Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan

by Esther Shephard, Rockwell Kent (Illustrator)

A collection of exploits of the legendary lumberjack and his blue ox Babe.

Genres: Childrens, Fantasy, Fiction

233 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1924

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are twenty-one Paul Bunyan tales in this collection from Esther Shephard, each running about ten to twelve pages. Even spreading them out to one per day (a daily commitment of just a few minutes), you realize a little Paul Bunyan goes a long way. I guess I’d much prefer to find a piece, like “Paul’s Cradle,” “Logging North Dakota,” or, of course, “Babe the Blue Ox,” mixed in here and there in broader American folklore anthologies.

This edition from Odyssey gets extra credit thanks to the powerful illustrations by Rockwell Kent (even if the reproduction quality isn’t the best).

[Brok3n · Rating 3 out of 5]

True American Folklore

I was reminded of Paul Bunyan by Nghi Vo's Into the Riverlands. Into the Riverlands is a Wuxia-style story of a trip through The Riverlands. The exaggeration of the character abilities reminded me of Paul Bunyan. (See my review here.)

I think I was 7-8 years old when I read Paul Bunyan, and after reading Into the Riverlands I decided that it might be time for a re-read. Of course, I see a lot in the book now that I didn't when I was a kid. For instance, I remember being surprised that these stories, which are almost entirely about men, were written by a woman. I did not at that age appreciate the distinction between "written by" and "collected by". Shephard is in fact quite careful to say in her Introduction and Acknowledgments that she collected the stories from lumberjacks and wrote them down just as she heard them. (That said, the book and illustrations by Rockwell Kent are obviously pitched at children -- one has to guess that involved considerable censorship by Shephard. She makes it clear, in fact, that these are a small subset of the hundreds of stories she had heard.)

I was pleased to see how imaginative the tall tales are. They go far beyond anything in Into the Riverlands. For instance, there is a story about how Paul tried to get rid of mosquitoes by introducing bumblebees to eat them. But the bumblebees and the mosquitoes bred to produce horrific huge flying insects with stingers at each end. There's another story about how Paul had a sawmill built in the East, then taken apart and shipped out west, where he hired an English engineer to reassemble the mill. The Englishman assembled the components back to front, and the result was a sawmill that worked in reverse-- if you fed sawdust in at one end, logs came out the other.

The Amazon page for the book quotes a review from The Independent saying, "This is authentic folklore, probably the one well-rounded folk tale America has developed . . . Besides being good fun, [it] neatly caps the point that American humor is at bottom exaggeration." The Independent is an English newspaper, and every American reader will wearily recognize the typical English snootiness towards American culture. (As the sawmill story above shows, we Americans sometimes mirror this disdain in our own way.)

While the claim that "American humor is at bottom exaggeration" is ignorant nonsense, I thought to myself that there might be a germ of truth. Is it true that this tradition of tall tales is specifically American? It's an idea that feels true to me, yet I have a hard time assembling data to support it.

The Paul Bunyan stories arise from an American game of one-upsmanship in which story-tellers compete in telling ever bigger whoppers. One can find many examples of such competitions in American literature. For instance, there are examples in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi. And I remember occasionally engaging in it myself. For instance, I remember bantering with students in this vein. In my memory, it is only American students who engaged, while Chinese, Korean, and Japanese students looked on with expressions of horror on their faces. I don't know if those memories are accurate, and even if they are, they may not mean what I'd like them to mean. It is entirely possible that the Asian students simply expect a professor to have dignity and are appalled to see one telling blatantly absurd tales.

But then, I think of other examples of tall tales. Into the Riverlands is not in itself a convincing example of Chinese/Vietnamese tall tale-telling -- Nghi Vo grew up in Chicago. But we have the Baron Munchausen stories, which come from 18th century Germany. We have Pippi Longstocking from Sweden. We even have the Monty Python sketch "Four Yorkshiremen".

So, I don't know. Certainly tall tales are not a uniquely American phenomenon. There may, however, exist an American subculture of tall tale-telling with its own distinctive character.

Blog review.

[Ms. B · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was written in 1924 and as far as I know was the first collection of Paul Bunyan tales to be published! Because of its age, this one would not work well with younger readers.* Language was different in 1924; without background knowledge on Paul, younger readers will quickly lose interest in this one. This one is best for die-hard Paul Bunyan fans and those who are curious about 1920s literature.
*I will assume this was written as a book for adults.

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great discoveries for me of Paul Bunyan in Western Washington! Always thought he was Minnesota, but who knew he made Sound, Bat, mountains, canal in along the Pacific. Glad a Washingtonian author gave us this great read and fun stories!

[Jeremiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just came across this title in a used bookstore, and reading it to my son is almost like a dream come true. When I was young I wanted to be Paul Bunyan when I grew up. I grew up in the frosty, wooded lands of central Minnesota where there are forty foot tall statues of Paul Bunyan in several towns and taller tales to fill a night of bedtime stories. When I was twelve years old splitting wood for the bone-chilling winter nights was a common chore for me and my older brother, and I loved to imagine that I was the great Paul as I hammered down on log after log. This is a great collection of the best stories told of Paul Bunyan with some fine line drawn illustrations.

[Michael Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading this book, I actually laughed. It was a funny book stock full of all sorts of tales about Paul Bunyan. My favorite was the one about Paul Bunyan in his crib. I enjoyed reading it, although since it was written in 1924 I found some of the words hard to understand. Even so, it was a good book that made me laugh, although I wouldn't give it five stars because some of the stories were a little slow. It is a good book for anyone who likes tall tales (Literally) and is a good filler book to just pick up and read if you only have five or ten minutes to spare. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[Erica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Paul Bunyan as a child and wanted to read this to my boys but I think I underestimated how old I was when I read it. They need a few more years before they'll enjoy it, I think. We'll come back to it though!

[Marika]

Very entertaining. Tall tales, on both senses of the word tall.

[Mellanie C]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14655885