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The Big Sky #1
The Big Sky
Originally published more than fifty years ago, The Big Sky is the first of A. B. Guthrie's epic adventure novels of America's vast frontier. The Big Sky introduces Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers, three of the most memorable characters in western American literature. Traveling the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Rockies, these frontiersmen live as trappers, traders, guides, and explorers. The story centers on Caudill, a young Kentuckian driven by a raging hunger for life and a longing for the blue sky and brown earth of big, wild places. Caught up in the freedom and savagery of the wilderness, Caudill becomes an untamed mountain man whom only the beautiful daughter of a Blackfoot chief dares to love. With The Big Sky, Guthrie gives us an unforgettable portrait of a spacious land and a unique way of life.
15 pages, Audio CD
First published January 1, 1947
About the author
A.B. Guthrie Jr.
50 books106 followersAlfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. was an American novelist, screenwriter, historian, and literary historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction during 1950 for his novel The Way West.
After working 22 years as a news reporter and editor for the Lexington Leader, Guthrie wrote his first novel.
Ηe was able to quit his reporting job after the publication of the novels The Big Sky and The Way West (1950 Pulitzer Prize).
Guthrie died during 1991, at age 90, at his ranch near Choteau.
(Source - Wikipedia)
After working 22 years as a news reporter and editor for the Lexington Leader, Guthrie wrote his first novel.
Ηe was able to quit his reporting job after the publication of the novels The Big Sky and The Way West (1950 Pulitzer Prize).
Guthrie died during 1991, at age 90, at his ranch near Choteau.
(Source - Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 537 reviews
August 31, 2018
This is the first novel in A, B. Guthrie, Jr.'s trilogy about the settlement of the American West. It spans the years from 1830 to 1843, or roughly from the time that fur trappers and traders, along with the American Indians, had the Far West pretty much to themselves, until the time when settlements were growing up along the Missouri River, when steamboats were plying the western waters, and when settlers were beginning to think about making the overland journey to Oregon.
At the center of the story is a Kentucky boy named Boone Caudill, who is barely seventeen when the story begins. In the midst of a fight with his drunken, abusive father, Boone smacks the older man with a piece of firewood, knocking him out cold and, Boone believes, perhaps killing him. With that, Boon has had enough of his home and of Kentucky. His Uncle Zeb, whom he knows only very slightly, is a mountain man, living somewhere up the Missouri River. Encouraged by the tales he's heard from Zeb, Boone decides to follow in his uncle's foot steps.
He sets out for the West, having many adventures and misadventures along the way. He hooks up with another young man, Jim Deakins, who will become his best friend, and the two of them join a party of fur traders, making their way by boat up the Missouri and into Indian country. It's a very hard and extremely dangerous journey, but along the way, Boone grows stronger and harder and begins to evolve into the mountain man he will ultimately become.
As the story progresses, we see the changes that these critical years make in Boone, in the Indian inhabitants of the land, in the Far West, and to some extent, in the larger nation itself. It's a story beautifully told, entertaining and exciting, and at times tragic, and it well deserves its reputation as an American classic.
At the center of the story is a Kentucky boy named Boone Caudill, who is barely seventeen when the story begins. In the midst of a fight with his drunken, abusive father, Boone smacks the older man with a piece of firewood, knocking him out cold and, Boone believes, perhaps killing him. With that, Boon has had enough of his home and of Kentucky. His Uncle Zeb, whom he knows only very slightly, is a mountain man, living somewhere up the Missouri River. Encouraged by the tales he's heard from Zeb, Boone decides to follow in his uncle's foot steps.
He sets out for the West, having many adventures and misadventures along the way. He hooks up with another young man, Jim Deakins, who will become his best friend, and the two of them join a party of fur traders, making their way by boat up the Missouri and into Indian country. It's a very hard and extremely dangerous journey, but along the way, Boone grows stronger and harder and begins to evolve into the mountain man he will ultimately become.
As the story progresses, we see the changes that these critical years make in Boone, in the Indian inhabitants of the land, in the Far West, and to some extent, in the larger nation itself. It's a story beautifully told, entertaining and exciting, and at times tragic, and it well deserves its reputation as an American classic.
January 17, 2020
I particularly love fiction when the allegory and the story march hand-in-hand to a natural conclusion. I don’t need to be spoon-fed, I just relish when the character and the polemic arrive at similar points, after similar journeys. Sounds simple… but, not so much.
The Big Sky is a beautifully written novel that takes some getting used to. It’s about the mountain men of the West during the years 1835-43 and A.B. Guthrie’s style is a perfect fit for the era and the people, whom he so lyrically describes. It takes a while to shift gears enough to fully appreciate a three paragraph description of the sound and feel of the north wind in the trees but, once you abandon yourself to the stunningly descriptive style, you’ll begin to get a feel for the things that drew mountain men west.
The book certainly doesn’t fit the mold of the western adventure. Do not come to The Big Sky hoping for something in the vein of Lonesome Dove - you’ll be frustrated and disappointed. Expect, instead, a Walden-like meditation on the unblemished frontier, permeated by an intimate look at the type of soul who ventured there and devoted some of his life to its discovery.
The reviews here of The Big Sky are punctuated by laments over the despicableness of the character Boone Caudill and I could certainly pigeonhole Caudill as despicable, though I don’t. Instead, I put him into the same category as the allegory Guthrie’s driving home throughout the book, and that is the telling of a tragic story of the ultimate destruction of something pure and good and holy, precipitated unwittingly by the very men who found it most so. In that, Caudill turns out to be, in my thinking, one of the most heart-breaking characters I’ve ever encountered and the seminal events in the destruction of the American West, as described so subtly and agonizingly by A.B. Guthrie here, among the most calamitous.
The Big Sky is a profoundly moving study of man’s inexplicable, maddening propensity to destroy the things he loves, woven through a gorgeously poignant ode to the vast, lost American West. Guthrie lays out a righteous, graceful polemic counseling future generations to more wisely shepherd America’s wilderness than did those who came before and, through it, he inspires a deeper contemplation of our place in the world.
The Big Sky is a beautifully written novel that takes some getting used to. It’s about the mountain men of the West during the years 1835-43 and A.B. Guthrie’s style is a perfect fit for the era and the people, whom he so lyrically describes. It takes a while to shift gears enough to fully appreciate a three paragraph description of the sound and feel of the north wind in the trees but, once you abandon yourself to the stunningly descriptive style, you’ll begin to get a feel for the things that drew mountain men west.
The book certainly doesn’t fit the mold of the western adventure. Do not come to The Big Sky hoping for something in the vein of Lonesome Dove - you’ll be frustrated and disappointed. Expect, instead, a Walden-like meditation on the unblemished frontier, permeated by an intimate look at the type of soul who ventured there and devoted some of his life to its discovery.
The reviews here of The Big Sky are punctuated by laments over the despicableness of the character Boone Caudill and I could certainly pigeonhole Caudill as despicable, though I don’t. Instead, I put him into the same category as the allegory Guthrie’s driving home throughout the book, and that is the telling of a tragic story of the ultimate destruction of something pure and good and holy, precipitated unwittingly by the very men who found it most so. In that, Caudill turns out to be, in my thinking, one of the most heart-breaking characters I’ve ever encountered and the seminal events in the destruction of the American West, as described so subtly and agonizingly by A.B. Guthrie here, among the most calamitous.
The Big Sky is a profoundly moving study of man’s inexplicable, maddening propensity to destroy the things he loves, woven through a gorgeously poignant ode to the vast, lost American West. Guthrie lays out a righteous, graceful polemic counseling future generations to more wisely shepherd America’s wilderness than did those who came before and, through it, he inspires a deeper contemplation of our place in the world.
April 6, 2024
I'm all for troubled heroes, but I don't like troubling ones. And Boone Caudill, the main character in this epic tale of the American West, is about as troubling as a hero can get. In fact, it's hard to see him as a hero at all, given his crazed entitlement, his narcissism, and his penchant for murder and rape. Guthrie's descriptions of the untamed American wilderness were incredible, but they were difficult to appreciate, given Caudill's utterly loathsome character.
May 27, 2021
The Big Sky is the first in A.B. Guthrie’s series of novels about the settling of the American West. It is the story of three men, Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers, each of whom braves the unknown and difficult life in the cold mountains west of civilization, for his own unique reasons. It is a portrait of what a mountain man was and what it took to be such an adventurer.
There is nothing sugar-coated in this book. It is often raw and coarse and startling.
They were a heap better than squaw meat, which men had been known to butcher and eat, probably after bedding with the squaws first.
This is a hard, cruel and unforgiving life, and the men who live it are sometimes little more than animals. Boone Caudill, fleeing an already hard and abusive life with his father, becomes a kind of savage survivalist. Dick Summers, in many ways the most skilled and intuitive of the three men, is only half a mountain man. He has altered his life, but not his soul. He likes to get to town and doesn’t mind the idea of farming, and he is the only one who still manages to fit into the world of white men.
One of the main characters of The Big Sky is the West itself. Guthrie paints it the way Ansel Adams photographed it, large and beautiful and powerful.
From the top Boone could see forever and ever, nearly any way he looked. It was open country, bald and open, without an end. It spread away flat now and then rolling, going on clear to the sky. A man wouldn’t think the whole world was so much. It made the heart come up. It made a man little and still big, like a king looking out.
This is God’s country, but even the men who love it and choose it, question what kind of God rules in such a wilderness. Jim Deakins contemplates his relationship with God and what God expects from him fairly frequently, and I particularly enjoyed his thoughts, because I think having such close connections to nature, but also experiencing its cruelties up close, would raise doubts and wonder.
These men are like the wildness of the country they inhabit, they are being worn away, being lost, becoming the last of their kind. The country is on the cusp of westward expansion, the buffalo are being slaughtered into extinction, Greeley is about to urge young men to go west, and the young men are going to take young women with them and build and plow.
It was strange about time; it slipped under a man like quiet water, soft and unheeded but taking a part of him with every drop--a little quickness of the muscles, a little sharpness of the eye, a little of his youngness, until by and by he found it had taken the best of him almost unbeknownst.
A historical picture of life in 1830s Montana, The Big Sky is also about change--the change in the country and the change in the people who populate it. There is no room for the Indians in the society that is coming, and there is no room for the mountain men either. Both are dying breeds. Both are living on borrowed time.
I must note that the portrayal of the Indians in this book seems remarkably accurate to me. They are seen as both victim and aggressor, but neither the noble savage nor the devil’s spawn. The attitude of the white men toward them is primarily one of exploitation or dread, and only a few, like Boone and Summers, come to really know anything about them individually. There is a graphic chapter that deals with the devastating effects of smallpox on the Indian population, that is one I will find it hard to ever forget.
Wallace Stegner wrote the foreward to the volume I was reading. If you would truly like to recognize the importance and meaning of this novel, you need do nothing more than read it.
Boone Caudill is “both mountain man and myth, both individual and archetype, which means that the record of his violent life is both credible and exhilarating.” Don’t think anyone could have said it better than that.
There is nothing sugar-coated in this book. It is often raw and coarse and startling.
They were a heap better than squaw meat, which men had been known to butcher and eat, probably after bedding with the squaws first.
This is a hard, cruel and unforgiving life, and the men who live it are sometimes little more than animals. Boone Caudill, fleeing an already hard and abusive life with his father, becomes a kind of savage survivalist. Dick Summers, in many ways the most skilled and intuitive of the three men, is only half a mountain man. He has altered his life, but not his soul. He likes to get to town and doesn’t mind the idea of farming, and he is the only one who still manages to fit into the world of white men.
One of the main characters of The Big Sky is the West itself. Guthrie paints it the way Ansel Adams photographed it, large and beautiful and powerful.
From the top Boone could see forever and ever, nearly any way he looked. It was open country, bald and open, without an end. It spread away flat now and then rolling, going on clear to the sky. A man wouldn’t think the whole world was so much. It made the heart come up. It made a man little and still big, like a king looking out.
This is God’s country, but even the men who love it and choose it, question what kind of God rules in such a wilderness. Jim Deakins contemplates his relationship with God and what God expects from him fairly frequently, and I particularly enjoyed his thoughts, because I think having such close connections to nature, but also experiencing its cruelties up close, would raise doubts and wonder.
These men are like the wildness of the country they inhabit, they are being worn away, being lost, becoming the last of their kind. The country is on the cusp of westward expansion, the buffalo are being slaughtered into extinction, Greeley is about to urge young men to go west, and the young men are going to take young women with them and build and plow.
It was strange about time; it slipped under a man like quiet water, soft and unheeded but taking a part of him with every drop--a little quickness of the muscles, a little sharpness of the eye, a little of his youngness, until by and by he found it had taken the best of him almost unbeknownst.
A historical picture of life in 1830s Montana, The Big Sky is also about change--the change in the country and the change in the people who populate it. There is no room for the Indians in the society that is coming, and there is no room for the mountain men either. Both are dying breeds. Both are living on borrowed time.
I must note that the portrayal of the Indians in this book seems remarkably accurate to me. They are seen as both victim and aggressor, but neither the noble savage nor the devil’s spawn. The attitude of the white men toward them is primarily one of exploitation or dread, and only a few, like Boone and Summers, come to really know anything about them individually. There is a graphic chapter that deals with the devastating effects of smallpox on the Indian population, that is one I will find it hard to ever forget.
Wallace Stegner wrote the foreward to the volume I was reading. If you would truly like to recognize the importance and meaning of this novel, you need do nothing more than read it.
Boone Caudill is “both mountain man and myth, both individual and archetype, which means that the record of his violent life is both credible and exhilarating.” Don’t think anyone could have said it better than that.
December 30, 2022
A Wayfaring Stranger
Kentucky. 1830s to early 1840s. Boone, age 17, saw his drunken father coming at him again. He had had enough beatings over the years. He picked up a piece of firewood and wacked him hard across the head with it. His father lay unconscious on the ground. Boone was not sure if he was dead or alive, but he wasn’t going to wait around to find out. He ran into the house and began packing. He even took his Indian scalp, maybe for good luck. Then he grabbed his father’s good rifle. Telling his mother goodbye, he began walking, staying out of sight of anyone who could later identify him, for he believed that if his father, if alive, would come after him, if not, either way, the law would.
“I am a poor wayfaring stranger
A traveling through this world below…”
Hard times had hit. Seeing a man in the woods, he ducked out of sight. The lawman had seen him and took note to remember what he looked like because he was suspicious of anyone who did not wish to be seen. Boone met with trouble.
Along the way Boone met and made friends with a man named Jim. They became very close. Jim even helped Boone get out of trouble a few times. They traveled together and joined some Creole fur traders as by boat on the river. For Boone, the past was getting further behind. Meeting up with more trouble, Boone and Jim went on alone.
Next, they met a Blackfoot man named Poor Devil. Poor Devil had just walked into their camp with an offering, a slain antelope. Now, he was to travel with them. They went the big Rendezvous, a gathering of the mountain men, the selling of their furs, the partying, the sharing of clap, all that good stuff. The men they met were vulgar and one wanted to kill Poor Devil. Another wanted a city woman with her perfume instead of the Indian women that he had been sleeping with that smelled like grease and smoke from the campfires. I thought of how it must be to sleep with any one of the men, how they must smell like maggot- laden garbage from never bathing. This gave new meaning to the sex life of mountain men for it can’t be all that romantic. Of course, they were not looking for romance. I believe I read somewhere that perfume was invented to cover up body odor. So, with perfume, you have two stinks instead of one. Moving on.
Boone spotted a buffalo, took up his rifle, aimed and fired. The buffalo looked like he was stunned, then fell to the ground. I closed my eyes and put the book down while fighting back tears. for I was now thinking of the scene in the book I had read, “Butcher’s Crossing.” How the white men had killed the buffalo herds just for their hides. The buffalo did not know what was happening. As they fell to the ground, other buffalos began surrounding the fallen to see what was wrong. I left the book lying for over a day, and then, like “Butcher’s Crossing.” I felt that I could weave my way around scenes like this one.
They came upon an Indian village. The Blackfeet were all dead. Smallpox. The heartless white man had left his mark on purpose. And in every village that they came upon, there were no survivors.
“There is no sickness, no toil, or danger in that bright land to which I go.
I’m going there to see my Father and all my loved ones who’ve gone on.”
Shortly thereafter, Boone and Jim came upon an old man, a Blackfoot that had survived. He was just sitting on the ground. They approached him carefully, and after gaining his trust, they helped him as best they could. (I thought of him often after they left him there.) Boone asked after a certain woman, a Blackfoot that he loved. The old man told him where he might find her if she were still alive. Leaving the old man, Jim and Boone went searching for her. I thought that this was a bad idea but didn’t know why outside of the fact that they were running out of good ideas. And I was right; it was a horrible idea.
“…I know dark clouds will gather 'round me
I know my way is hard and steep…” (A Wayfaring Stranger. Origen unknown)
Note: Beautifully written. A ten-star read. His book “The Way West” won the Pulitzer. I am a fan.
Kentucky. 1830s to early 1840s. Boone, age 17, saw his drunken father coming at him again. He had had enough beatings over the years. He picked up a piece of firewood and wacked him hard across the head with it. His father lay unconscious on the ground. Boone was not sure if he was dead or alive, but he wasn’t going to wait around to find out. He ran into the house and began packing. He even took his Indian scalp, maybe for good luck. Then he grabbed his father’s good rifle. Telling his mother goodbye, he began walking, staying out of sight of anyone who could later identify him, for he believed that if his father, if alive, would come after him, if not, either way, the law would.
“I am a poor wayfaring stranger
A traveling through this world below…”
Hard times had hit. Seeing a man in the woods, he ducked out of sight. The lawman had seen him and took note to remember what he looked like because he was suspicious of anyone who did not wish to be seen. Boone met with trouble.
Along the way Boone met and made friends with a man named Jim. They became very close. Jim even helped Boone get out of trouble a few times. They traveled together and joined some Creole fur traders as by boat on the river. For Boone, the past was getting further behind. Meeting up with more trouble, Boone and Jim went on alone.
Next, they met a Blackfoot man named Poor Devil. Poor Devil had just walked into their camp with an offering, a slain antelope. Now, he was to travel with them. They went the big Rendezvous, a gathering of the mountain men, the selling of their furs, the partying, the sharing of clap, all that good stuff. The men they met were vulgar and one wanted to kill Poor Devil. Another wanted a city woman with her perfume instead of the Indian women that he had been sleeping with that smelled like grease and smoke from the campfires. I thought of how it must be to sleep with any one of the men, how they must smell like maggot- laden garbage from never bathing. This gave new meaning to the sex life of mountain men for it can’t be all that romantic. Of course, they were not looking for romance. I believe I read somewhere that perfume was invented to cover up body odor. So, with perfume, you have two stinks instead of one. Moving on.
Boone spotted a buffalo, took up his rifle, aimed and fired. The buffalo looked like he was stunned, then fell to the ground. I closed my eyes and put the book down while fighting back tears. for I was now thinking of the scene in the book I had read, “Butcher’s Crossing.” How the white men had killed the buffalo herds just for their hides. The buffalo did not know what was happening. As they fell to the ground, other buffalos began surrounding the fallen to see what was wrong. I left the book lying for over a day, and then, like “Butcher’s Crossing.” I felt that I could weave my way around scenes like this one.
They came upon an Indian village. The Blackfeet were all dead. Smallpox. The heartless white man had left his mark on purpose. And in every village that they came upon, there were no survivors.
“There is no sickness, no toil, or danger in that bright land to which I go.
I’m going there to see my Father and all my loved ones who’ve gone on.”
Shortly thereafter, Boone and Jim came upon an old man, a Blackfoot that had survived. He was just sitting on the ground. They approached him carefully, and after gaining his trust, they helped him as best they could. (I thought of him often after they left him there.) Boone asked after a certain woman, a Blackfoot that he loved. The old man told him where he might find her if she were still alive. Leaving the old man, Jim and Boone went searching for her. I thought that this was a bad idea but didn’t know why outside of the fact that they were running out of good ideas. And I was right; it was a horrible idea.
“…I know dark clouds will gather 'round me
I know my way is hard and steep…” (A Wayfaring Stranger. Origen unknown)
Note: Beautifully written. A ten-star read. His book “The Way West” won the Pulitzer. I am a fan.
October 30, 2023
Loneliness And Freedom In The Old West
The genre of the American Western has had a long history through dime and pulp novels and magazines, radio, television, and film, and novels and stories. Although much of the genre deals in stereotypes, many Westerns are thoughtful and imaginative, including A.B. Guthrie's 1947 novel, "The Big Sky". Guthrie (1901 -- 1991) wrote a series of six novels on the settlement of the Montana territory of which "The Big Sky" is the first chronologically and in the order of writing. It is a many-layered work in its themes and characterizations. The book cuts against many stereotypes of the West; and it cuts as well against current standards and thinking, both those of today and, to a degree, those when the book was written. Today's readers will want to reject the racist language of the book, most of which is in dialogue sections. There is much to be thought about and enjoyed in this book which will challenge and inspire a sympathetic reader.
"The Big Sky" is set between 1830 -- 1843 in Kentucky, Indiana, and Missouri, along the Missouri River, and particularly in the early Montana territory. The primary character, Boone Caudill, receives a complex portrayal as both anti-hero and hero. At the age of 17, Boone runs away from his poor farming family and from his abusive father to seek a life of freedom as a trapper in the West. Boone is a violent, unsociable loner and killer. He is portrayed realistically and sharply and in many sections of the book it is difficult to feel sympathy for him. Yet, Boone also is shown as living his own life and pursuing his dreams within his own lights in a manner given to few people.
The other two major characters in the book are also mountain men. Jim Deakins, in his mid-20s, is good-natured and reflective. He becomes Boone's companion early in the story as the two head for the West. Dick Summers, a middle-aged mountain man, serves as mentor to Caudill and Deakins. Summers has had extensive experience in the West but he also has a stake in a more conventional society in his attitude and in his ownership of a small Missouri farm. The book follows the adventures and changing fortunes of Caudill, Deakins, and Summers, as they journey 2000 miles on the Missouri River on a keelboat and as they pursue the wild life of freedom in the Montana territory.
The novel is stunning in its descriptions of the river and of the large lonely places, mountains, wildlife, and seasons of the West. The book is realistic in that the author makes clear the anti-social, to say the least, characters of the individuals who would choose to pursue and who excel in such a life. The characters are violent and mean in many respects and their life is hard, fragmented and lonely. The book offers an extended and on the whole sympathetic portrayal of the Indian tribes and of their battle with the weapons of the white settlers and with their illnesses of smallpox, alcoholism, and venereal disease. The primary Indian character is a beautiful young woman, Teal Eye, with whom Boone falls in love.
With its violence and realism, "The Big Sky" is still strongly romantic. The author is clearly in love with place and has a nostalgia for a wildness which even in the late 1830s was fast disappearing. He also shares a love for his characters and for their quest for freedom which he contrasts with the life of suits and ties in jobs which lack feeling and in lives which lack passion. In many ways, the book is with Boone and his companions while recognizing their large weaknesses. In addition to its elements as a history, the book is a reflection on the nature of certain concepts of freedom and individualism which still retain their power to move people's minds and hearts. To my mind, the book probes these questions more convincingly than some more modern, much praised novels such as Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom". The book also includes a great deal of theological reflection offered by Jim Deakins which fits in well and enhances the context of this story of the old West and of freedom. The predominant tone is of secularism and humanism. "The Big Sky" is a thoughtful book as well as a yarn, a character study, and a history.
Contemporary readers will struggle with the racist language of this book and with its ideas of freedom, individuality and sex which probably will not be entirely their own. It is a virtue in a book to make the reader think and to see different perspectives, whether the perspectives come from the past or from the future. I enjoyed this Western with the grandeur of its portrait of the West and with its portrayals of a rare, flawed and wild way of life. This is a book for reflective readers of American literature and for lovers of the West.
Robin Friedman
The genre of the American Western has had a long history through dime and pulp novels and magazines, radio, television, and film, and novels and stories. Although much of the genre deals in stereotypes, many Westerns are thoughtful and imaginative, including A.B. Guthrie's 1947 novel, "The Big Sky". Guthrie (1901 -- 1991) wrote a series of six novels on the settlement of the Montana territory of which "The Big Sky" is the first chronologically and in the order of writing. It is a many-layered work in its themes and characterizations. The book cuts against many stereotypes of the West; and it cuts as well against current standards and thinking, both those of today and, to a degree, those when the book was written. Today's readers will want to reject the racist language of the book, most of which is in dialogue sections. There is much to be thought about and enjoyed in this book which will challenge and inspire a sympathetic reader.
"The Big Sky" is set between 1830 -- 1843 in Kentucky, Indiana, and Missouri, along the Missouri River, and particularly in the early Montana territory. The primary character, Boone Caudill, receives a complex portrayal as both anti-hero and hero. At the age of 17, Boone runs away from his poor farming family and from his abusive father to seek a life of freedom as a trapper in the West. Boone is a violent, unsociable loner and killer. He is portrayed realistically and sharply and in many sections of the book it is difficult to feel sympathy for him. Yet, Boone also is shown as living his own life and pursuing his dreams within his own lights in a manner given to few people.
The other two major characters in the book are also mountain men. Jim Deakins, in his mid-20s, is good-natured and reflective. He becomes Boone's companion early in the story as the two head for the West. Dick Summers, a middle-aged mountain man, serves as mentor to Caudill and Deakins. Summers has had extensive experience in the West but he also has a stake in a more conventional society in his attitude and in his ownership of a small Missouri farm. The book follows the adventures and changing fortunes of Caudill, Deakins, and Summers, as they journey 2000 miles on the Missouri River on a keelboat and as they pursue the wild life of freedom in the Montana territory.
The novel is stunning in its descriptions of the river and of the large lonely places, mountains, wildlife, and seasons of the West. The book is realistic in that the author makes clear the anti-social, to say the least, characters of the individuals who would choose to pursue and who excel in such a life. The characters are violent and mean in many respects and their life is hard, fragmented and lonely. The book offers an extended and on the whole sympathetic portrayal of the Indian tribes and of their battle with the weapons of the white settlers and with their illnesses of smallpox, alcoholism, and venereal disease. The primary Indian character is a beautiful young woman, Teal Eye, with whom Boone falls in love.
With its violence and realism, "The Big Sky" is still strongly romantic. The author is clearly in love with place and has a nostalgia for a wildness which even in the late 1830s was fast disappearing. He also shares a love for his characters and for their quest for freedom which he contrasts with the life of suits and ties in jobs which lack feeling and in lives which lack passion. In many ways, the book is with Boone and his companions while recognizing their large weaknesses. In addition to its elements as a history, the book is a reflection on the nature of certain concepts of freedom and individualism which still retain their power to move people's minds and hearts. To my mind, the book probes these questions more convincingly than some more modern, much praised novels such as Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom". The book also includes a great deal of theological reflection offered by Jim Deakins which fits in well and enhances the context of this story of the old West and of freedom. The predominant tone is of secularism and humanism. "The Big Sky" is a thoughtful book as well as a yarn, a character study, and a history.
Contemporary readers will struggle with the racist language of this book and with its ideas of freedom, individuality and sex which probably will not be entirely their own. It is a virtue in a book to make the reader think and to see different perspectives, whether the perspectives come from the past or from the future. I enjoyed this Western with the grandeur of its portrait of the West and with its portrayals of a rare, flawed and wild way of life. This is a book for reflective readers of American literature and for lovers of the West.
Robin Friedman
February 16, 2019
"You want to go to St. Louis, don't you, Boone? That's what counts. Not this here. You want to trap beaver and fight Injuns and live like a natural man."
He forgot to add catching the clap to that list of manly pursuits . . .
"Can't miss it and still shine as a man."
Young Boone, striking out from home for the very first time, is lucky to have more seasoned guide like Jim Deakins to offer advice, and help navigate the rough terrain that lies ahead. Together they head up river, hoping to make it as fur trappers. What they find is not true wilderness, but streams already emptied of beaver by previous travelers.
"This was man's country onc't. Every water full of beaver and a galore of buffler any ways a man looked, and no crampin' and crowdin'. Christ sake!"
This is a rough and raunchy tale, well written, though perhaps too raw for some readers bothered by racism, sexism, and a frequent use of the n-word. Part one of a series, the author's next book, The Way West, won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize. This is an exquisite tale of men who were changed by the wilderness, in the days before wilderness was much changed by men.
In case you might be doubting Guthrie's writing chops, take a gander at this lovely end-of-life musing:
He had lived a man's life, and now it was at an end, and what had he to show for it? Two horses and a few fixin's and a letter of credit for three hundred and forty-three dollars. That was all, unless you counted the way he had felt about living and the fun he had had while time ran along unnoticed. It had been rich doings, except that he wondered at the last, seeing everything behind him and nothing ahead. It was strange about time: it slipped under a man like quiet water, soft and unheeded but taking a part of him with every drop - a little quickness of the muscles, a little sharpness of the eye, a little of his youngness, until by and by he found it had taken the best of him almost unbeknownst. He wanted to fight it then, to hold it back, to catch what had been borne away. It wasn't that he minded going under, it wasn't that he was afraid to die and rot and forget and be forgotten; it was that things were lost to him more and more - the happy feeling, the strong doing, the fresh taste for things like drink and women and danger, the friends he had fought and funned with, the notion that each new day would be better than the last, good as the last one was. A man's later life was all a long losing, of friends and fun and hope, until at last time took the mite that was left of him and so closed the score.
Manly, yes, but I liked it, too.
He forgot to add catching the clap to that list of manly pursuits . . .
"Can't miss it and still shine as a man."
Young Boone, striking out from home for the very first time, is lucky to have more seasoned guide like Jim Deakins to offer advice, and help navigate the rough terrain that lies ahead. Together they head up river, hoping to make it as fur trappers. What they find is not true wilderness, but streams already emptied of beaver by previous travelers.
"This was man's country onc't. Every water full of beaver and a galore of buffler any ways a man looked, and no crampin' and crowdin'. Christ sake!"
This is a rough and raunchy tale, well written, though perhaps too raw for some readers bothered by racism, sexism, and a frequent use of the n-word. Part one of a series, the author's next book, The Way West, won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize. This is an exquisite tale of men who were changed by the wilderness, in the days before wilderness was much changed by men.
In case you might be doubting Guthrie's writing chops, take a gander at this lovely end-of-life musing:
He had lived a man's life, and now it was at an end, and what had he to show for it? Two horses and a few fixin's and a letter of credit for three hundred and forty-three dollars. That was all, unless you counted the way he had felt about living and the fun he had had while time ran along unnoticed. It had been rich doings, except that he wondered at the last, seeing everything behind him and nothing ahead. It was strange about time: it slipped under a man like quiet water, soft and unheeded but taking a part of him with every drop - a little quickness of the muscles, a little sharpness of the eye, a little of his youngness, until by and by he found it had taken the best of him almost unbeknownst. He wanted to fight it then, to hold it back, to catch what had been borne away. It wasn't that he minded going under, it wasn't that he was afraid to die and rot and forget and be forgotten; it was that things were lost to him more and more - the happy feeling, the strong doing, the fresh taste for things like drink and women and danger, the friends he had fought and funned with, the notion that each new day would be better than the last, good as the last one was. A man's later life was all a long losing, of friends and fun and hope, until at last time took the mite that was left of him and so closed the score.
Manly, yes, but I liked it, too.
August 5, 2021
The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie, Jr. first published in 1947, is a panoramic view and adventurous tale of the exploration of the west in the mid-nineteenth century that gives us such unforgettable characters like Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers. And of course, Teal Eyes. This was an amazing book beginning in Kentucky then traversing the Missouri River from St. Louis to the beautiful Rocky Mountains exploring big and wild places in the early and unexplored west. As I read this book, I found myself referring frequently back to the map that plotted their journey with all of the key events along the way as I tried to imagine life in that time. Part of me just would love to mount a horse and ride off into the sunset!
It was a lovely introduction to this book to have the Foreward written by Wallace Stegner that I think says it all:
It was a lovely introduction to this book to have the Foreward written by Wallace Stegner that I think says it all:
"A.B. Guthrie's 'The Big Sky' does not belie its title. It is a novel lived entirely in the open. The big wild places are both its setting and its theme, and everything about this book is as big as the country it moves in. The story sweeps westward from Kentucky to St. Louis and up the interminable Missouri through Omaha and Pawnee country, past Ree and Sioux country, into Stoney and Big Belley and Blackfoot country, and there, riding on the boil of its own excitement, it waits out its climax. Bigness, distance, wildness, freedom, are the dream that pulls Boone Caudill westward into the mountains, and the dream has an incandescence in the novel because it is also the dream that Bud Guthrie grew up on."
November 3, 2019
"The days were gone when a man could sleep as long as he wanted and get up lazy and eat some meat and lie down again, glad for warmth and a full stomach and even the ice that put the beaver out of reach. It wasn't quite sunup when Boone awakened, hearing the sharp chirp of a winter bird that spring was giving a voice to.
The others were sleeping, except for Summers who was sitting up and shivering a little. Poordevil was snoring a kind of whistling snore, as if the gap in his teeth gave a special sound to it. Every time the bird cheeped, he would stop and then start in again, maybe getting the cheep mixed up in his dreams".
6 στα 5 αστέρια!!!
Να βάλω το μυαλό μου σε τάξη και να βγάλω από μέσα μου όλες τις σκέψεις και τα συναισθήματα που μου άφησε αυτό το υπέροχο έργο, δεν είναι εύκολο.
Ο A.B. Guthrie Jr, ο συγγραφέας αυτού του μυθιστορήματος έγραψε ένα είδος καθαρόαιμου αμερικάνου ρεαλιστικού - ιστορικού μυθιστορήματος, γνωστού ως western το οποίο απέχει μακράν από την στερεοτυπική απεικόνιση των καουμπόηδων με τα σαλούν και τους πιστολέρο. Βρήκα ένα άρθρο του Richard Severo για τους New York Times όπου αναφέρει:
"Ο Guthrie επέλεξε να προσεγγίσει με έναν σαφώς διαφορετικό τρόπο την λογοτεχνία γύρω από το θέμα της Άγριας Δύσης, διαφοροποιούμενος από τους συγκαιρινούς του. Τίποτα στη γραφή του δεν θυμίζει τη φθηνή απεικόνιση της λογοτεχνίας western η οποία εκείνη την εποχή έχαιρε ευρείας αποδοχής. Ο Guthrie είχε δηλώσει πως δεν ήθελε να γράψει μύθους γύρω από τη Δύση."
'Ετσι λοιπόν στα 1947 γράφει το μυθιστόρημα "The Big Sky", το πρώτο μέρος μιας τριλογίας (ακολουθεί το "The Way West" στα 1949 που κερδίζει αμέσως το βραβείο Pulitzer την ίδια χρονιά, και κλείνει με το με το "Fair Land, Fair Land" γραμμένο τριάντα σχεδόν χρόνια αργότερα, στα 1982 που λειτουργεί ως επίλογος).
Το "The Big Sky" ξεκινάει στα 1830 με τον πρωταγωνιστή της ιστορίας, τον ατίθασο και ανυπότακτο δεκαεπτάχρονο Boone Caudill και φτάνει ως τα 1843 καλύπτοντας ένα διάστημα δεκατριών ετών. Το μυθιστόρημα χωρίζεται σε πέντε μέρη και μέσα από αυτό παρακολουθούμε την πορεία του νεαρού, από ένα μικρό χωριό του Kentucky, προς τα βορειοδυτικά, ως την περιοχή που σημέρα βρίσκεται ο καταυλισμός των Ιδιάνων Blackfoot (γνωστό ως Blackfeet Nation), εκεί που όπου οι πολιτείες του Idaho, της Montana και του Wyoming χωρίζονται από την οροσειρά των Βραχωδών Ορέων (Rocky Mountains) από την μια, και τις μεγάλες πεδιάδες του ποταμού Missouri και το Yellowstone (που σήμερα αποτελεί εθνικό πάρκο).
Ο Boone δεν έχει την παραμικρή φιλοδοξία, παρά μόνο το όνειρο της απόλυτης ελευθερίας. Επιζητά να ζήσει μακριά από τους ανθρώπους και αναζητά τον θείο του ανάμεσα στους "Βουνίσιους" (mountain men) που ζούσαν σε εκείνη την περιοχή (στα δάση και στα ποτάμια) ασχολούμενοι κυρίως με το κυνήγι του κάστορα, του οποίου την γούνα εμπορεύοντας για λογαριασμό κάποιων μεγάλων Εταιρειών. Ο μεγαλύτερος κίνδυνος σε εκείνα τα μέρη πέρα από την ίδια την φύση ήταν οι διάφορες φυλές των Ινδιάνων με τους οποίους υπάρχει μια αρκετά ιδιότυπη συμβιωτική σχέση.
"Ο Boone το μόνο που θέλει είναι κρέας με πάχος και μια καλή φωτιά και να είναι μακριά από τους ανθρώπους. Αυτό αρκεί, σκέφτηκε ο Boone. Τί άλλο να ζητήσει ο άνθρωπος, αρκεί να έχει κόκαλα με μεδούλι και μπόλικο κρέας στα πλευρά και μια φωτιά να τον κρατάει ζεστό και μια γη όπου να μπορεί τριγυρνάει ελεύθερα; Τί καλύτερο από ένα μέρος όπου κάθε μέρα μπορούσες να σκοτώνεις κι από έναν βούβαλο χωρίς ιδιαίτερο κόπο, κρατώντας για τον εαυτό σου τα καλύτερα κομμάτια, αφήνοντας τα υπόλοιπα για τους λύκους. Γιατί να θέλει κάτι περισσότερο, εκτός ίσως από μια καλή Ινδιάνα να ζει μαζί της στη σκηνή και να ξαπλώνει πλάι της, τη νύχτα;"
Πολλοί αναγνώστες βρίσκουν τον ήρωα αντιπαθητικό, ωστόσο θεωρώ πως ο χαρακτήρας του, ο φαινομενικά απλοϊκός και βάρβαρος, διαθέτει μια μεγάλη δόση οξυδέρκειας (μαθαίνει να επιβιώνει, όσο αποξενώνεται από τον πολιτισμό και τους ανθρώπους τόσο περισσότερο γίνεται κομμάτι της φύσης και του περιβάλλοντός του) και μια καταπιεσμένη ευαισθησία, διψάει για αγάπη, αλλά αγνοεί τον τρόπο με τον οποίο αυτή θα μπορούσε εκφραστεί και να εκδηλωθεί (αυτό είναι το τρωτό του σημείο, η αιτία της δυστυχίας του και το αποτέλεσμα της φριχτής κακοποίησης που υπέστη ως παιδί στα χέρια του τυραννικού πατέρα του).
Τον συμπάθησα γιατί, παρ' όλη την κτηνώδη φύση του, μοιάζει με φοβισμένο ζώο που επιτίθεται για να αμυνθεί και που αν το εξημερώσεις θα σταθεί στο πλευρό σου ως φίλος πιστός και αφοσιωμένος χωρίς ωστόσο να χάνει κάτι από την ουσία που συνιστά την αδάμαστη φύση του. Ένας χαρακτήρας που εκφράζεται κυρίως μέσα από τις πράξεις του οι οποίες συχνά απορρέουν από το ένστικτο και όχι τη λογική. Σκοτώνει για να ζήσει. Είτε αυτό αφορά ζώα είτε ανθρώπους.
Η σχέση των λευκών με τους Ινδιάνους είναι, όπως προανέφερα, ιδιότυπη. Η κάθε φυλή έχει τους δικούς κανόνες και κώδικες συμπεριφοράς. Κάποιοι είναι πιο φιλικοί και συνεργάσιμοι κάποιοι άλλοι τελείως εχθρικοί. Βλέποντας τον τόπο τους να κατακτάται σταδιακά, αισθάνονται ταπεινωμένοι. Αναφέρει σε ένα σημείο ο αρχηγός της φυλής των Piegan έχοντας μόλις βιώσει των αφανισμό του λαού από μια φοβερή επιδημία:
"Ο λευκός φέρνει ουίσκι. Κάνει τον Ινδιάνο να τρελαίνεται. Ο λευκός πλαγιάζει με τις γυναίκες του. Κουβαλάει αρρώστιες", είπε πιάνοντας με το χέρι του τον καβάλο του. "Η καρδιά του λευκού είναι κακή [...] Ο Ινδιάνος πολεμάει. Πολεμάει γενναία. Για να κρατήσει τον λευκό μακριά. Ο λευκός φέρνει μεγάλο δηλητήριο, μεγάλη αρρώστια. Σκοτώνει τον Ινδιάνο [...] Η καρδιά του Ινδιάνου είναι νεκρή. Νεκρή ανάθεμά την. Τώρα πια ο Ινδιάνος έπαψε να πολεμάει".
Από την άλλη πλευρά οι λευκοί, γαλουχημένοι με διαφορετικές νοοτροπίες και ιδεώδη, συχνά αποτύγχαναν να κατανοήσουν τον Ινδιάνικο τρόπο σκέψης. Μια ενέργεια ή μια χειρονομία που στον δυτικό κόσμο έχει ένα ορισμένο αντίκτυπο για τους Ινδιάνους μπορεί να σημαίνει το τελείως αντίθετο:
"Έτσι όπως είχε η κατάσταση δεν μπορούσες να έχεις εμπιστοσύνη στους Ινδιάνους, ακόμα κι αν ζούσες μαζί τους. Ήταν γεμάτοι έπαρση, όσο εύκολα ικανοποιούνταν άλλο τόσο εύκολα εξοργίζονταν και ξαφνικά αντιδρούσαν με τρόπους που ένας λευκός δεν μπορούσε να προβλέψει και για αιτίες που ούτε καν του περνούσαν από το μυαλό".
Μια αδιάκοπη σύγκρουση πολιτισμών ανάμεσα σε ανθρώπους διαφορετικούς κάτω από έναν κοινό, τεράστιο γαλάζιο ουρανό. Το έργο είναι γεμάτο από σκηνές βίας και αγριότητας. Από την αφαίρεση των σκαλπ των νεκρών ως τρόπαιο για τον νικητή, μια τακτική όπου εφαρμοζόταν όχι μόνο από τους Ινδιάνους αλλά και από τους λευκούς και μάλιστα συχνά χρησίμευε και ως αντάλλάξιμο είδος, ως την ανθρωποφαγία (βρώση ανθρώπινων πτωμάτων για την ακρίβεια, σε περίπτωση ακραίων περιστάσεων).
Και κάπου εκεί, καθώς οι κάστορες και οι βούβαλοι λιγοστεύουν επικίνδυνα και τα κέρδη μειώνονται από το εξαντλητικό κυνήγι, αρχίζει το όνειρο της κατάκτησης της απώτερης Δύσης. Πέρα από τα δύσβατα μονοπάτια των Βραχωδών Ορέων, ανοίγεται μια γη της Επαγγελίας. Η κατάκτηση του Όρεγκον και της Καλιφορνιας. Πλούσια γη για τους αγρότες και αρκετοί "άγριοι" που πρέπει να "εκπολιτιστούν" για τους μισιονάριους.
Στα 1952 το έργο αυτό γυρίστηκε και ως ταινία με σκηνοθέτη τον Howard Hawks και πρωταγωνιστή τον Kirk Douglas η οποία δίνει μια εξαιρετική εικόνα των τοπίων που περιγράφονται στο βιβλίο και πλαισιώνεται αριστοτεχνικά από την μουσική του συνθέτη Dimitri Tiomkin. Η πρωταγωνίστρια που υποδύεται την Teal Eye (μια νεαρή Ινδιάνα της φυλής των Piegan που παίζει σπουδαίο ρόλο στη ζωή του κεντρικού ήρωα), η Elizabeth Threatt ήταν Ινδιάνα από την πλευρά της μητέρας της.
Το μυθιστόρημα αυτό, παραμένει ακόμα και σήμερα αγαπημένο από τους Αμερικάνους. Παρ' όλο που ορισμένοι βλέπουν επικριτικά την επιλογή του συγγραφέα να αναπαράγει πιστά την ομιλία της εποχής στους διαλόγους (στην αρχή δεν καταλάβαινα τίποτα από όσα έλεγαν), συμπεριλαμβάνοντας διάφορες εκφράσεις που σήμερα θεωρούνται και είναι ακραία ρατσιστικές (πχ η χρήση της λέξης "νέγρος") θεωρώ πως πρόκειται για ένα έργο ιστορικά ακριβές και, ως τέτοιο, κρίνω πως η επιλογή του συγγραφέα υπήρξε έντιμη και ορθή καθώς δεν γράφτηκε για να προσβάλει αλλά για να προβάλει και να σκιαγραφήσει μια ορισμένη εποχή.
Μάλιστα ανακάλυψα πως υπάρχει μια παλιά μετάφραση στα ελληνικά από έργο του Guthrie (πρόκειται για μια συντομευμένη έκδοση του δεύτερου τόμου της τριλογίας) που κυκλοφόρησε κάπου μέσα στη δεκαετία του 1950 ή 1960 από δύο διαφορετικούς εκδότες. Μεταφραστής είναι ο Καίσαρ Εμμανουήλ.
The others were sleeping, except for Summers who was sitting up and shivering a little. Poordevil was snoring a kind of whistling snore, as if the gap in his teeth gave a special sound to it. Every time the bird cheeped, he would stop and then start in again, maybe getting the cheep mixed up in his dreams".
6 στα 5 αστέρια!!!
Να βάλω το μυαλό μου σε τάξη και να βγάλω από μέσα μου όλες τις σκέψεις και τα συναισθήματα που μου άφησε αυτό το υπέροχο έργο, δεν είναι εύκολο.
Ο A.B. Guthrie Jr, ο συγγραφέας αυτού του μυθιστορήματος έγραψε ένα είδος καθαρόαιμου αμερικάνου ρεαλιστικού - ιστορικού μυθιστορήματος, γνωστού ως western το οποίο απέχει μακράν από την στερεοτυπική απεικόνιση των καουμπόηδων με τα σαλούν και τους πιστολέρο. Βρήκα ένα άρθρο του Richard Severo για τους New York Times όπου αναφέρει:
"Ο Guthrie επέλεξε να προσεγγίσει με έναν σαφώς διαφορετικό τρόπο την λογοτεχνία γύρω από το θέμα της Άγριας Δύσης, διαφοροποιούμενος από τους συγκαιρινούς του. Τίποτα στη γραφή του δεν θυμίζει τη φθηνή απεικόνιση της λογοτεχνίας western η οποία εκείνη την εποχή έχαιρε ευρείας αποδοχής. Ο Guthrie είχε δηλώσει πως δεν ήθελε να γράψει μύθους γύρω από τη Δύση."
'Ετσι λοιπόν στα 1947 γράφει το μυθιστόρημα "The Big Sky", το πρώτο μέρος μιας τριλογίας (ακολουθεί το "The Way West" στα 1949 που κερδίζει αμέσως το βραβείο Pulitzer την ίδια χρονιά, και κλείνει με το με το "Fair Land, Fair Land" γραμμένο τριάντα σχεδόν χρόνια αργότερα, στα 1982 που λειτουργεί ως επίλογος).
Το "The Big Sky" ξεκινάει στα 1830 με τον πρωταγωνιστή της ιστορίας, τον ατίθασο και ανυπότακτο δεκαεπτάχρονο Boone Caudill και φτάνει ως τα 1843 καλύπτοντας ένα διάστημα δεκατριών ετών. Το μυθιστόρημα χωρίζεται σε πέντε μέρη και μέσα από αυτό παρακολουθούμε την πορεία του νεαρού, από ένα μικρό χωριό του Kentucky, προς τα βορειοδυτικά, ως την περιοχή που σημέρα βρίσκεται ο καταυλισμός των Ιδιάνων Blackfoot (γνωστό ως Blackfeet Nation), εκεί που όπου οι πολιτείες του Idaho, της Montana και του Wyoming χωρίζονται από την οροσειρά των Βραχωδών Ορέων (Rocky Mountains) από την μια, και τις μεγάλες πεδιάδες του ποταμού Missouri και το Yellowstone (που σήμερα αποτελεί εθνικό πάρκο).
Ο Boone δεν έχει την παραμικρή φιλοδοξία, παρά μόνο το όνειρο της απόλυτης ελευθερίας. Επιζητά να ζήσει μακριά από τους ανθρώπους και αναζητά τον θείο του ανάμεσα στους "Βουνίσιους" (mountain men) που ζούσαν σε εκείνη την περιοχή (στα δάση και στα ποτάμια) ασχολούμενοι κυρίως με το κυνήγι του κάστορα, του οποίου την γούνα εμπορεύοντας για λογαριασμό κάποιων μεγάλων Εταιρειών. Ο μεγαλύτερος κίνδυνος σε εκείνα τα μέρη πέρα από την ίδια την φύση ήταν οι διάφορες φυλές των Ινδιάνων με τους οποίους υπάρχει μια αρκετά ιδιότυπη συμβιωτική σχέση.
"Ο Boone το μόνο που θέλει είναι κρέας με πάχος και μια καλή φωτιά και να είναι μακριά από τους ανθρώπους. Αυτό αρκεί, σκέφτηκε ο Boone. Τί άλλο να ζητήσει ο άνθρωπος, αρκεί να έχει κόκαλα με μεδούλι και μπόλικο κρέας στα πλευρά και μια φωτιά να τον κρατάει ζεστό και μια γη όπου να μπορεί τριγυρνάει ελεύθερα; Τί καλύτερο από ένα μέρος όπου κάθε μέρα μπορούσες να σκοτώνεις κι από έναν βούβαλο χωρίς ιδιαίτερο κόπο, κρατώντας για τον εαυτό σου τα καλύτερα κομμάτια, αφήνοντας τα υπόλοιπα για τους λύκους. Γιατί να θέλει κάτι περισσότερο, εκτός ίσως από μια καλή Ινδιάνα να ζει μαζί της στη σκηνή και να ξαπλώνει πλάι της, τη νύχτα;"
Πολλοί αναγνώστες βρίσκουν τον ήρωα αντιπαθητικό, ωστόσο θεωρώ πως ο χαρακτήρας του, ο φαινομενικά απλοϊκός και βάρβαρος, διαθέτει μια μεγάλη δόση οξυδέρκειας (μαθαίνει να επιβιώνει, όσο αποξενώνεται από τον πολιτισμό και τους ανθρώπους τόσο περισσότερο γίνεται κομμάτι της φύσης και του περιβάλλοντός του) και μια καταπιεσμένη ευαισθησία, διψάει για αγάπη, αλλά αγνοεί τον τρόπο με τον οποίο αυτή θα μπορούσε εκφραστεί και να εκδηλωθεί (αυτό είναι το τρωτό του σημείο, η αιτία της δυστυχίας του και το αποτέλεσμα της φριχτής κακοποίησης που υπέστη ως παιδί στα χέρια του τυραννικού πατέρα του).
Τον συμπάθησα γιατί, παρ' όλη την κτηνώδη φύση του, μοιάζει με φοβισμένο ζώο που επιτίθεται για να αμυνθεί και που αν το εξημερώσεις θα σταθεί στο πλευρό σου ως φίλος πιστός και αφοσιωμένος χωρίς ωστόσο να χάνει κάτι από την ουσία που συνιστά την αδάμαστη φύση του. Ένας χαρακτήρας που εκφράζεται κυρίως μέσα από τις πράξεις του οι οποίες συχνά απορρέουν από το ένστικτο και όχι τη λογική. Σκοτώνει για να ζήσει. Είτε αυτό αφορά ζώα είτε ανθρώπους.
Η σχέση των λευκών με τους Ινδιάνους είναι, όπως προανέφερα, ιδιότυπη. Η κάθε φυλή έχει τους δικούς κανόνες και κώδικες συμπεριφοράς. Κάποιοι είναι πιο φιλικοί και συνεργάσιμοι κάποιοι άλλοι τελείως εχθρικοί. Βλέποντας τον τόπο τους να κατακτάται σταδιακά, αισθάνονται ταπεινωμένοι. Αναφέρει σε ένα σημείο ο αρχηγός της φυλής των Piegan έχοντας μόλις βιώσει των αφανισμό του λαού από μια φοβερή επιδημία:
"Ο λευκός φέρνει ουίσκι. Κάνει τον Ινδιάνο να τρελαίνεται. Ο λευκός πλαγιάζει με τις γυναίκες του. Κουβαλάει αρρώστιες", είπε πιάνοντας με το χέρι του τον καβάλο του. "Η καρδιά του λευκού είναι κακή [...] Ο Ινδιάνος πολεμάει. Πολεμάει γενναία. Για να κρατήσει τον λευκό μακριά. Ο λευκός φέρνει μεγάλο δηλητήριο, μεγάλη αρρώστια. Σκοτώνει τον Ινδιάνο [...] Η καρδιά του Ινδιάνου είναι νεκρή. Νεκρή ανάθεμά την. Τώρα πια ο Ινδιάνος έπαψε να πολεμάει".
Από την άλλη πλευρά οι λευκοί, γαλουχημένοι με διαφορετικές νοοτροπίες και ιδεώδη, συχνά αποτύγχαναν να κατανοήσουν τον Ινδιάνικο τρόπο σκέψης. Μια ενέργεια ή μια χειρονομία που στον δυτικό κόσμο έχει ένα ορισμένο αντίκτυπο για τους Ινδιάνους μπορεί να σημαίνει το τελείως αντίθετο:
"Έτσι όπως είχε η κατάσταση δεν μπορούσες να έχεις εμπιστοσύνη στους Ινδιάνους, ακόμα κι αν ζούσες μαζί τους. Ήταν γεμάτοι έπαρση, όσο εύκολα ικανοποιούνταν άλλο τόσο εύκολα εξοργίζονταν και ξαφνικά αντιδρούσαν με τρόπους που ένας λευκός δεν μπορούσε να προβλέψει και για αιτίες που ούτε καν του περνούσαν από το μυαλό".
Μια αδιάκοπη σύγκρουση πολιτισμών ανάμεσα σε ανθρώπους διαφορετικούς κάτω από έναν κοινό, τεράστιο γαλάζιο ουρανό. Το έργο είναι γεμάτο από σκηνές βίας και αγριότητας. Από την αφαίρεση των σκαλπ των νεκρών ως τρόπαιο για τον νικητή, μια τακτική όπου εφαρμοζόταν όχι μόνο από τους Ινδιάνους αλλά και από τους λευκούς και μάλιστα συχνά χρησίμευε και ως αντάλλάξιμο είδος, ως την ανθρωποφαγία (βρώση ανθρώπινων πτωμάτων για την ακρίβεια, σε περίπτωση ακραίων περιστάσεων).
Και κάπου εκεί, καθώς οι κάστορες και οι βούβαλοι λιγοστεύουν επικίνδυνα και τα κέρδη μειώνονται από το εξαντλητικό κυνήγι, αρχίζει το όνειρο της κατάκτησης της απώτερης Δύσης. Πέρα από τα δύσβατα μονοπάτια των Βραχωδών Ορέων, ανοίγεται μια γη της Επαγγελίας. Η κατάκτηση του Όρεγκον και της Καλιφορνιας. Πλούσια γη για τους αγρότες και αρκετοί "άγριοι" που πρέπει να "εκπολιτιστούν" για τους μισιονάριους.
Στα 1952 το έργο αυτό γυρίστηκε και ως ταινία με σκηνοθέτη τον Howard Hawks και πρωταγωνιστή τον Kirk Douglas η οποία δίνει μια εξαιρετική εικόνα των τοπίων που περιγράφονται στο βιβλίο και πλαισιώνεται αριστοτεχνικά από την μουσική του συνθέτη Dimitri Tiomkin. Η πρωταγωνίστρια που υποδύεται την Teal Eye (μια νεαρή Ινδιάνα της φυλής των Piegan που παίζει σπουδαίο ρόλο στη ζωή του κεντρικού ήρωα), η Elizabeth Threatt ήταν Ινδιάνα από την πλευρά της μητέρας της.
Το μυθιστόρημα αυτό, παραμένει ακόμα και σήμερα αγαπημένο από τους Αμερικάνους. Παρ' όλο που ορισμένοι βλέπουν επικριτικά την επιλογή του συγγραφέα να αναπαράγει πιστά την ομιλία της εποχής στους διαλόγους (στην αρχή δεν καταλάβαινα τίποτα από όσα έλεγαν), συμπεριλαμβάνοντας διάφορες εκφράσεις που σήμερα θεωρούνται και είναι ακραία ρατσιστικές (πχ η χρήση της λέξης "νέγρος") θεωρώ πως πρόκειται για ένα έργο ιστορικά ακριβές και, ως τέτοιο, κρίνω πως η επιλογή του συγγραφέα υπήρξε έντιμη και ορθή καθώς δεν γράφτηκε για να προσβάλει αλλά για να προβάλει και να σκιαγραφήσει μια ορισμένη εποχή.
Μάλιστα ανακάλυψα πως υπάρχει μια παλιά μετάφραση στα ελληνικά από έργο του Guthrie (πρόκειται για μια συντομευμένη έκδοση του δεύτερου τόμου της τριλογίας) που κυκλοφόρησε κάπου μέσα στη δεκαετία του 1950 ή 1960 από δύο διαφορετικούς εκδότες. Μεταφραστής είναι ο Καίσαρ Εμμανουήλ.
December 4, 2020
Truly a western Masterpiece. There was never an inclination to skip over those descriptive portions as they were majestic and so very vivid, bringing as much, if not more, to the story as did the endearing characters. Highly recommend.
January 19, 2011
This book is a masterpiece, although it was Guthrie's second book, The Way West, that won the Pulitzer Prize. It was written in 1947 but doesn't get read much any more. A shame.
Guthrie was appalled by the Western cowboy books that were being written. He wanted to write a novel that followed some of the first men to live in the harsh, lonely environment of the West. His work was carefully drawn from historical sources, journals, diaries, and numerous trips to the area. The characters in The Big Sky were not romanticized; mountain men were "hardened, cold and brutal people and their heroism was hidden within tedious, dirty, dangerous or even squalid events."
The protagonist, Boone Caudill, was such a man. He left his Kentucky home at 17, fleeing an abusive father, and spent years crisscrossing the West. He was a trapper, a hunter, a loner, spending most of his time by himself or with one or two friends. Eventually he finds a Blackfoot squaw with whom he settles down for a time, but ends up leaving.
Guthrie's prose is wonderful and you can feel the beauty as well as the dangers of the landscape. "The wind got to a man when he stood still, chilling his sweat and making him shiver beneath his skins. It filled him full; it blew into him through his eyes and nose and mouth and drove through his skin. It was something he didn't feel alone or hear alone but that he knew in every part of him as a man swimming would know the water."
Boone could feel civilization pushing in on him and it saddened him. It's what we've all felt at one time or another, that, by our presence, we've destroyed the beauty which drew us there.
This is a book that each generation should read again.
Guthrie was appalled by the Western cowboy books that were being written. He wanted to write a novel that followed some of the first men to live in the harsh, lonely environment of the West. His work was carefully drawn from historical sources, journals, diaries, and numerous trips to the area. The characters in The Big Sky were not romanticized; mountain men were "hardened, cold and brutal people and their heroism was hidden within tedious, dirty, dangerous or even squalid events."
The protagonist, Boone Caudill, was such a man. He left his Kentucky home at 17, fleeing an abusive father, and spent years crisscrossing the West. He was a trapper, a hunter, a loner, spending most of his time by himself or with one or two friends. Eventually he finds a Blackfoot squaw with whom he settles down for a time, but ends up leaving.
Guthrie's prose is wonderful and you can feel the beauty as well as the dangers of the landscape. "The wind got to a man when he stood still, chilling his sweat and making him shiver beneath his skins. It filled him full; it blew into him through his eyes and nose and mouth and drove through his skin. It was something he didn't feel alone or hear alone but that he knew in every part of him as a man swimming would know the water."
Boone could feel civilization pushing in on him and it saddened him. It's what we've all felt at one time or another, that, by our presence, we've destroyed the beauty which drew us there.
This is a book that each generation should read again.
April 7, 2019
"It was good to tell stories sometimes and to hear stories told and to brag and to laugh over nothing and play horse while the whisky worked in you, and to have the good feeling in the back of your head all the time that when you were through talking and betting and drinking and wrestling there would be an Indian girl waiting for you; and, afterwards, you would lie quiet with her and hear the coyotes singing and the stream washing and see the stars down close and feel the warmth of her, and the lonesomeness would be all gone, as if the world itself had come to set a spell with you."
The first of Guthrie's six novels of the old west tells the story of 17 year-old Boone Caudill who leaves his family home in 1830s Kentucky to eventually become a mountain man and explore the territory that would become known as the Oregon Pass. The central character of the book is actually the unspoiled wilderness, which is lovingly described throughout the book by Guthrie, a Nieman Fellow from Harvard, who grew up in Teton County, Montana listening to the stories of local cowpokes and dreaming of days gone by. The frequent use of the "n-word" may be shocking, but appears to be accurately portrayed as a self-referential part of mountain man jargon. The Big Sky was adapted into a 1962 Howard Hawks movie, and "Big Sky Country" was used as a 1962 promotional slogan of the Montana State Highway Department.
The first of Guthrie's six novels of the old west tells the story of 17 year-old Boone Caudill who leaves his family home in 1830s Kentucky to eventually become a mountain man and explore the territory that would become known as the Oregon Pass. The central character of the book is actually the unspoiled wilderness, which is lovingly described throughout the book by Guthrie, a Nieman Fellow from Harvard, who grew up in Teton County, Montana listening to the stories of local cowpokes and dreaming of days gone by. The frequent use of the "n-word" may be shocking, but appears to be accurately portrayed as a self-referential part of mountain man jargon. The Big Sky was adapted into a 1962 Howard Hawks movie, and "Big Sky Country" was used as a 1962 promotional slogan of the Montana State Highway Department.
July 21, 2023
An extraordinary novel about the era of the mountain men in the American West (early 1800s). Imbued with a rugged, earthy mystique. Intriguing and tragic.
October 26, 2020
Tutto comincia in Kentucky.
E’ il 1830, quando in una sera di pioggia battente, il diciassettenne Boone, stanco dei soprusi subiti, scappa di casa dopo aver colpito il padre.
E' diretto nei selvaggi territori dell’Ovest sulle tracce di uno zio cacciatore.
A St.Louis, si unirà ad un giovane poco più grande: Jim Deakins.
Entrambi sognano di diventare uomini di frontiera.
Una volta raggiunti i territori dell’Ovest si accorgeranno che per sopravvivere non c’è posto per l’esitazione e la paura.
Gli spazi sono immensi, l’ambiente è selvaggio e tutto ciò dà la sensazione di sentirsi completamente liberi seppur incatenati alle ferree regole della natura.
E’ una terra, questa, a cui ci si lega con la possessività di un amore morboso:
infastidendosi se qualcun altro osa metterci mano.
Boone, Jim e poi Dick – altro protagonista del romanzo- rappresentano tre modi differenti di affrontare i cambiamenti nelle terre dell’Ovest che con l’espandersi della conquista portano i coloni che metteranno mano alla terra cambiandone il volto da paesaggio selvaggio a campo arato.
Gli indiani sono stereotipati per alcuni versi ma rispettati nelle loro differenti identità.
Lo sterminio qui non è nascosto e neppure cantato come atto necessario.
In poche parole, Guthrie non rende romantico un massacro nascondendolo dietro al mito dell’eroe bianco.
Per i miei principi, di primo acchito. avrei dovuto odiare questo romanzo perché contiene tutte le coordinate di un paesaggio che non condivido:
è lo sguardo del maschio bianco americano.
E’ uno sguardo che si fonda sull'esclusione per cui non esistono margini di sopravvivenza tollerata ma esseri indegni perché non possiedono le caratteristiche principali che meritano il primo posto nella piramide sociale.
In poche parole se non sei bianco sei feccia.
Se non sei uomo, poi, sei unicamente un corpo strumentale allo sfogo degli istinti sessuali.
L’uomo di frontiera ha necessità di affermare la propria superiorità su tutto.
Nei confronti del mondo animale occorre misurarsi con la forza dell’istinto ancestrale e, dunque, è necessario essere furbi, scaltri ma soprattutto avere una buona mira.
Le scene di caccia non risparmiano i successivi squartamenti ed il gusto non solo della carne cruda ma del sangue stesso degli animali appena uccisi.
Sono tutti rituali cruenti che hanno il preciso di intento di affermare la propria supremazia.
Tutte queste caratteristiche avrebbero dovuto farmi odiare quest’opera ma non è andata così perché in realtà il cammino di crescita di Boone segue passi alternativi ai sentieri della massa.
Il suo è uno sguardo che trova la sua misura allargo la vista e perdendosi nella vastità del paesaggio.
Una storia appassionante anche perché si concentra s’un momento storico importante per questo contesto: il periodo tra il 1830 ed il 1843 in cui cacciatori ed avventurieri assistono al passaggio in cui i territori (ormai privi di castori e con i bisonti vicini all'estinzione) fanno luccicare gli occhi a lungimiranti ed avidi capitalisti.
Boone diventa simbolo di chi non vuole credere che tutto verrà contaminato e che il grande cielo in cui perdersi venga recintato…
” Boone giaceva supino e guardava il cielo notturno luccicante di stelle. Erano nitide e luminose come fiammelle appena accese, come quei fuochi che un viaggiatore poteva scorgere su una riva lontana. La luce delle stelle era quasi buona come quella della luna, lì sul fiume superiore dove giorni azzurri sbiadivano in notti più fonde di quanto fosse possibile immaginare. Di giorno Boone poteva salire su una collina e guardare in lungo e in largo, fino a dove il cielo non si curvava a ostacolargli la vista. C’era il cielo, blu come se fosse stato colorato con la vernice, e la terra marrone che si snodava sotto, e lui tra loro, con una sensazione di selvaggia libertà nel petto, come se terra e cielo fossero il soffitto e il pavimento di una casa tutta sua.”
E’ il 1830, quando in una sera di pioggia battente, il diciassettenne Boone, stanco dei soprusi subiti, scappa di casa dopo aver colpito il padre.
E' diretto nei selvaggi territori dell’Ovest sulle tracce di uno zio cacciatore.
A St.Louis, si unirà ad un giovane poco più grande: Jim Deakins.
Entrambi sognano di diventare uomini di frontiera.
Una volta raggiunti i territori dell’Ovest si accorgeranno che per sopravvivere non c’è posto per l’esitazione e la paura.
Gli spazi sono immensi, l’ambiente è selvaggio e tutto ciò dà la sensazione di sentirsi completamente liberi seppur incatenati alle ferree regole della natura.
E’ una terra, questa, a cui ci si lega con la possessività di un amore morboso:
infastidendosi se qualcun altro osa metterci mano.
Boone, Jim e poi Dick – altro protagonista del romanzo- rappresentano tre modi differenti di affrontare i cambiamenti nelle terre dell’Ovest che con l’espandersi della conquista portano i coloni che metteranno mano alla terra cambiandone il volto da paesaggio selvaggio a campo arato.
Gli indiani sono stereotipati per alcuni versi ma rispettati nelle loro differenti identità.
Lo sterminio qui non è nascosto e neppure cantato come atto necessario.
In poche parole, Guthrie non rende romantico un massacro nascondendolo dietro al mito dell’eroe bianco.
Per i miei principi, di primo acchito. avrei dovuto odiare questo romanzo perché contiene tutte le coordinate di un paesaggio che non condivido:
è lo sguardo del maschio bianco americano.
E’ uno sguardo che si fonda sull'esclusione per cui non esistono margini di sopravvivenza tollerata ma esseri indegni perché non possiedono le caratteristiche principali che meritano il primo posto nella piramide sociale.
In poche parole se non sei bianco sei feccia.
Se non sei uomo, poi, sei unicamente un corpo strumentale allo sfogo degli istinti sessuali.
L’uomo di frontiera ha necessità di affermare la propria superiorità su tutto.
Nei confronti del mondo animale occorre misurarsi con la forza dell’istinto ancestrale e, dunque, è necessario essere furbi, scaltri ma soprattutto avere una buona mira.
Le scene di caccia non risparmiano i successivi squartamenti ed il gusto non solo della carne cruda ma del sangue stesso degli animali appena uccisi.
Sono tutti rituali cruenti che hanno il preciso di intento di affermare la propria supremazia.
Tutte queste caratteristiche avrebbero dovuto farmi odiare quest’opera ma non è andata così perché in realtà il cammino di crescita di Boone segue passi alternativi ai sentieri della massa.
Il suo è uno sguardo che trova la sua misura allargo la vista e perdendosi nella vastità del paesaggio.
Una storia appassionante anche perché si concentra s’un momento storico importante per questo contesto: il periodo tra il 1830 ed il 1843 in cui cacciatori ed avventurieri assistono al passaggio in cui i territori (ormai privi di castori e con i bisonti vicini all'estinzione) fanno luccicare gli occhi a lungimiranti ed avidi capitalisti.
Boone diventa simbolo di chi non vuole credere che tutto verrà contaminato e che il grande cielo in cui perdersi venga recintato…
” Boone giaceva supino e guardava il cielo notturno luccicante di stelle. Erano nitide e luminose come fiammelle appena accese, come quei fuochi che un viaggiatore poteva scorgere su una riva lontana. La luce delle stelle era quasi buona come quella della luna, lì sul fiume superiore dove giorni azzurri sbiadivano in notti più fonde di quanto fosse possibile immaginare. Di giorno Boone poteva salire su una collina e guardare in lungo e in largo, fino a dove il cielo non si curvava a ostacolargli la vista. C’era il cielo, blu come se fosse stato colorato con la vernice, e la terra marrone che si snodava sotto, e lui tra loro, con una sensazione di selvaggia libertà nel petto, come se terra e cielo fossero il soffitto e il pavimento di una casa tutta sua.”
April 26, 2021
Boone Caudill was a man, a very bland man. Luckily he had some friends I could stand. Boone was tortured and volatile which could have had the makings for a great character. I was excited to see where it would go but the trip up the Missouri River was at times more arduous for me than it was for them. I wanted to glide downstream to civilization even if I could be robbed, beaten, and thrown in jail by a backward system.
I can understand why people love this so I couldn't bring myself to give it less than 3 stars. I know it was a groundbreaking book and it paved the way for authors like Wallace Stenger and Larry McMurtry. If I hadn't recently fallen head over heels for Lonesome Dove and Angle of Repose, maybe I would have liked this better. Lonesome Dove excelled at the fast pace driving narrative and character development whereas Angle of Repose had gorgeous prose and contemplative brilliance. The Big Sky couldn't match those, but where it mostly fell short for me was in the character development.
The novel's strengths were its landscape descriptions and the contemplative passages that were in the voice of Dick Summers and Jim Deakins. If either of them were the central character instead of Boone Caudill, I'd probably have liked this a lot more. There is one point where Dick Summers beautifully describes the first time he saw Jackson's Hole and the Grand Teton and then compares it to the current time:
"It was all in the way a man thought, though the way a young man thought. When the blood was strong and the heat high a body felt the earth was newborn like himself; but when he got some years on him he knew different; down deep in his bones he understood that everything was old, old as time, maybe - so old he wondered what folks had been on it before the Indians themselves, following up the waters and pitching their lodges on who had gone before. It made a man feel old himself to know that younger ones coming along would believe the world was new, just as he had done, just as Boone and Jim were doing, though not so strong any more."
I've always felt old, in terms of civilization, and those who have walked before. I love hearing stories about how people overcame obstacles, worked hard, and managed great things with little resources. I should have loved this, but there were too many parts that either bored me or felt inauthentic, especially when it came to Teal Eye. Then the ending made me so mad, that I refused to read the last 44 pages. It wasn't passionate anger of beloved character being wronged, it was the disgusted-type anger that thinks "come on. this is how you're going to spice up this book?!" I had respected the book up to that point.
I'm reading The Way West next month. I believe it focuses on Dick Summers who was my favorite of the three main men. That leaves me hopeful that I will like the second installment much better. I also haven't been in the best of moods lately so that could have contributed to not being able to bond with this book.
I can understand why people love this so I couldn't bring myself to give it less than 3 stars. I know it was a groundbreaking book and it paved the way for authors like Wallace Stenger and Larry McMurtry. If I hadn't recently fallen head over heels for Lonesome Dove and Angle of Repose, maybe I would have liked this better. Lonesome Dove excelled at the fast pace driving narrative and character development whereas Angle of Repose had gorgeous prose and contemplative brilliance. The Big Sky couldn't match those, but where it mostly fell short for me was in the character development.
The novel's strengths were its landscape descriptions and the contemplative passages that were in the voice of Dick Summers and Jim Deakins. If either of them were the central character instead of Boone Caudill, I'd probably have liked this a lot more. There is one point where Dick Summers beautifully describes the first time he saw Jackson's Hole and the Grand Teton and then compares it to the current time:
"It was all in the way a man thought, though the way a young man thought. When the blood was strong and the heat high a body felt the earth was newborn like himself; but when he got some years on him he knew different; down deep in his bones he understood that everything was old, old as time, maybe - so old he wondered what folks had been on it before the Indians themselves, following up the waters and pitching their lodges on who had gone before. It made a man feel old himself to know that younger ones coming along would believe the world was new, just as he had done, just as Boone and Jim were doing, though not so strong any more."
I've always felt old, in terms of civilization, and those who have walked before. I love hearing stories about how people overcame obstacles, worked hard, and managed great things with little resources. I should have loved this, but there were too many parts that either bored me or felt inauthentic, especially when it came to Teal Eye. Then the ending made me so mad, that I refused to read the last 44 pages. It wasn't passionate anger of beloved character being wronged, it was the disgusted-type anger that thinks "come on. this is how you're going to spice up this book?!" I had respected the book up to that point.
I'm reading The Way West next month. I believe it focuses on Dick Summers who was my favorite of the three main men. That leaves me hopeful that I will like the second installment much better. I also haven't been in the best of moods lately so that could have contributed to not being able to bond with this book.
June 4, 2021
Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins and Dick Summers come to life in the pages of A. B. Guthrie’s
The Big Sky living the lives of mountain men in the American West of 1830. This is an adventure story as well as a love story. We are taken up the Missouri River on a keelboat and through the mountains and valleys hunting buffalo, trapping beaver and fighting Indians with these men. We witness their bonding and their mischief as well as their savagery and their violence. Guthrie’s love for his own Montana is vividly imagined throughout. It is quite evident that he was witness to the beauty of the mountains and valleys he writes about so well. I truly benefit from his descriptive prose as I’ve never seen any of these parts of the US before. This is a novel that takes place out of doors and you definitely feel that openness and wide expanse of the plains as well as the breathtaking beauty of the mountains and valleys.
From the top, Boone could see forever and ever, nearly any way he looked. It was open country, bald and open, without an end. It spread away, flat now and then rolling, going on clear to the sky. A man wouldn’t think the whole world was so much. It made the heart come up. It made a man little and still big, like a king looking out. It occurred to Boone that this was the way a bird must feel, free and loose, with the world to choose from.
Boone Caudill is a restless and angry young man who leaves his Kentucky home fueled by an abusive situation with his father. He has a need for adventure and freedom that can’t be found with his family. He’s a man who can’t be contained within walls. The only thing that makes him happy is being out in the open in the wilderness. There was the sky above, blue as paint, and the brown earth rolling underneath, and himself between them with a free, wild feeling in his chest, as if they were the ceiling and floor of a home that was all his own.
Boone’s impulsive nature and quick temper often lead to violence. Whiskey and squaws become a way of life as well as killing buffalo and trapping beaver while at the same time taking scalps and trying to keep his own. He is a man more comfortable in the world of the Blackfeet than the white man. As expansion to the West threatens his lifestyle, Boone’s animalistic essence is a part of him that will not fit into this new civilization, living only for survival, an unsustainable lifestyle. He makes an ultimate decision that alters him forever and questions whether or not Boone, the mountain man, has a future.
Jim Deakins is Boone’s loyal friend and companion. They travel together learning the mountain man ways and becoming well versed in the lessons they receive from their mentor, Dick Summers. Jim is the social one, who needs to have interaction with others and to have fun. He looks forward to the Rendezvous where he can experience a civilized way for a time before returning to the wilderness. Dick is older and has been able to keep one foot in the wilderness and one in a future settling down and planting roots. He is everything that Boone wants to be but ironically he has his sights set on a different future - the one that Boone can’t abide. These men see their livelihood changing with the depletion of the buffalo and the beaver as well as the sickness that wipes out many Indian tribes altogether. While Dick realizes the need for change himself, it is Boone who holds on to the extinct way of life that he loves.
But new times are a-coming now, and new people, a heap of them, and wheels rolling over the passes, carrying greenhorns and women and maybe children, too, and plows.
The Big Sky living the lives of mountain men in the American West of 1830. This is an adventure story as well as a love story. We are taken up the Missouri River on a keelboat and through the mountains and valleys hunting buffalo, trapping beaver and fighting Indians with these men. We witness their bonding and their mischief as well as their savagery and their violence. Guthrie’s love for his own Montana is vividly imagined throughout. It is quite evident that he was witness to the beauty of the mountains and valleys he writes about so well. I truly benefit from his descriptive prose as I’ve never seen any of these parts of the US before. This is a novel that takes place out of doors and you definitely feel that openness and wide expanse of the plains as well as the breathtaking beauty of the mountains and valleys.
From the top, Boone could see forever and ever, nearly any way he looked. It was open country, bald and open, without an end. It spread away, flat now and then rolling, going on clear to the sky. A man wouldn’t think the whole world was so much. It made the heart come up. It made a man little and still big, like a king looking out. It occurred to Boone that this was the way a bird must feel, free and loose, with the world to choose from.
Boone Caudill is a restless and angry young man who leaves his Kentucky home fueled by an abusive situation with his father. He has a need for adventure and freedom that can’t be found with his family. He’s a man who can’t be contained within walls. The only thing that makes him happy is being out in the open in the wilderness. There was the sky above, blue as paint, and the brown earth rolling underneath, and himself between them with a free, wild feeling in his chest, as if they were the ceiling and floor of a home that was all his own.
Boone’s impulsive nature and quick temper often lead to violence. Whiskey and squaws become a way of life as well as killing buffalo and trapping beaver while at the same time taking scalps and trying to keep his own. He is a man more comfortable in the world of the Blackfeet than the white man. As expansion to the West threatens his lifestyle, Boone’s animalistic essence is a part of him that will not fit into this new civilization, living only for survival, an unsustainable lifestyle. He makes an ultimate decision that alters him forever and questions whether or not Boone, the mountain man, has a future.
Jim Deakins is Boone’s loyal friend and companion. They travel together learning the mountain man ways and becoming well versed in the lessons they receive from their mentor, Dick Summers. Jim is the social one, who needs to have interaction with others and to have fun. He looks forward to the Rendezvous where he can experience a civilized way for a time before returning to the wilderness. Dick is older and has been able to keep one foot in the wilderness and one in a future settling down and planting roots. He is everything that Boone wants to be but ironically he has his sights set on a different future - the one that Boone can’t abide. These men see their livelihood changing with the depletion of the buffalo and the beaver as well as the sickness that wipes out many Indian tribes altogether. While Dick realizes the need for change himself, it is Boone who holds on to the extinct way of life that he loves.
But new times are a-coming now, and new people, a heap of them, and wheels rolling over the passes, carrying greenhorns and women and maybe children, too, and plows.
June 23, 2008
I want to go to big sky country and I want to do it on horseback and I want to trap beaver and I want to hunt buffalo for food and shelter and I want to trade with Native Americans and I want it to be the 1800's...but that aint gonna happen so I just went ahead and read this book.
January 16, 2022
I read this one because it is the first of a trilogy, the second book of which, The Way West, won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize. I found it was an interesting story, but was a bit put off by the racism and misogyny. Racism as AmerIndians (and blacks) are presented as inherently inferior to whites and misogynist especially towards female Indians who are portrayed as prostitutes and at best submissive wives. It is the story of the West in the 1830s and 40s, setting the stage for the Oregon Trail story in the aforementioned second book. The characters of Boone, Jim, and Dick are the most developed and yet none of them really grew on me all that much. There was a moment which I found made little sense towards the middle where Boon and Dick narrowly escape a massacre and it is never explained how Jim somehow survived the incident and hangs out with them again. I found that the ending was largely unsatisfactory as well. It still gets 3 stars though because of the more anthropologically interesting writing about life in those frontier days which was fairly well-described.
I hope that the next book will be better.
One quote:
"You think there is a hell sure enough, Boone? It nigh made me take to God, Boone, hearing Clemens play and sing. If'n I close my eyes I can hear him plain, the nice tunes twangin' out and the voice with them and the mountains theirselves seemin' to crowd round and listen. Hi-yi. Hi-yi. Don't sound so good when I sing it, but even a Injun song was something in Clemens' mouth, like as if it brought God down from the sky. Instead of takin' to God, I took liquor and women, but God seemed all around just the same. Seems like he must have felt good, too, seein' us caper. It's agin nature he would be set against frolics. Sometimes, lyin' with a woman and the night thick and a wolf singing from a hill, I figgered God was close.figgered He must be a friend, Boone, and not no stiff and proper son of a bitch puttin' my name down for hell. Sometimes when I looked out over the plains, so far and mighty it dizzied the eye, I figgered God was there, too. Who made it all and give a body an eye to see with and a heart to feel with if 'twarn't God?" (pp. 290)
I hope that the next book will be better.
One quote:
"You think there is a hell sure enough, Boone? It nigh made me take to God, Boone, hearing Clemens play and sing. If'n I close my eyes I can hear him plain, the nice tunes twangin' out and the voice with them and the mountains theirselves seemin' to crowd round and listen. Hi-yi. Hi-yi. Don't sound so good when I sing it, but even a Injun song was something in Clemens' mouth, like as if it brought God down from the sky. Instead of takin' to God, I took liquor and women, but God seemed all around just the same. Seems like he must have felt good, too, seein' us caper. It's agin nature he would be set against frolics. Sometimes, lyin' with a woman and the night thick and a wolf singing from a hill, I figgered God was close.figgered He must be a friend, Boone, and not no stiff and proper son of a bitch puttin' my name down for hell. Sometimes when I looked out over the plains, so far and mighty it dizzied the eye, I figgered God was there, too. Who made it all and give a body an eye to see with and a heart to feel with if 'twarn't God?" (pp. 290)
July 7, 2011
I tried--truly I did. Guthrie is a Pulitzer Prize winner and this has been called his masterpiece. It's not badly written by any means, quite the contrary, but this is one of those books I find way too dark in terms of the characters--and I say that as someone that loved The Color Purple and The Kite Runner. But then, both those novels have very appealing protagonists you can root for, here the major character never seemed anything but despicable, not simply just a scoundrel like in Little Big Man, and this novel lacks the leavening humor of that one.
Set on the American frontier from 1830 to 1843, this novel is centered on Boone Caudill, who the introduction tells us, is destined to become a savage "mountain man." Problem is from the beginning there isn't anything very civilized about him. He leaves home at seventeen after punching out his abusive father and stealing his prize rifle, and his even more cherished razor strop--made from an Indian's scalp. Before he's eighteen he'll be collecting his own Indian scalps--and will have contracted "the clap" from a prostitute. Moreover, well more than half-way through the novel, the only female character of note, Teal Eye, a blackfoot tribe member, is practically mute. And the stereotypical, wince-worthy depiction of Native Americans didn't help, even if I make allowances for the filter of the white characters' perspective and that contemporary views might be overly romanticized. I mean, "heap?" And "how" as a greeting?
Also, the narrative is frequently punctuated with the word "nigger." I'm not mentioning this because I'm accusing Guthrie of being racist, any more than Alice Walker or Toni Morrison or Mark Twain for that matter are guilty of being racist when using such words in fiction to depict character. It's rarely if ever used to even refer to blacks--apparently the "mountain men" often use it to refer to themselves. But it's one aspect of the novel that made this a tiresome and unpleasant read for me. There's not one character that engaged my sympathy or interest. Those who care far less about characters being likeable and have more tolerance for brutality and graphic violence might find this more enjoyable.
Set on the American frontier from 1830 to 1843, this novel is centered on Boone Caudill, who the introduction tells us, is destined to become a savage "mountain man." Problem is from the beginning there isn't anything very civilized about him. He leaves home at seventeen after punching out his abusive father and stealing his prize rifle, and his even more cherished razor strop--made from an Indian's scalp. Before he's eighteen he'll be collecting his own Indian scalps--and will have contracted "the clap" from a prostitute. Moreover, well more than half-way through the novel, the only female character of note, Teal Eye, a blackfoot tribe member, is practically mute. And the stereotypical, wince-worthy depiction of Native Americans didn't help, even if I make allowances for the filter of the white characters' perspective and that contemporary views might be overly romanticized. I mean, "heap?" And "how" as a greeting?
Also, the narrative is frequently punctuated with the word "nigger." I'm not mentioning this because I'm accusing Guthrie of being racist, any more than Alice Walker or Toni Morrison or Mark Twain for that matter are guilty of being racist when using such words in fiction to depict character. It's rarely if ever used to even refer to blacks--apparently the "mountain men" often use it to refer to themselves. But it's one aspect of the novel that made this a tiresome and unpleasant read for me. There's not one character that engaged my sympathy or interest. Those who care far less about characters being likeable and have more tolerance for brutality and graphic violence might find this more enjoyable.
May 6, 2021
This book follows two men on their adventures west becoming mountain men, hunters and fighters of native Americans.
As a woman, I found very little to like about the book, or the characters for that matter, although the geography lesson was good, as I kept referring to my atlas. I have family roots in Kalispel, and have travelled by car from Great Falls over to Flathead Lake, so that part was interesting to me.
Although the descriptive writing and plot held my attention, the attitudes of the characters and actions they took put me off. Too much machismo for me. I wouldn’t want to live in that world.
Postscript 5/5/21: Now that I am reading The Way West, I think maybe I was too stingy with my star rating for The Big Sky. The book is memorable, and the writing style is quite good, with a plot that carries through to the end, keeping the reader engaged. On second thoughts, even though I did have some gender/race issues, I will up my rating to four stars.
As a woman, I found very little to like about the book, or the characters for that matter, although the geography lesson was good, as I kept referring to my atlas. I have family roots in Kalispel, and have travelled by car from Great Falls over to Flathead Lake, so that part was interesting to me.
Although the descriptive writing and plot held my attention, the attitudes of the characters and actions they took put me off. Too much machismo for me. I wouldn’t want to live in that world.
Postscript 5/5/21: Now that I am reading The Way West, I think maybe I was too stingy with my star rating for The Big Sky. The book is memorable, and the writing style is quite good, with a plot that carries through to the end, keeping the reader engaged. On second thoughts, even though I did have some gender/race issues, I will up my rating to four stars.
June 13, 2016
An absolute classic of the American West. A flawed hero; an epic quest; a doomed love story. Violence, escape, redemption, survival. Without this book there would there could be no Lonesome Dove and no Blood Meridian - it really is that key a book. And looking back, it is the natural successor to the first half of Huckleberry Finn. No one book will ever capture the whole of what it is to be a part of the North American continent but this key novel comes as close as any that you care to name.
August 21, 2021
The Big Sky is an intimate look at the American West just prior to the Great westward migration to the far shore of the Pacific Ocean. Three mountain men ,each with their own reasons for living in the wild country away from civilization, witness the last of the days of trapping beaver, mingling with various Indian natives, the open, virgin rivers,mountains, plains, forests and vast sky. The raw, stark beauty of cunning survival in the unmastered , natural world carves deeply into the soul of each man. A.B.Guthrie,Jr writes in a kind of English that does not rymne yet is total poetry. This is a sweeping,glorious, gritty American saga at it's finest.
March 21, 2018
Amazing real life story about trappers, hunters and those they meet along their quest for fur, meat and a safe place to bed down. Survival in the wilderness of 1840s West. But how the central figure Boone encapsulates the attributes of a wild man put forth on the West and how he manhandles the wilderness to carve the path for civilization to follow rubs the course through the novel. Like the river which meanders and rushes in between he eventually disappears from sight. I thoroughly enjoyed this adventure with its graphic descriptions which may be too gory for some; its majestic scenery with all its harshness and visciousness. This is not a romantic view but a heart pounding slog, sprint and jump through disease ridden wildness with human and animal threats all around.
April 22, 2019
Capolavoro.
Da mesi non ho più la "spinta" per fare recensioni ma questo libro la merita per quanto mi ha dato.
Da mesi non ho più la "spinta" per fare recensioni ma questo libro la merita per quanto mi ha dato.
November 12, 2016
Likely first read this in the early 60s, on my bunk in an USAF barracks. Then, it would have received a 5-star rating. Read most of Guthrie's book thereafter, but after Way West, can't recall connecting with his characters.
(My longest college essay probably springs from Guthrie, a comparative look how Blackfeet and Crow Indians interacted with the trappers.)
Joseph Walker (non-fiction) now most dominates my memories of the Mountain Men.
The Way West
Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker
(My longest college essay probably springs from Guthrie, a comparative look how Blackfeet and Crow Indians interacted with the trappers.)
Joseph Walker (non-fiction) now most dominates my memories of the Mountain Men.
The Way West
Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker
January 21, 2019
This is one of those books that started off with a bang and ended with a whimper. I really was hooked for the first two parts of The Big Sky. The novel opens with Boone Caudill, a teenager, running away from his abusive pap and trying to make it on his own out into the world. He has a series of adventures and episodes, meeting some foes, some allies, as he tries to find his footing away from home and out under the big sky. It at times almost felt like a Western version of Huckleberry Finn, with Boone running away and having to make it away from civilization much in the same way as Huck does in Twain’s novel. These moments, Guthrie really captures the essence and feel of high adventure and of the West.
However, the book does not keep this momentum going.
I think one of the aspects that I didn’t care for was, well, Boone. Starting with Part 3, and then beyond, he becomes less and less the intriguing character. While there is a slight character arc, as Boone does change, he seems to only changes for the worse. I’m not asking for an antihero to be warm and fuzzy, but there was an inconsequential aspect to his nature, something missing, that made me lose some interest in his fate or life journey. I actually felt like the co-stars of the novel, his two partners, Jim and Dick Summers, had more character depth. I suppose that Jim is somewhat of a contrast to Boone, but I guess this helps to balance these two characters out as the plot advances.
Alongside this, and I know that this book is written from the perspective of the Old West, but there were too many problems with the depiction of other characters. The Native Americans are stereotyped to the lowest common denominator for the most part: the men are often wild, untamed, and drunk, and the women in the tribes only serve as vessels for Boone and his buddies’ lust.
Moreover, the adventures of Boone and his buddies seem to get a tad repetitive, especially in the second half, which tends to drag and get muddled and meandering despite the many conflicts that consume Boone.
Still, I did enjoy certain aspects of The Big Sky. The writing and description of nature, the great outdoors and certain points of the plot were picaresque and illustrative. Guthrie often puts the reader right there in time and place, under the Western skies.
That being said, while Guthrie’s book certainly has the feel of a Western, and certainly presents the mythological aspect of “roughing it” and the creation of the mountain man, at the end of the day his main star, Boone Caudill, is somewhat lacking in substantiality, unless being irritable or ornery qualifies for character depth.
Interesting read at points, but I do not think I’ll move on in the series.
However, the book does not keep this momentum going.
I think one of the aspects that I didn’t care for was, well, Boone. Starting with Part 3, and then beyond, he becomes less and less the intriguing character. While there is a slight character arc, as Boone does change, he seems to only changes for the worse. I’m not asking for an antihero to be warm and fuzzy, but there was an inconsequential aspect to his nature, something missing, that made me lose some interest in his fate or life journey. I actually felt like the co-stars of the novel, his two partners, Jim and Dick Summers, had more character depth. I suppose that Jim is somewhat of a contrast to Boone, but I guess this helps to balance these two characters out as the plot advances.
Alongside this, and I know that this book is written from the perspective of the Old West, but there were too many problems with the depiction of other characters. The Native Americans are stereotyped to the lowest common denominator for the most part: the men are often wild, untamed, and drunk, and the women in the tribes only serve as vessels for Boone and his buddies’ lust.
Moreover, the adventures of Boone and his buddies seem to get a tad repetitive, especially in the second half, which tends to drag and get muddled and meandering despite the many conflicts that consume Boone.
Still, I did enjoy certain aspects of The Big Sky. The writing and description of nature, the great outdoors and certain points of the plot were picaresque and illustrative. Guthrie often puts the reader right there in time and place, under the Western skies.
That being said, while Guthrie’s book certainly has the feel of a Western, and certainly presents the mythological aspect of “roughing it” and the creation of the mountain man, at the end of the day his main star, Boone Caudill, is somewhat lacking in substantiality, unless being irritable or ornery qualifies for character depth.
Interesting read at points, but I do not think I’ll move on in the series.
October 16, 2014
This is a "classic" historical fiction of the western expansion. Boone flees his vengeful "Pa" and heads west. Things do not go smoothly.
Along the way he meets Jim and the two of them set out. Along the way we will share with them a realistic look at everything from Keel-boats to foot travel. We'll hunt and we'll fight. We'll meet a range of characters. We'll learn to live as and look at the land as the "Indians" do.
Yes the native Americans are called Indians here. I want to include in this review that the language of the time is used. This means it can be seen by today's readers as very non-PC.
Let me give you a heads up that race is discussed as it would have been then...Indians vs. whites, the word squaw is common...
As is the "N" word. You note that I won't even type it out to to inform you. I know that some will be offended or even hurt by the word being used even in a historical way. I get that. Be aware that it's used here (as it was then) in a more generic way and not as a reference to race.
Still if it will bother you be aware of it.
One of the key parts of the story here is that of the difference between the people who have come to regard the land as the "Indians" do and the ones who can only see the land as something to be divided up and owned.
Boone is not a likeable character but the book is a trip into the past.
Be aware of the language that could be found offensive and then decide. The book is well worth reading.
Along the way he meets Jim and the two of them set out. Along the way we will share with them a realistic look at everything from Keel-boats to foot travel. We'll hunt and we'll fight. We'll meet a range of characters. We'll learn to live as and look at the land as the "Indians" do.
Yes the native Americans are called Indians here. I want to include in this review that the language of the time is used. This means it can be seen by today's readers as very non-PC.
Let me give you a heads up that race is discussed as it would have been then...Indians vs. whites, the word squaw is common...
As is the "N" word. You note that I won't even type it out to to inform you. I know that some will be offended or even hurt by the word being used even in a historical way. I get that. Be aware that it's used here (as it was then) in a more generic way and not as a reference to race.
Still if it will bother you be aware of it.
One of the key parts of the story here is that of the difference between the people who have come to regard the land as the "Indians" do and the ones who can only see the land as something to be divided up and owned.
Boone is not a likeable character but the book is a trip into the past.
Be aware of the language that could be found offensive and then decide. The book is well worth reading.
March 10, 2017
There were parts of this book I really enjoyed. I liked the beginning with Boone dealing with his Pap and running away from home and his trouble with the law. After that, though, it was hit or miss for me. Until the ending, which just sucked.
Young Boone decides he's not gonna let Pap hit him anymore, so he steals his old man's rifle, takes a cooked chicken his mom gave him, and sets out for the American West. The rifle is stolen by a man he shares his camp with and later Boone finds the man and starts a fight with him to get the rifle back, but ends up in jail for attempted robbery. Once out, he gets to the Rocky Mountains and becomes a mountain man. There are some adventures, some good and some bad, and a long search for a young Indian girl he wants to marry and finally does. More bad stuff happens.
Boone isn't a very likable character. For a while Guthrie balances this by switching the point of view to two of his companions, but that really just seems to interrupt the flow of the story, and with Dick Summers there's just way too much introspection, bogging down the plot until you're begging for Boone to get mad and kill somebody before you do it yourself.
Bottom line, it isn't a bad book. But it wasn't good enough to make me want to read the two sequels, either.
Young Boone decides he's not gonna let Pap hit him anymore, so he steals his old man's rifle, takes a cooked chicken his mom gave him, and sets out for the American West. The rifle is stolen by a man he shares his camp with and later Boone finds the man and starts a fight with him to get the rifle back, but ends up in jail for attempted robbery. Once out, he gets to the Rocky Mountains and becomes a mountain man. There are some adventures, some good and some bad, and a long search for a young Indian girl he wants to marry and finally does. More bad stuff happens.
Boone isn't a very likable character. For a while Guthrie balances this by switching the point of view to two of his companions, but that really just seems to interrupt the flow of the story, and with Dick Summers there's just way too much introspection, bogging down the plot until you're begging for Boone to get mad and kill somebody before you do it yourself.
Bottom line, it isn't a bad book. But it wasn't good enough to make me want to read the two sequels, either.
June 24, 2023
Novela vasta y enorme, del Oeste del Norte, ese con indios corta cabelleras, búfalos, nieve, whisky y viruela. El escenario es imponente, un deleite seguir el viaje rio arriba por el Missouri. La historia del protagonista transita por los límites del drama y la aventura, con suficientes dosis de acción y sangre para no aburrirse, además de múltiples reflexiones confrontando la llegada del hombre blanco versus la vida del indio o el "mountain man", ambas especies libres en vías de extinción.
Se aprende bastante de geografía e historia, sorprende la cantidad de tribus que albergaba este río y toda esa zona de Norteamérica ya desaparecida. Siempre es un placer leer estas novelas que dejan algo más que una buena historia.
Dan ganas de ir a la montaña.
Se aprende bastante de geografía e historia, sorprende la cantidad de tribus que albergaba este río y toda esa zona de Norteamérica ya desaparecida. Siempre es un placer leer estas novelas que dejan algo más que una buena historia.
Dan ganas de ir a la montaña.
September 24, 2013
Before Lonesome Dove and All the Pretty Horses, A. B. Guthrie's The Big Sky was the go-to novel of the American West. Those who want a gritty and realistic portrayal of the characters and environment that made up the frontier at that time need look no further. Sink your teeth into The Big Sky and at the end when you hunger for more, pick up book two, The Way West, which won Guthrie the Pulitzer Prize.
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