Bear, Man, and God: Eight Approaches to William Faulkner's the Bear

by Francis Lee Utley (Compiler), William Faulkner, Lynn Z. Bloom (Editor)

Genres: Nonfiction, Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

1907

Reviews

[Franz Lerch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book after our Supper Club-Book Club picked the Faulkner story The Bear from the novel( or story collection) Go Down, Moses. I used the book mostly as a reference guide as to the messages Faulkner was trying to convey. The editors had spent a lot of time wading through Faulkner’s tedious prose. I gained some valuable insight and background.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is about Faulkner's sense of the southern wilderness woods as a mythic place, an area of continual possibility, until corrupted by modernity, commerce, and the European notion of land as commodity. It is about the power of the wilderness to draw out the best in people, when the wilderness is approached with reverence, awe and humility. It is about Ike McCaslin's gradual understanding of his family's role in the primal sin of the American south, slavery and the use of blacks as commodities, and Ike's noble, if futile, renunciation of the material heritage passed down to him.
I have been wanting to reread "The Bear" for a while, and I am glad I got around to it. I will continue to plug away at the supporting critical and interpretive material, which so far seems decidedly non-PoMo, and therefore somewhat readable.

[Ed Gosney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely not for the casual Faulkner reader. But if you appreciate his writing and want to dig a little deeper, including critical essays, this is a treat.