Spotted Horses

by William Faulkner

the store saw, coming up the road from the south, a covered wagon drawn by mules and followed by a considerable string of obviously alive objects which in the levelling sun resembled vari-sized and colored tatters torn at random from large billboards—circus posters, say—attached to the rear of the wagon and inherent with its own separate and collective motion, like the tail of a kite. “What in the hell is that?” one said.

“It’s a circus,” Quick said. They began to rise, watching the wagon. Now they could see that the animals behind the wagon were horses. Two men rode in the wagon

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Classics

78 pages, Unknown Binding

First published June 1, 1931

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

[WhatNarjesReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

برای آشنایی با قلم فاکنر این کتاب رو خوندم
مضمون کتاب رو دوست داشتم، درمورد شخصیتی به اسم فلم اسنوپس هست که کارش جمع کردن اسب‌های وحشی و فروششونه، اما در حقیقت کارش پیرو سودجویی و کلاه‌برداریه و فروش اسب‌هاش از طریق مارکتینگ 😂 و کلاه گذاشتن روی سر روستایی‌ها هست و بعد از سودجویی ناپدید میشه.

[Halley Brooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this in a collection of 3 short novels by Faulkner but it was so miserable I cannot bear to finish the other 2 at this time

[Joe Kraus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure whether I’ve read this before as a stand-alone work or only as part of The Hamlet. Like a lot of Faulkner, it tells (or retells) an incident that echoes throughout the lives of his many characters. If you know As I Lay Dying, you might appreciate that one of the titular horses of the title is the progenitor of Jewel’s horse, and it offers a nice glimpse into the lives of Tull and his wife Cora. It’s also a signal event in the rise of Flem Snopes, one fueled by a latent anger over the insults his father Abner experienced at the hands of the slave-holding Sartoris and de Spain families.

What strikes me here is Faulkner’s strange capacity to mingle comedy and tragedy into one. On the one hand, this is almost a knee-slapping story. Flem pulls off a classic heist. He brings a string of unbroken (and probably untameable) wild horses up from Texas, and manipulates the rustics of Frenchman’s Bend into bidding on them. Then, because he is always steps ahead of everyone else, he finds ways to get out of the resulting legal jeopardy. He’s a conman extraordinaire, and it’s not hard to imagine Faulkner – perhaps in the person of semi-narrator V.I. Ratliff – laughing at the greed and ignorance that makes his rise possible.

At the same time, we see some of the genuine hardship underlying the situation. It’s hard not to feel for Armstid and his wife as he, humiliated by his poverty, can’t help but risk what little he has for a useless prize. His wife and children suffer as he spends the $5 she’s scrimped to raise, and it’s not funny when we see Flem – who’s clearly stolen it – make something like amends by giving her a nickel in charity. When she accepts it with thanks, it hurts.

Flem’s dark side isn’t all we see here. (We get glimpses of the way he has sold out his cousin Mink – a story that we don’t hear in full until The Hamlet – and we see bits and pieces of how he’s risen thus far with his marriage to Eula and his slow displacement of Jody Varner.)

Instead, we also see one of Faulkner’s clearest articulations of the power of the wild this side of the McCaslin stuff. Faulkner always writes with power, but I think of him as specializing in characters. Here, at least at the beginning, he conjures the horses themselves as symbols of a wild, untamed possibility. We aren’t yet talking Corman McCarthy here, but the people here feel small next to the horses, and there’s a beauty to that.

I’m not sure I can quite recommend this as a stand-alone work. It feels somewhat rushed at the end, and it needs even more of the larger Yoknapatawpha context than most of his works to make much sense.

Still, the heart of this is a strong dose of Faulkner as he imagines the rise of his Snopeses as against the decline of his Compsons and Sartorises. And that, of course, is absolutely worth reading.

[Kelsey Hanson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is example of Faulkner's humorous side. As per usual, Faulkner focuses on Southern culture and he does it very well. This story focuses on three different types of con men involved with selling horses. The writing is poetic and enjoyable, but I will admit this is not my favorite Faulkner short story.

[Tyler Voth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great intro to Faulkner. There’s a poetic cadence to his writing that really adds to the wit, different from some of his minimalist contemporaries like Hemingway or Steinbeck.

I loved the scene with the candy-stealing limp boy, but what does it mean? I found this challenging in all the right ways. He kept me on my toes, trying to keep all the characters’ perspectives and stories straight. Who owned the horses?!

[M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly the prose of this one is fantastic and resonated with me. Even if its symbolism, resulted somewhat strange, the imagery of the moon and the pear tree, to mention examples, are of exquisite prose. I might have to dig a little deeper into the cultural issues to catch on it being perceived as humorous.

[Wherefore Art Thou · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is decent. It tells the story of a conflict between townsfolk and the conmen that come to town to steal their money in exchange for likely untamable horses. Each person involved in the sale has their own level of unscrupulousness and that is interesting, as well as the family dynamics of the Snopes clan.

It didn’t do a whole lot for me story wise but the writing was a pleasure.

[Thomas McDade · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Spotted Horses" is the best example of Faulkner's tall tales, exercises in southern or southwestern humor that he first appreciated in the work of Thomas Banks Thorpe ("The Big Bear of Arkansas") or Mark Twain ("You Can't Pray a Lie" from Huckleberry Finn, for instance)."

-Encyclopedia.com

[MsChris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, boring and mind-numbing.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

My only questions are when did the term "tennis shoes" come into existence? And then what is the time period of this novella? I'm confused.

[Samira · Rating 1 out of 5]

کتاب خسته کننده ای بود

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 1 out of 5]

ماقبل نقد.

[Seema Dubey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okayish novella. Talks about the horse trade decades back. Descriptions are pretty good.

[La Haynes · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stupid waste of many words; just so he could wrap it up with a couple of laws. It did take imagination to concoct that story.

[Nahid Anvari · Rating 5 out of 5]

آن قدر نمایش جنون‌آمیز آرمستید جالب است که حتی فلم اسنوپس برای تماشای آن سه مایل راهش را دور می‌کند. البته بعضی‌ها عقیده دارند که او می‌تواند این سه مایل اضافی را با نصف یک رستوران تاخت بزند.

[TonyWS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but definitely not one of Faulkner’s stronger works.

[Jeff P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is top-notch, and the story is entertaining enough, but didn’t quite go anywhere all that interesting.

I read this as part of Three Famous Short Novels.

[Jennifer Barstad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good story about finding out who can be trusted to do the right thing.

[Paul Royar]

Liked.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

as always,it is a pleasure to read Faulkner but the story itself was only ok.

[Raha Taha]

ترجمه بدي داشت!