Imatge de l'autor

A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (1901–1991)

Autor/a de The Big Sky

30+ obres 2,782 Membres 71 Ressenyes 4 preferits

Sobre l'autor

A. B. Guthrie, Jr., is one of America's most celebrated writers of western literature. He received the 1950 Pulitzer Prize in fiction for "The Way West". Guthrie died in 1991. (Bowker Author Biography)

Sèrie

Obres de A. B. Guthrie, Jr.

The Big Sky (1947) 1,127 exemplars
The Way West (1949) 717 exemplars
Shane [1953 film] (1953) — Screenwriter — 184 exemplars
Fair Land, Fair Land (1982) 167 exemplars
These Thousand Hills (1956) 151 exemplars
Arfive (1970) 59 exemplars
The Last Valley (1975) 55 exemplars
Wild Pitch (1829) 35 exemplars
Playing Catch-Up (1985) 34 exemplars
The Big It and Other Stories (1961) 34 exemplars
Murder in the Cotswolds (1989) 32 exemplars
The Genuine Article (1977) 31 exemplars
Murders at Moon Dance (1943) 23 exemplars
No Second Wind (1980) 19 exemplars
The Big Sky [1952 film] — Autor — 13 exemplars
Private Murder (1989) 10 exemplars
The Kentuckian [1955 film] (2001) — Screenwriter — 8 exemplars
Images from the Great West (1990) 6 exemplars
Once upon a pond (1973) 6 exemplars
Los Premios Pulitzer de Novela Vol.VIII (1971) — Col·laborador — 4 exemplars
The Old Post Road (1962) 1 exemplars

Obres associades

El Darrer dels mohicans (1826) — Introducció, algunes edicions13,099 exemplars
The Oregon Trail (1849) — Pròleg, algunes edicions2,058 exemplars
The Arbor House Treasury of Great Western Stories (1982) — Col·laborador — 101 exemplars
Doomed Road of Empire : The Spanish Trail of Conquest (1963) — Editor — 39 exemplars
American odyssey; the journey of Lewis and Clark (1969) — Introducció — 30 exemplars
Great Tales of the West (1982) — Col·laborador — 30 exemplars
Pulitzer Prize Reader (1961) — Col·laborador — 27 exemplars
Stories to Remember: Literary Heritage Series (1967) — Col·laborador — 21 exemplars
Currents in Fiction (1974) — Col·laborador — 20 exemplars

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This is a wonderful book full of winds, savagery, unsullied nature, friendship, hard men, and loss. When I was young there were men who sat beneath a tree at the bottom of our garden, watching the world go by. WW2 had left them to fend for themselves. Some of them were hard men: men who said little, who had something about the set of jaw and lips that signaled pain, loss, and the toll of life. Set in the mid-1800s, Guthrie's hard men are mountain men; who are quiet, keenly observant, more at ease in open space than indoors, men who have known hardship, and men who remain calm in crisis.

The narrative arc follows Boone who is bold, too quick to anger, and instinctive; not just in his search for a better life, but in his single-minded quest for the girl/woman, Teal Eye. But living instinctively has its difficulties. Guthrie writes with a sparse precision and his use of backwoods dialogue is masterful, not only in its economy of expression but in its richness:
A dog that was all hair and bark ran from behind the house and yipped at Blue. Blue winked one eye and let a low growl out of his Phlegmy throat, and the small dog backed up, still yipping. Then he lifted his leg against a bush and scratched the ground afterwards and trotted away with his head held high as if he had made a good out of it. p 370.
The Big Sky has rhythms where we rest between passages of extreme tension, such as the theft of a horse at night, with closely observed evocations of landscape and the natural world inhabiting it. If the allegorical trajectory of the novel is the steady progression of Boone becoming part of that world as theystruggle up-stream. it is also the steady destruction of it and the over-riding sense of inevitable loss as Boone staggers towards internal and external confrontation at the very end. Summers shows us another side as he faulters in old-age. In many respects this is such a well observed book that I can also read it as the struggle today between the vanishing values of the analogue world as they are subsumed by the digital.
Summers couldn't see anything among the willows, not so much as a branch bent out of shape or the grass trampled where a man might have gone through, but he knew the Sioux were there. He brought his head back, still slowly, and turned about, to see an Indian screened in the brush only an arm's length away. Two black stripes ran down the Indian's cheeks. They pulled downward as the Indian caught his movement. There was one still instant, - a flash of seeing, in which nothing moved or sounded - and then the Indian jerked up his battle axe. (p. 119)
… (més)
 
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simonpockley | Hi ha 24 ressenyes més | Feb 25, 2024 |
Fair Land, Fair Land by A. B. Guthrie is the third book in the series that he wrote about the American West. He started with The Big Sky, a story about mountain men, then moved on to The Way West detailing how pioneers followed the Oregon Trail settling and developing the region. This third book he called a finishing touch as he wanted closure for the characters of the first two books.

In Fair Land, Fair Land we once again meet Dick Summers, originally a mountain man who became a guide on the Oregon Trail. Now as he looks around, he can see and feel the end of his free way of life. More and more white people are settling, building farms and towns and changing the land. He and his friend Higgins decide to strike out and live a free life while they can. Along the way he meets and takes as his companion, Teal Eye, a young Blackfoot woman who he knew in the past. The book is leading us to his confrontation with Boone Caudill, a previous partner who owes Dick Summer an explanation for his behaviour that ended with the death of a good friend to both men.

This was my first read of Fair Land, Fair Land although I have long been a fan of A. B. Guthrie and have read most of his other books more than once. The author was well known in Montana as a conservationist and was strongly in favor of wolves being returned to Yellowstone Park. In this book he shows some of this by having Dick Summers becoming aware and pondering upon the end of the buffalo, the treatment of the Indians, and the eventual spoiling of the land by over development. This was a historically accurate portrayal but is also a moving and engrossing story.
… (més)
½
 
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DeltaQueen50 | Hi ha 6 ressenyes més | Sep 18, 2023 |
I read the first book in this series, The Big Sky, many years ago in an old Time-Life series of out of print books. It was very good (also a movie with Kirk Douglas, I think), and I wanted to read this sort-of sequel, especially since it is on many lists of the best westerns. However, it is not available as an e-book, so I did not read it out of principle. I recently realized that I wasn't sure what the principle was, so I bought a used paperback copy. It's quite good. I recommend that you read it with a copy of the Oregon Trail Map that the national park service has. You can download it as a .pdf file. Now I have a paperback copy that nobody wants, so if you are interested, I will give it to you.… (més)
 
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markm2315 | Hi ha 20 ressenyes més | Jul 1, 2023 |
 
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dgmathis | Hi ha 20 ressenyes més | Mar 16, 2023 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
30
També de
22
Membres
2,782
Popularitat
#9,235
Valoració
½ 3.6
Ressenyes
71
ISBN
152
Llengües
8
Preferit
4

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