Isaac McCaslin, but Quentin Compson, who had committed suicide in The Sound and the Fury (1929), and whom Faulkner was resurrecting at the same time he was writing "Lion," for his role in Absalom, Absalom. "Lion" was the central story around which he collected a number of stories he had been working on since the 1930s, which he incorporated into Go Down, Moses. Throughout 1940, Faulkner apparently worked on revising this story into the long complicated chapter that eventually became "The Bear," though it was still called "Lion" on the typescript he submitted to Random House. In the fall of 1941, needing money as usual, Faulkner reduced the narrative materials of "Lion" to a twenty-page version (published in The Saturday Evening Post, May 4, 1942). Faulkner then carefully revised each story in Go Down, Moses and sent to Random House a completely revised and retyped typescript, which the editors pushed through with a minimum of intervention that amounted to virtual indifference. The problems are mostly typographical errors, things that should have been caught by a careful proofreader. The typescript submitted by Faulkner is the copy-text for this edition.

Pharmacdon wrote: "This is from the publisher notes of Three Famous Short Novels: Spotted Horses / Old Man / The Bear:
"The Bear" first originated as a 1935 short story, “Lion," about a dog who tracked a..."

Your clarification is very much appreciated, Pharmacdon!

The book posted for voting is the 1942 novella, excerpted from Go Down, Moses. 1990 edition, Curley Pub, 193 pages. I have all four texts, so will be reading them all! WF's my favorite novelist, so I can use this month to compare the versions.

Might I suggest that since we are each selecting one of the four, that when we comment we make sure to reference which one we are citing?

As Sam mentioned, the first appearance of the story was in The Saturday Evening Post. Brief background and photos of the article are available at the Digital Yoknapatawpha site here:

Joseph Blotner has already done the work for me! From the Notes and Bibliography of his Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner.

Excerpt is under spoiler for length, and bc there are some plot revelations.
(view spoiler)[

Lion

It was probably the late winter or early spring of 1935 when Faulkner wrote this story. He doubtless tried to sell it to at least one of the large-circulation weekly magazines, but it was Harper's which purchased it and printed it in Volume CLXXII (Dec. 1935), 67-77. In September of 1941 Faulkner used much of the material of the story in section 3 of "The Bear", which was really a novella and which would be the fifth and longest part of the novel Go Down, Moses (1942). Whereas the magazine version had been narrated by sixteen-year-old Quentin Compson, now Faulkner employed an omniscient narrator, and Quentin's role was assumed by young Ike McCaslin. This permitted Faulkner to obtain the maximum dramatic effect from the climactic conflict between Old Ben and Lion and Boon by narrating it as it happened, rather than having it told as Quentin and the others heard it after the fact from old Ike McCaslin and Ad, the cook, who was now renamed Ash. Faulkner also interpolated into the story the collapse of Sam Fathers after Old Ben's death and then Sam's own passing. In Go Down, Moses, Ike would not then or later have produced offspring, as he obviously had done in order to have the grandson in the story named after Ike's father. Boon was still violent, but he had not killed a Negro, as the reader had been told in the magazine version. Faulkner also expanded the liquor-buying expedition to Memphis, deriving more humor from Boon's behavior than he had done in the earlier treatment of the material. He also enlarged and deepened the last portion of the Harper's story, so much so that he chose to use it not in section 3, but in section 5 to conclude "The Bear", gaining both power and resonance from Ike's meditation and irony through Boon's frenzy and the implied juxtaposition of past and present. (hide spoiler)]

I just finished reading this. I read the online version linked to in Message 3, which, if I'm reading Pharmacdon's clarification properly, is the version published in 1942 in the Saturday Evening Post (I think??).

I was really impressed by this story! Something about the writing style gave it an urgency which kept propelling me forward. It's a writing style that might be awkward, but somehow isn't, and instead gives a sense of immediacy. I really liked the ending, with his father's quick understanding and ideas about truth.

I listened to ebook where the story was long while reading a printed story that was shorter.

My reading of the story was not affected by which version I most focused on. For me the story was primal within the humans and bear, something mythic in the story, relational between bears and humans.

I may go back to find a quote or two to post here.

Sublime. Subliminal. Mythic. Relational.

@Wobbley and Cynda - I'm so happy to hear that you were both so touched by the story! Thomas Merton has a fantastic lecture series on WF and The Bear (it's been free on Hoopla, through my library in MD, for months now). Merton is quite humorous, and uses what he calls Faulkner's "human spiritualism" to elucidate what he was teaching at seminary. (Note: I an NOT not making a pro or anti religious comment here, but pointing out how Faulkner's work has been used by folks outside of the literary community.)
The transcript can be found here,
The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton
but I personally enjoy listening to Merton speak. 🧡📚

Cheryl, I had a friend who was also appreciative of Thomas Merton, so I read parts of several of Merton's works. I remember Merton encouraging himself and others to live in the present and with intention. . . . I do see how the hunters and the hunted were present and intentional. Good connection. Glad to be reminded.

I read the 20 page short story version and used this for my personal bookshelf record The Bear: Short Story. The writing is lovely so I gave it 4*. I am not opposed to hunting, but I don't understand the ritualistic approach that men sometimes have toward it. I grew up hiking, camping, swimming in lakes and canoeing. I rode horses. I completely understand the boy walking in the woods and knowing each animal trail, but then I never personally encountered a bear. That would be a frightening thing. We saw a lot of bears in the Smoky Mountains, but they were tame and at a distance.

I tend to see Nature more in the terms that Henry Thoreau or Jack London write about. Faulkner speaks of it as a magical or mystical thing. Laws of Nature and Magic are by definition antonyms. Still the writing was lovely.

Just for fun: I had ChatGPT (an AI) write a review of "The Bear" in the style of writing of William Faulkner.

In the dimmed twilight of Yoknapatawpha's labyrinthine legacy, there emerges a tale, a tale wrought in the very sinews of Southern soil and bloodlines, a tale known as "The Bear." William Faulkner, a chronicler of the tangled destinies that thread through the heart of the Mississippi wilderness, delivers yet another masterpiece that tugs at the tendrils of time, unraveling the complex tapestry of the land and its people.

A reader, upon encountering this magnum opus, will soon discover that "The Bear" is not merely a narrative; it is an embodiment of Faulkner's profound communion with the very spirit of the earth he walks upon. Through the nuanced strokes of his pen, Faulkner renders a landscape not as backdrop, but as a living, breathing entity that breathes in harmony with the lives it cradles. In every rustling leaf, in every dewdrop kissed by dawn, the reader discerns Faulkner's unmistakable voice, a voice that resonates through the ages.

Within the pages of this epic, characters emerge from the shadows of their own history, interwoven with the lore of the wilderness they navigate. Ike McCaslin, a young man awakening to the truth of his lineage, embarks on a quest that mirrors the journey of an entire nation grappling with its past. In the company of his compatriots, the old-timers and the young, the black and the white, Ike's trajectory through time mirrors the intricate dance between the hunting hounds and the hunted prey.

Yet, "The Bear" is not a simple hunt, nor a mere coming-of-age chronicle. It is Faulkner's reflection on the inescapable cycle of existence, a cycle that births as it devours, that creates even as it destroys. Faulkner's prose is a river that flows not in a straight line, but in a meandering course, carrying with it the debris of memory and the sediment of history. His sentences, labyrinthine and layered, invite the reader to plunge deeper into the mire of human experience, to uncover the buried roots of the present.

In the end, "The Bear" stands as a testament to Faulkner's mastery of the written word and his affinity for the land from which his tales spring. With this work, he beckons the reader to explore the corridors of time, to embrace the past as an inseparable part of the present, and to reckon with the legacy that courses through our veins like a wild, untamed river. Faulkner's words linger long after the final page, echoing in the recesses of the mind, a reminder that the bear, both literal and metaphorical, will forever roam the terrain of our collective consciousness.

If we are sipping Henry James�� fine wine* then we must be sipping William Faulkner’s whiskey.
*A reference to my comment in the “Washington Square�� spoilers section, message 38.

Pharmacdon wrote: "Just for fun: I had ChatGPT (an AI) write a review of "The Bear" in the style of writing of William Faulkner.

In the dimmed twilight of Yoknapatawpha's labyrinthine legacy, there emerges a tale, a..."

This is so much better than any review I write.

Sam wrote: This is so much better than any review I write.

It is intimidating. When I asked ChatGPT to write a review in my style, it said: “Book is about a bear.�� 😅

Pharmacdon wrote: "It is intimidating. When I asked ChatGPT to write a review in my style, it said: “Book is about a bear.�� 😅"

Haha, thanks for sharing this; it really made me laugh!

In hunting and fishing culture, The Big One is honored as much as sought. If the Big One gets killed, fishing and hunting parties will ne less excited. Sighting the Big One as group is good. Sighting the Big One with gun or hook at the ready, but still somehow now catching it is puzzling to the novice, such as our teenaged boy here.

All humans and their cultures are imperfect yet there is also something grand in them all. Here is the acknkwledged connection being the hunter and hunted & the hunted and hunter. There is more, such as the poem and lesson the father gives the boy, but to describe in words misses the heart energy, the respect and reverence.

Tradition would be a better word rather than ritual hunting. There was a neighborly get-together for a hunting party. Hunting in those days served the purpose of replenishing meat in their larder and killing the animals that harmed their livestock and harvest.

As true as what Pharmacdon says, this is the second story I have read in a month's time about a hunter developing a deeper understanding of the animal hunted. This story here and a story in modern telling of traditional stories in African Tales: A Barefoot Collection by Geina Mhlophe Gcina Mhlophe


It might be that same old body-spirit break that some traditional tales seem to indicate. Not everyone's truth--the storytellers' truth.

I found the short one online before coming to this thread, so didn't know what I missed! If anyone is unsure, I whole-heartedly recommend the short version. An absolutely gorgeous piece of writing.

I agree with Cynda about the mythic quality of this. And also that it is stunning.

I really appreciate the explanations from everyone above, and will have to read Go Down, Moses sometime soon.

The descriptions of the dogs were particularly intense and thrilling:
where they huddled, quiet, the eyes luminous, glowing at them and vanishing, and no sound, only that effluvium of something more than dog, stronger than dog and not just animal, just beast ..."

This was my first Faulkner read and it started off pretty good but the middle part was so confusing to me. Maybe also because English isn't my first language and I had a bit of a trouble understanding that part. Sadly rated it 1*.

I have read the short version. I don’t understand the story.

I suspect that some of it is language trouble, like for instance a sentence like
"I want you to learn how to do when you didn't shoot. It's after the chance for the bear or the deer has done already come and gone that men and dogs get killed."

He should learn what to do when he is not shooting? �� has done already come�� ? What is that?

What is the story about at all? Not shooting an old almost immortal bear? They ritually try each year, not actually expecting to succeed? In the end they drink and read a bit and talk about a small dog that cannot do anything but be brave.

Why is that “considered one of his greatest. Some critics call it the best short story ever written.��

Sparknotes says that the story is a “symbolic exploration of the relationship of man and nature. Old Ben, the legendary bear, is a symbol of the power and inscrutability of nature�� Is that really it? If that is the case it sounds like the moral of the story is wrong. The bear is not surviving and immortal.

J_BlueFlower wrote:
"I want you to learn how to do when you didn't shoot. ..."

Prior to that, the story reads:

He had raised and cocked his gun as Sam told him and stood motionless again while the uproar, the invisible course, swept up and past and faded; it seemed to him that he could actually see the deer, the buck, blond, smoke-colored, elongated with speed, fleeing, vanishing, the woods, the gray solitude, still ringing even when the cries of the dogs had died away.
“Now let the hammers down,�� Sam said.

He tells him how to prepare to shoot but then carefully unarms the rifle, as that is when people and dogs get shot by accident. At this point in the story, he is taught patience as a hunter.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "I have read the short version. I don’t understand the story.

I suspect that some of it is language trouble, like for instance a sentence like
"I want you to learn how to do when you didn't shoot. ..."



I am with you on this one Blueflower. I don't understand the ritualistic element at all. But those same people who love hunting would probably not understand things I love to do like dancing or playing instruments.