Melki's Reviews > The Big Sky

"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.