Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner

Go Down, Moses Reviews

• 
  Ahmad Sharabiani

  (Book 578 from 1001 books) - Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner
  
  Go Down, Moses is a collection of seven related pieces of short fiction by American author William Faulkner, sometimes considered a novel.
  
  Contains:
  Was = بود,
  The Fire and the Hearth = آتش و اجاق,
  Pantaloon in Black = دلقک داغدار,
  The Old People = پیران قوم,
  The Bear = خرس,
  Delta Autumn = پاییز دلتا,
  and Go Down, Moses = برخیز ای موسی.
  
  برخیز ای موسی - ویلیام فاکنر (نیلوفر) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز بیست و پنجم ماه دسامبر سال2009میلادی
  
  عنوان: برخیز ای موسی؛ نویسنده: ویلیام فاکنر؛ مترجم: صالح حسینی؛ تهران، نیلوفر، سال1374؛ در383ص؛ شابک9644480104؛ چاپ دوم سال1382؛ چاپ سوم سال1386؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
  
  عنوان کتاب «برخیز ای موسی»، برگرفته از سرودهای مذهبی سیاه‌پوستان به همین نام است؛ درون‌مایه ی سرود، نمایانگر آرزوهای سیاه‌پوستان برای حضور منجی است، که به قدرت بازوی او، ظلم و ستم‌ها بر سیاه‌پوستان، از میان برداشته خواهد شد
  
  کتاب هفت داستان دارد: «بود»، «آتش و اجاق»، «دلقک داغدار»، «پیران قوم»، «خرس»، «پاییز دلتا» و «برخیز ای موسی»؛
  
  وجود پیوستگی درنمایه ای و شخصیتی، بین داستان‌های کتاب، آن را از حالت سری داستان‌های کوتاه درآورده، و چهره ای رمان گونه به آن بخشیده‌ است؛ شخصیتِ محوری، در همگی داستان‌ها «اسحاق مکازلین» است؛ «فاکنر»، از زبان اوست که به بیان آنچه می‌خواهند در باب سیاهپوستان، و نژاد پرستی بگویند، مینشینند و مینگارند؛ «اسحاق مکازلین» نقل به مضمون از کتاب، (پدر هیچکس، و عموی همگان نامیده می‌شود)؛ «عمو اسو»، چه آن هنگام، که کودکی ده ساله‌ بوده، یا آنگاه که پیرمردی هشتاد ساله است، در باب جهان پیرامون خویش، می‌اندیشد، و تلاش دارد، تصمیماتش را برای پیشبرد زندگی، براساس آنچه خود درست می‌پندارد، برگزیند، نه براساس آنچه تاکنون بوده است، و یا آنچه از این پس، باید باشد؛ حق مالکیت زمین، حق برده‌ داری، و حقوقی از اینگونه، که در نظر سرمایه‌ داران آنروز «آمریکا»، عادی تلقی می‌شده، در ذهن «اسحاق»، جنبه ی پرسشی، پیدا می‌کند، و باعث می‌شود، که «اسحاق»، ارث جد بزرگوارش «کاروترز مکازلین» را، حق خویش نداند؛
  
  تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 24/01/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 25/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
• 
  Lisa

  If you want to sum up this magnificent novel in one sentence, it could be: "The world is not black and white, no matter how much we try to make it so for simplicity's sake!"
  
  Or maybe one could say that simplicity is not that simple. And the good old times are not that good.
  
  And most definitely, the rural illiterate life of Faulkner's stories is complex and painful and complicated and difficult in all the human ways we tend to think of as "modern". Modernity may just be what we currently remember ourselves of the eternally repeating human messes. If you read about earlier times, you realise they were just as confused and worried and good and bad and in between as we are.
  
  They fought nature and each other and themselves.
  
  They tried their best and did their worst.
  
  And every once in a while, there is a writer who finds the perfect way to express the inexpressible strangeness of the human condition. And for that magic of transmission it is worth being a literate human being after all.
  
  Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful novel in short stories!
• 
  Gail

  When I'm away from Faulkner's works, I always think of them as "hard", "confusing", "over-the-top". You know, that sort of thing that only intellectuals read and pretend to understand and enjoy. But when I start to read them...
  
  The first chapter is mysterious and deliberately obtuse. The reader is picked up in the middle of some strange goings-on and must try to decipher the characters and the allusive plotline.
  
  But keep reading. No matter how much you feel like you're drowning, or lost in some maze, or hurtling down the hill aquiring more and more mass like that mythical snowball from your youth, just keep on reading. The prose, which seems at first glance to be so complex and without identifiable form as to be impenentrable, will soon charm you, draw you into its web, and you'll forget all about grammar constructs as you tumble over ideas, people, and events.
  
  This is a sad, sad story of men's pride, women's degradation, the corrupting abuse of power and the corrupting influence of having no power when one man can be considered to "own" another. A moving exposition of the American South. Worth reading either to better understand both black and white culture, or to simply be carried off into another world by some astounding prose.
• 
  Sara

  In its entirety, this novel is about the legacy, the genealogy, the entangled lives of the descendants left by Old Carothers McCaslin, their fates and the prices they pay for the sins of the father.
  
  Beginning the history before the outbreak of the Civil War and taking it through several generations to about the 1940’s, Faulkner explores the lingering curse that slavery bequeaths to families, the mingling of the two races, the denial of bloodline and the burden of bloodline, and the connections and perversions of man and the natural world he inhabits.
  
  It contains Faulkner’s famous short-story, The Bear, which I have reviewed separately, but The Bear is only a piece of the story that unfolds in its entirety here. While most of the other sections deal primarily with race issues and progeny, The Bear also tackles man’s relationship to nature and the idea that no one can ever own the land…the assurance that it is only on loan to all of us and no amount of money can purchase any real right to call it our own.
  
  No one has ever bested Faulkner at presenting the complexities and ironies of the Southern black/white relationship. These are lives closely interwoven by both proximity, shared experience, and blood. Even the participants in the system, like Isaac and Sam Fathers, are confused by the realities vs. the appearances. Sam is one of Faulkner’s finest creations, because he represents everything that is honorable and fine in a man, and that quality is recognized by everyone around him, despite his origins, which would be used by society to classify him as a lesser man.
  
  While this book has been viewed as a short-story collection by many, it seemed to me (as indeed it did to Faulkner himself) to be a complete novel, following a lineage that ties the stories one to another to tell a complete tale that simply spans decades.
  
  I read this book many years ago and I am grateful to The Southern Literary Trail for encouraging me to make it a long overdue re-read.
• 
  ArturoBelano

  Bu kitabı okumak isteyen şanslı okurun yapması gereken ilk şey, kitabın sonunda yer alan soy kütüğü tablosunu gözünden ayırmamaktır. Sürekli ‘kim kimdi’ diye sayfa çevirmek yerine tabloyu siz de çizin, çok ihtiyacınız olacak.
  
  Faukner’ın okuduğum en zor, en katmanlı, en yoğun kitabı KHM oldu. Faulkner külliyatı sona erdiğinde ortaya çıkacak ilk 3 tablosunu merak ediyorum, 2019 sonunda güncellenecek listede şimdilik durum şu; Ağustos Işığı, KHM, Döşeğimde Ölürken.
  
  En başta öyküler olarak basılan ancak yazarın ısrarı üzerine diğer baskılarda öykü ibaresi kaldırılmış bu kitapta beni en başta çarpan şey kurgunun mükemmelliği oldu. O, anlayana kadar göbeğimizi çatlatan doyumsuz cümleleri bir yana ileride Faulkner dediğimde bahsedeceğim ilk şey bu kurgu harikası olacak. Neredeyse yüz yıllık bir sürece yayılan anlatıyı küçük ve belirsiz hamlelerle, okurken ‘nereye varacak bu muhabbet’ diye söylenirken öyle bir yerde temel anlatıya katıyor ve bağlıyor ki alkışlamamak ve zekası önünde huşuyla eğilmemek mümkün değil. Etkilendiği yazar ve kitapları bilmekle beraber, Faulkner bende öncesiz ve sonrasız bir yerde duruyor. Ne etkilendikleri ne etkiledikleri onunla aşık atacak düzeyde değil. El artırıyorum, onun cümleleriyle yazacak hatta taklit edecek başka bir kalem bilmiyorum.
  
  Şunu söylemeden geçmeyeyim; okuru çok yoruyor, çok şey talep ediyor bazı yerlerde trenden fırlatıp atasım ve bu faslı kapatasım geldi ama neyse ki çalışkan öğrenciyim, üstüme vazife aldığım işi bitirmeden duramıyorum.
  
  KHM, kölelik döneminden kalma siyahların ayin şarkısı, birlikte edilen bir dua. Demek ki kurtarılması gereken bir halk, kurtulunması gereken bir Firavun ve bir Kenan ülkesi özlemi var. Ama kim bu Musa ve nasıl kurtaracak halkını.
  
  KHM, iki beyaz, bir siyah (ve araya kanı karışmış Kızılderili) ailenin 100 yıla yaklaşan iç içe geçmiş hikayesini anlatıyor. Yine Güney’de, Yoknapatawpha civarlarındayız. Beyaz yerleşimciler gelmeden önce Kızılderililerin sahibi olduğu bir yer burası ama beyaz adama satıyorlar. Onlarda siyah köleleriyle beraber toprağı işliyorlar. Kitap merkezine bu toprağın sahibi Mccaslin ailesinin son erkek ferdi, İke Amca’yı alıyor. Mirastan elini etiğini çekmiş, sahipliği ve mülkiyeti reddeden, mağrur değil mazlum bir Musa. Yaraya derman olmuyor, yaranın varlığını imliyor sadece. Bu mirası sadece toprak mülkiyeti üzerinde düşünmeyelim, bununla beraber ‘boyun bağı’ ve Avrupalı geçmiş de( teyzenin İngiliz hayranlığı) reddediliyor. Güney her ne kadar kendini Avrupa geleneğine bağlasa da köle ve sahip ilişkisi bir lanet gibi yapışıyor üzerlerine.
  
  Tanrının gazabıyla ilgili dini metinlerde ensest vurgusunu görürüz. Eski Ahit 1- 19’da Sodom ve Gomora’nın yıkılışı bölümünde de bu karşımıza çıkar. KHM’de bu ilk lanet ile başlar ve bu lanetle biter, hem kitap hem de soy. Güney’in soylu aileleri koruyucu, kurtarıcı ve boyun bağlı gezse de lanet her yere bulaşmıştır. Mirasın reddi burada başlar. Diğer bir günahsa sahip olmadır, sahibi olmayana. Burada Faulkner’ın Tapınak’da da gördüğümüz doğa- teknoloji antagonizmasını görürüz. İke amca, doğanın bir sahibi olduğuna inanmaz. Toprak bizim değildir ki miras yoluyla aktaralım. Aynı zamanda toprağın üzerinde işleyen teknolojik aletler doğayı ve doğamızı bozmaktadır. Ayı hikayesindeki Koca Ben’e atfedilen ölümsüzlük misyonunu buradan okumak lazım ki zaten tüm hikayeleri kesen olarak Ayı hikayesine dikkat etmek gerekiyor. Ama, Ayı pis bir şekilde vurulacak, ölümsüz doğa yenilecek ve vahşi doğa teknolojik gelişme karşısında sürekli geri çekilecektir. Faulkner’ı Mişima ve Dostoyevski’yle akraba kıldığım husus tam da burası. Kaybedilmiş bir davadan geriye kalanı anlatıyorlar sanki, geçmiş geçip gitmiş ve ama ‘kazanan’ da bir değer yok, başladıkları savaş ile kazandıkları arasında bir uçurum bir lanet var. Bir diğer akrabalıksa bu kadar yerel olup (nevski caddesi, Tokyo- Kyoto hattı ve o az gelişmiş güney) bu kadar evrensel olabilmeleri.
  
  Bakmayın konuştuğuma, KHM anlatılacak bir kitap değil, söyleyeceğim her şey eksik kalır, okunacak bir kitap mı onu da bilmiyorum. Netflix’de bu kitaptan eğlenceli bin tane içerik bulabilirsiniz. Ama Tanrının destekleyeceği tek savaşın dişi geyikler ve yavrularını korumak için olduğuna kani olmak ve bunun siyah- beyaz, köle-sahip, doğa- teknoloji, güney- kuzey, mülk- mülksüzleşme bağlamında oturduğu yeri; 20. Yüzyılın en büyük Amerikalı yazarının kaleminden o harika üslupla okumak istiyorsanız sakın kaçırmayın.
  
  Necla Aytür'e ne demeli bilmiyorum, yine mükemmel bir iş çıkarmış. Ancak yine de her Faulkner kitabında " ah bir de ana dilinden okusaydım" demekten kendimi alamıyorum.
  
  Son olarak; Faulkner’a buradan sakın başlamayın..
• 
  Lyn

  William Faulkner’s 1942 novel, set in his apocryphal Yoknapatawpha County, is a collection of seven interrelated stories, focused chiefly upon the McCaslin family, and more specifically about Ike McCaslin.
  
  Race and racism has long been one of the most ubiquitous themes in his canon, probably due to his Mississippi ancestry and home, he lived in and around issues regarding the traditions of slavery, reconstruction and systematic racism every day of his life in the old south. While a causal reader may likely see Faulkner himself as racist and white supremacist (certainly by today’s standards) he was at the time a sensitive observer of much of what was wrong with his society and his writing shined a light on the hypocrisy and evil of that culture and frequently his empathetic pen revealed the heroism and dignity of black folks, living and even thriving in such an ethos in spite of the challenges and obstacles faced.
  
  The McCaslin family itself is one of the most complicated and philosophically fecund sources for Faulkner’s dissertations on race. One of the old land-owning families of Yoknapatawpha County, the family traces its lineage back to old Caruthers McCaslin, who died before the Civil War but about whom legend still abounds. Most interestingly, especially in Faulkner’s able prose, is that old McCaslin had children with a black woman and those children have a special place in this canon, being a part of a heraldic clan but also black and at the bottom of the socio-economic system. Two of these offspring, Lucas Beauchamp and Ned McCaslin, feature prominently in Faulkner’s fiction. We see Lucas again (he was a central protagonist in Intruder in the Dust) in the excellent short work The Fire and The Hearth.
  
  The Bear
  
  At the heart of this novel, composed as it is of seven short stories, is perhaps Faulkner’s greatest novella. Early versions of the story were printed in Harper’s Magazine of December 1935 and as “The Bear” in The Saturday Evening Post in 1942 before it was published that same year as one of the seven chapters in the novel Go Down, Moses.
  
  Like his contemporary Ernest Hemingway, and literary rival, Faulkner told some exceptional hunting stories and this falls into that category but is so much more. Set in the late 1800s, a very young Ike spends consecutive summers and falls at the hunting camps of Civil War veterans Colonel Sartoris, General Compson and Major de Spain, as well as other recurring characters. We follow Ike as he is trained and guided by Sam Fathers, a mixed blood who identifies closely with the local Native American tribes, most likely Choctaw. As Ike matures, he becomes one of the most naturally gifted woodsman in the group and his hunting abilty grows in connection with the annual tracking of a local legendary rogue bear, Ole Ben. While the hunt for the bear progresses over serval years, the quest itself becomes an allegory for the loss of the natural state of the world and of humanity’s loss of innocence. Fathers as a black / Choctaw native guide for Ike becomes a vehicle whereby Faulkner can explore themes of nature, tradition and isolation from civilization.
  
  The chapters range from Ike’s time as a teenager, with descriptions of the white and black families within the McCaslin clan, to when he is very old, likely in the 1940s, when much of the natural environment has been depleted by deforestation and Ike becomes an atavistic link to the older time.
  
  Perhaps not one of his best, but a fine visit with Faulkner and a must read for one of his fans or a scholar of the Southern Gothic genre.
  
  
• 
  Aubrey

  3.5/5
  
  Faulkner's one of those writers who's best read incomprehensibly. What went into my love for
  The Sound and the Fury and
  Light in August was a devotional and patient waiting for moments of clarity, one that relished the rolling prose and chiaroscuro enough in the meantime for a warm reception of an end. In contrast, this work largely inherited the last section of the first, a very concise and straightforward view of the previous three sections' miasma that ultimately suffered for its lending well to a reader's making of meaning. There's a moment in the middlish-end of GDM that carries on in the Faulknerian way, but by then the patience no longer waits for a message other than what was confirmed so understandably in the first 250 pages. A disappointment, but not unforeseen.
  
  Within my class on the English periods of Neoclassicism and Romanticism there was a supreme focus on the writer as prophet. It was easier to do that sort of thing when the world that was not invalidated through slavery and genocide was a much smaller context of place, but even today you can imprint a cohesiveness of the biblical breed on a narrative scale if you play your cards right à la
  Blood Meridian and such. Even personal mediation succeeds in the vein of
  A Breath of Life, but that is much more difficult when the scope is less grand and the thematic underbelly is far more self-reflexive. Whichever the case, both are prone to error of exotification and other symptoms of those prone to grandiose definitions of the Other, after a while rendering each and every work a balancing act of the right audience at the right time. This is of course is the usual thing with literary works, but the stakes are higher when heaven is a prophet and hell is a profiteer.
  
  An emphasis on hunting coupled with a fairy tale story of white supremacy made for an uncomfortable taste in the wake of Ferguson and government-hired guns killing a black person every 28 hours, an off the top of the head statistic that doesn't have ready recourse to the numbers of murdered brown and indigenous people but knows the less popularized are comparable. Take your guns and idealized female-pain and leave me the woods. I'll still be reading
  Absalom, Absalom!, but there's a future grappling its way out of a mythologized past and into a political hope to be reckoned with. The less comprehension of bloodbreeding tropes, the better.
• 
  Cosimo

  Imparare dal sangue
  
  «Estate e autunno e la neve e la pioggia e la primavera succulenta nell'ordinata immortale sequenza, le fasi eterne e immemori della madre che se altri mai l'aveva fatto l'uomo che press'a poco era, madre e padre insieme del vecchio nato da una schiava negra e da un capo chickasaw che era stato suo padre in spirito, se altri mai, e lui l'aveva venerato e ascoltato e amato e perduto e pianto; e un giorno si sarebbe sposato e anche loro avrebbero avuto per il loro breve frattempo quella breve insostanziale gloria che in sé per sua natura non dura e di qui ecco la gloria; e avrebbero, potevano, portarne la memoria nel tempo quando la carne non parla più alla carne perché la memoria almeno dura, ma la foresta sarebbe stata per lui l'amante e la sposa”.
  
  L'anima nera di Faulkner risuona tra le eterne foreste del Delta del Mississippi e canta la melodia della passione, la dignità della debolezza e l'etica del sopravvivere, concetti cardine che danno forma a quell'idea di endurance in grazia alla quale il nuovo popolo di Mosé si è affrancato dalla schiavitù e ha espiato le proprie vergogne. Isaac Ike McCaslin è un eroe della conoscenza, in questo romanzo familiare epico, ramificato in frammenti biblici come un fiume sacro e profondo, nella narrazione di una dinastia segnata dalla miscegenation e dalla maledizione del sangue: è tra le pieghe della sopportazione e nelle diverse forme della tolleranza che prende corpo la voce del Deep South, la tradizione dell'oralità che incatena storie ed episodi uno dentro l'altra, in un groviglio anticonvenzionale dove la trama si disegna a rovescio. Se un sentimento appare sovrano in questo testo dallo stile primordiale e mitopoietico è quello del lutto, del pianto per un passato che imprigiona nell'assenza; il passato della guerra e della cattività nelle piantagioni e quello della natura che resiste e poi arretra, si ritira, scompare e infine muore. Così, come il fratello nero, Ike scopre la violenza della nascita decifrando in un libro mastro la sua eredità; la ripudia, ne rinnega il male, rinunciando alla propria appartenenza, in modo ascetico e quasi eretico, scegliendo un'esistenza senza il possesso del mondo. Dopo la genesi attraverso la caccia, protegge un cuore irreprensibile e ascolta il proprio bisogno vergine di fuga, scegliendo di svanire nell'ambivalenza e nella fragilità, nella religiosità spirituale di una natura eterna e selvaggia, uomo senza razza che si mescola al divino in una furente e preveggente immortalità.
• 
  Sue

  This Has been a wonderful reading experience. It feels like I've been to a symphony, overwhelmed by the many component parts but the totality is just so great and, to my mind, so well done. This novel, which is a collection of tales out of the Mississippi delta, encompasses a century of life, a war that splintered the country, the racial lines that divide then cross and mingle, the ever-changing land itself, and annual male rites of passage in the hunt.
  
  Once again I've chosen to allow Faulkner's prose to wash over me. The family lineage, the complicated begats, will be truly reconciled hopefully in my second reading. Enough comes through to allow me to have moments of "What" and "Oh!" as I read and I know that I'm absorbing much of this complex extended inter-racial family without stopping to study as I read.
  
  There are many exceptional sections. Of course I can't choose them all.
  
  
  "At first there was nothing. There was the faint, cold,
  steady rain, the gray and constant light of the late
  November dawn, with the voices of the hounds converging
  somewhere in it and toward them. Then Sam Fathers, standing
  just behind the boy as he had been standing when the boy
  shot his first running rabbit with his first gun and almost
  with the first load it ever carried, touched his shoulder
  and he began to shake, not with any cold. Then the buck
  was there. He did not come into sight, he was just there,
  looking not like a ghost but as if all of light were
  condensed in him and he were the source of it, not only
  moving in it but disseminating it, already running, seen
  first as you always see the deer, in that split second after
  he has already seen you, already slanting away in that first
  soaring bound...." (p 155)
  
  
  And one more from late in "The Bear",
  
  
  "...he had not stopped, he had only paused, quitting the
  knoll which was no abode of the dead because there was no
  death, not Lion and not Sam: not held fast in earth but
  free in earth and not in earth but of earth, myriad yet
  undiffused of every myriad part, leaf and twig and particle,
  air and sun and rain and dew and night, acorn oak and leaf
  and acorn again, dark and dawn and dark and dawn again in
  their immutable progression and, being myriad, one...."
  (p 312)
  
  
  This unity of life in death also seems to apply in many ways to the living of Faulkner's Mississippi, whether they understand or accept it or not.
  
  5*
  Highly recommended to those who don't mind some of those Run on Faulknerian sentences!
  
  
  
• 
  Connie G

  "Go Down, Moses" is a novel composed of seven interconnected short stories. The longest story, "Bear," consists of five chapters and could be considered a novel itself. It's a complex book about the history of the McCaslins in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. It goes back and forth in time - before and after the Civil War. The book deals with slavery and relationships between black and white characters, all the more complicated because there are white and black branches of the McCaslin family. The relationship with the natural world, the ownership of land and people, and the coming of age of Isaac McCaslin are important themes of the book. It's a challenging read because there are so many characters, and they are not introduced in a linear sense of time. However, it's an impressive book once you understand all the relationships.
  
  "War" - a slave escapes to a neighboring plantation to visit his enslaved sweetheart. Card games are played between the plantation owners to determine the fate of the two lovers.
  
  "The Fire and the Hearth" - a story involving an illegal whisky still, and a search for lost treasure.
  
  "Pantaloon in Black" - the grief of a young black man following the death of his wife.
  
  "The Old People" - Sam Fathers is a part-Indian, part-black man who serves as a mentor to Isaac, teaching him how to hunt and appreciate the natural world. Sam believes that the land cannot be owned by individuals.
  
  "The Bear" - Old Ben was "the big old bear with one trap-ruined foot that in an area almost a hundred miles square had earned for himself a name, a definite designation like a living man." He's a mythical bear representing the strength of nature, while the men are trying to dominate nature by killing him. Isaac becomes an expert tracker as he tracks the old bear who has eluded the hunters during many of their annual hunting expeditions. A wild dog, Lion, might be a match for Old Ben. This is a continuation of the rite of passage for Isaac, as well as being a wilderness story. Isaac also learns about his family history, including his grandfather having several children with his slaves. Isaac makes a decision about his family inheritance.
  
  "Delta Autumn" - Isaac continues to go on the annual hunting trip, although he is now an old man. He finds out about a hidden relationship involving one of the men in his family when a woman comes into the hunting camp.
  
  "Go Down, Moses" - Samuel Beauchamp, the grandson of the couple in "The Fire and the Hearth," is in serious trouble with the law. The young man was the child of the black and white branches of the family, but not acknowledged by his father.
• 
  Arman

  مجموعه ای از 7 داستان به هم پیوسته از ویلیام فاکنر؛
  داستان هایی که همه شان به نوعی در "مزرعه ی کاروترز" می گذرند، شخصیت های تقریبا ثابتی اغلب بین آن ها رفت و آمد می کنند و درون مایه ی همگی شان مشترک است.
  
  همه داستان ها(بجز یکی) درباره فرزندان و نوادگان کاروترز، ملاک بزرگی اهل جفرسن می باشد. در هر کدام از داستان ها، داستانِ بخشی از این نوادگان (که بخشی شان سیاهپوست بوده و حاصل رابطه ی وی با برده هایش، و بخشی دیگر سفیدپوست) روایت می شود و در حین روایت، مسائل مشترک در همه ی دیگر آثار فاکنر مطرح می شوند:
  نژاد و نژادپرستی، برده داری، خانواده و زوال آن، زنانگی و مردانگی، و مضامین مذهبی ای چون گناه و تقاص.
  
  اما چرا برخیز ای موسی را باید خواند؟
  به نظرم برای شروع فاکنرخوانی (حداقل به زبان فارسی)، بهترین کتاب همین "برخیز ای موسی" ست.
  چون در آن هم با مضامین مورد علاقه ی فاکنر آشنا می شویم، و هم اینکه برخلاف بیش ترِ آثار آقای نویسنده، در اینجا با پیچش های روایی محیرالعقول و دشواری روبرو نیستیم و تقریبا همه داستان ها بصورتی سرراست روایت می شوند.
  
  همچنین حتی داستان هایی از فاکنر که به ظاهر بسیار رئال می باشند، باز هم اشارات گسترده ای به کتاب مقدس دارند و می توان از همه شان خوانش هایی استعاری داشت (مثلا می توان کاروترز را نمادی از خودِ امریکا گرفت، و داستانِ فرزتدان سیاه و سفیدش را از این منظر دنبال کرد) و همین بر لذتِ خوانش داستان های وی می افزاید.
  
  یک توصیه:
  برای خوانشی راحت تر و دلپذیر باید بگویم که بی خیالِ درخت خانوادگیِ شخصیت های داستان ها(که در انتهای کتاب آمده) شوید.
  اکثر داستان ها و روابط شخصیت ها را می توان بدون توجه به آن (یا با نیم نگاهی به آن) فهمید.
  تنها در نیمه دوم داستان "خرس" است که با توجه به اینکه روابط خانوادگی در لفافه و بصورت مبهم و گذرا اشاره می شوند(و البته ترجمه ای که دشواری فهم متن را دو چندان کرده؛ بعضی جاها فکر کردم که آقای مترجم اصلا نخواسته خواننده چیزی متوجه شود)، تسلط نسبی بر درخت خانوادگی و نسبت های سببی و نسبی بین آن ها برای خواننده مبرم است و نیازِ به دقت بیش تری دارید.
  
  پ نوشت: به نظرم اگر ویلیام فاکنر را از ادبیات امریکا کنار بگذاریم، دیگر چیزی از آن باقی نمی ماند؛ مضامین و دغدغه هایی اصیل، روایت هایی بدیع و تسلط بر تکنیک های نگارشی و روایی.
• 
  Rafo Mesxidze

  ალბათ, ადამიანთა გადარჩენის ისტორიები ყველა ასეთია- არასდროს იცი ნამდვილად გადარჩენისაა თუ დაღუპვის.
  "ძია აიკი, სამოცდაათს გადაცილებული და ოთხმოცს იმაზე მეტად მიტანებული, ვიდრე თვითონ ირწმუნებოდა, ქვრივი, ბიძა ნახევარი ოლქისა, მამა კი- არავისი"- ასე იწყება წიგნი. მანამდე კი, ჩვენი აიზეკ მაკქასლინი ნადირობასაც ისწავლის და ძაღლის მოშინაურებასაც და იმდენს მოახერხებს, რომ ყოველგვარ საკუთრებაზე უარს იტყვის. აქ და ახლა სხვა ვერაფერს დავწერ ამ წიგნზე.
  
  "გარდავედ,მოსეზე" გენიალური არაფერი წამიკითხავს, მიახლოებული ან მსგავსი კი, და ისინიც ფოლკნერის დაწერილია ყველა.
  იმედია, ოდესმე მოვა დრო და შევძლებ ამ წიგნზე სათანადო ესეს დაწერას.
  
  და ეტყოდა უფალი მოსეს:
  წადი(გარდავედ) ხალხში და განწმინდე ისიც დღეს და ხვალ, სამოსელი გაირეცხონ. განემზადონ ზეგისთვის, რადგან ზეგ ჩამოვა უფალი ხალხის თვალწინ სინას მთაზეო
  
  
• 
  Bill

  In this novel in the form of seven short stories, set in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi from just before the Civil War to 1940, Faulkner recounts the tragedy of the McCaslin family, and its Edmonds and mixed-race Beauchamp branches, all descended from patriarch and wealthy plantation owner Carothers McCaslin.
  
  The main character is Ike McCaslin, grandson of Carothers, and it's his grappling with the inheritance of the South's sins of racism and slavery, generally, and Carothers's sins of rape and incest, specifically, and the encroachment of capitalism upon the wilderness that he learns to love through hunting, that form central throughlines in a typically Faulknerian embarrassment of riches of characters, plots, and themes.
  
  As usual, there's a generous sprinkling of humor to leaven the often unwholesome feast of human behavior Faulkner serves up.
  
  
• 
  Miss Ravi

  امیدوارم آقای فاکنر من را بابت سه ستاره ببخشد. راستش ارتباطم با داستان‌ و حتی بیش‌تر از آن، با شخصیت‌ها خیلی کم و ناقص بود. نمی‌توانستم همراه‌شان شوم و حس کنم که چقدر بهشان نزدیکم و فکرم را مشغول کرده‌اند. وقتی صفحه‌ی ویکی‌پدیای کتاب را خواندم، مطمئن شدم که رابطه آدم‌ها را گم کرده‌ام! البته باید اعتراف کنم که نباید این کتاب را توی مترو می‌خواندم چون بیش‌تر از چیزی که فکر می‌کردم تمرکز می‌خواهد. سکوت، تنهایی و خواندن پیوسته پیش‌نیازهای من برای خواندن این کتاب بودند که هیچ‌کدام‌شان را نداشتم. 
• 
  Jamie

  “The Bear” is one of my favorite short stories and the only thing I knew going in to Go Down, Moses was that it would be here surrounded by six more to make a loose kind of novel. OK then. Let’s do this. But what Faulkner does is just dunk you headfirst underwater and as you paddle back up— the loose stories over your head, jumping around like waterbugs with time and characters— all of a sudden “The Bear” comes along and in one masterful lunging stroke swipes you all the way back to dry land. Panting, soaked, gutted. So it’s not exactly six more stories filling in around one of my favorites, it’s “The Bear” being the heart and soul and key and consummation of all the rest.
  
  It isn’t perfect but I’d like it less if it was.
• 
  Saye Tafreshi

  کتاب باب میل من نبود ، فاکنر نویسنده دلخواه من نیست حتی ذره ای از کتابهاش لذت نمیبرم این سومین اثر بود بعد از گور به گور و خشم و هیاهو ، که باز هم جذبش نشدم
  جایزه نوبل نوش جانش اما واقعا اگر قصدش نشون دادن تبعیض نژادی تو کارهاش بود آنچنان ملموس این و به خواننده نشون نداده
  یا مشکل از ترجمه است یا خود اثر
  فیلم های که تو این زمینه دیدم برای نشون دادن اون فضا خیلی قوی و مفیدتر از این سه تا کتاب بوده
  بهرحال فاکنر جان شرمنده 😉
• 
  Patrizia Galli

  Go down, Moses deve il suo titolo ad un canto, un inno cristiano, che racchiude tutta l’angoscia di diverse generazioni di uomini e donne di colore in attesa del loro Mosè; un’intera popolazione di schiavi, vicini a quel popolo intrappolato in Egitto, ma senza la promessa di una terra tutta per loro.

  
  Il libro parla di un capostipite, Carothers McCaslin, che genera un figlio bianco e un figlio di colore. Il bianco, Ike, è però il solo destinato ad ereditare tutti i possedimenti di famiglia; ma, spiazzando tutti, deciderà di rifiutare il suo privilegio di nascita per abbracciare la sua «anima nera», scegliendo di vivere come uno “schiavo libero”, un gesto che lo renderà agli occhi della comunità «un essere che non vale niente. Meno di niente. Senz'altro, non un uomo». Ike sceglie di rinunciare a qualcosa per togliersi dal male e dalla vergogna e dall’ingiustizia che la sua famiglia rappresenta. I 7 racconti che compongono il romanzo ti catapultano in un universo fatto di salti temporali, di genealogie al limite del comprensibile, di incesti e di matrimoni di convenienza, di contrabbandieri, di tradimenti, di incursioni del Ku Klux Klan e di battute di caccia, dove il non detto è quasi più importante dello scritto, perché Faulkner è capace di costruire un mondo sommerso attraverso la sua scrittura che è meraviglioso.

  
  Le storie hanno spesso protagonisti differenti, ma narrano della stessa “famiglia mista”, dei McCaslin e sono la perfetta rappresentazione della lotta che l’America ha intrapreso fin dalla Guerra Civile riguardo il tema della razza, di come questo sia diventato un tema centrale per questo paese (e tutt’ora ne vediamo le conseguenze…) e di come l’incomprensione tra bianchi e neri non abbia mai avuto davvero fine, neanche con la fine della Guerra. Faulkner decide di scrivere Go down, Moses per raccontare la verità di Zio Ike, il solo a rendersi conto che, auto-imprigionandosi in questo sistema ereditario, sono gli uomini bianchi quelli che non sono mai stati liberi, questo è il suo gesto “rivoluzionario”, escludersi: «Quella dentro di sé, contro di sé – commenta Nadia Fusini – è l’unica guerra civile che Ike ammetta».

  
  Ma fuggire dal passato non può essere una soluzione, perché lo sfuggirvi è molto spesso un’illusione. I discendenti di Carothers McCaslin tentano a modo loro di andare oltre i misfatti del loro patriarca. Cass Edmonds amministra al meglio la piantagione fino alla fine del 1800 con un'efficienza e una rispettabilità non visibili nelle generazioni precedenti, eppure, nonostante gli sforzi, sia suo figlio che suo nipote commettono atti simili a quelli del vecchio patriarca Carothers. Zack Edmonds cerca di rubare la moglie di uno dei suoi braccianti neri, che è anche suo cugino a causa della relazione di Carothers con due delle sue schiave. Roth Edmonds è all'altezza dell'eredità familiare, generando effettivamente un figlio in una relazione incestuosa.
  Serve un atto di coraggio estremo per distaccarsi dal fardello che rappresenta l’eredità di una famiglia. Ma zio Ike non è Mosè, non vuole rimettere ordine nelle macerie di una famiglia. Non può, non ne è capace. Ike rappresenta, però, la testimonianza che una vita differente è possibile, una vita lontana dalla violenza, una vita che possa resistere e non piegarsi alla forza bruta, al diritto di proprietà, alla vergogna di trattare uomini come bestie da soma. Il suo gesto è per se stesso, non per gli altri; la discendenza McMaslin continuerà a perpetrare i suoi misfatti, lo stesso Ike ne sarà testimone, consapevole della relazione incestuosa di Roth, ma allo stesso modo esempio di una vita difforme dalle convenzioni di un Sud ancorato a tradizioni arcaiche e ingiuste.
  
• 
  Carloesse

  Più mi addentro in Faulkner e più mi convinco che è lui il più grande scrittore d’America. Quello che è riuscito a creare una vera epica americana, attraverso la storia delle grandi famiglie del Sud che ruotano attorno ai suoi memorabili personaggi. Perché per creare un’epica bisogna anche saper toccare il tema del “sacro”. E anche in questo “Go Down Moses” F. ci riesce perfettamente, creando quello “Zio Ike”, personaggio centrale del racconto centrale del libro: “L’Orso”, quello che ne prende più della metà delle pagine, quello che ricostruisce la storia della famiglia a partire dal capostipite che aveva mischiato il suo sangue bianco con quello dei suoi schiavi negri anche attraverso l’incesto dando origine ai due rami distinti della stirpe, quello bianco (di cui Ike fa parte) e quello nero che Ike riconosce parimenti suo, fino ad abdicare nel possesso della terra, della casa, degli averi, a rinunciare alla moglie e con essa alla possibilità di generare un figlio, bianco o nero che sia.
  Perché qui, in questa rinuncia, subentra l’aspetto sacrale, senza il quale non può esservi “epica”. Attraverso la pratica della caccia (o meglio dire alla sua "iniziazione" ) Il giovane Ike scopre anche il divino che pervade tutto ciò che lo circonda, la preda, il terribile cane che diventa l’antagonista, anno dopo anno il suo principale inseguitore, e contribuirà, anche nella lotta finale fino alla morte, alla sua uccisione e il bosco con tutte le sue creature, lui stesso, e gli umani che nel bene e nel male lo circondano, facendo parte della sua famiglia o del suo entourage.
  Ma Dio non si cura dei singoli individui. Non li premia né li punisce, li accompagna nel loro destino perché Dio è un essere indifferente, che non distingue i bianchi dai neri, gli umani dalle bestie o dal mondo che essi abitano. I cataclismi che è capace di inviare servono ad ammonire o a salvare l’intero genere, non le persone ma tutte le sue creature (comprese quelle che erroneamente lo hanno creato a loro immagine e somiglianza) nel loro insieme. La vita (e la morte) che è insita nella terra (e nel cielo), e che appartiene a tutti nel loro insieme.
  Ed è nel riconoscere questo (già intuito accanto all’ultimo superstite della famiglia di capi-tribù degli indiani cui la terra era appartenuta prima che a suo nonno, e anch’esso imparentato in qualche modo con lui, e che sarà il suo maestro di caccia) il senso profondo della successiva rinuncia di Ike al suo ruolo di patriarca della famiglia, e ad ogni sua proprietà.
  Curioso: proprio negli ultimi mesi mi è capitato di leggere l’ultimo libro di Calasso ( “Il Cacciatore celeste”) che indaga proprio l’aspetto divino-sacrale della caccia, che fin dalla nascita delle prime società umane aveva proprio questa connotazione divenendo presto il perno della nascita dei miti e delle religioni.
  Comunque sia, attorno al racconto centrale (L’Orso) ve ne sono altri 6, altrettanto belli, a farne da pannelli laterali o a riempirne la predella, narrando altre vicende che vedono protagonisti altri appartenenti alla stirpe (bianca o nera) lungo le generazioni che la hanno attraversata per un secolo (e nel trapasso dall’800 al ‘900, dallo schiavismo al Ku-Kux-Klan) così da costituire nell’intera successione delle diverse storie il romanzo così come lo intese F. quando lo affidò al suo editore, imbufalendosi alquanto vedendoselo intitolato “Go Down Moses e altri racconti” nella sua prima edizione.
  Solo incontrando il sacro, palese o nascosto che sia, si riesce a creare l’epico, l’eroico. Faulkner in qualche modo vi riesce sempre, e così compone i suoi immensi capolavori.
  
• 
  Albus Eugene Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore

  [anobii, Dec, 2014]
  Let My People Go
  Stati Uniti d’America, Anno del Signore 1940. Faulkner dedica il libro alla sua mammy nera: “a mammy Caroline Barr, Mississippi (1840 – 1940); che è nata in schiavitù e ha dato alla mia famiglia una fedeltà senza riserve né calcolo e alla mia infanzia una devozione e un amore incommensurabili”. Una dedica/manifesto di … Black Faulkner.
  Le vicende dei discendenti, Bianchi e Neri, legittimi e illegittimi, del capostipite Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin, dai primi dell’Ottocento agli anni ’40. Sette racconti interconnessi e pieni di rimandi e di personaggi ricorrenti o romanzo vero e proprio? Nella sua bella prefazione, Nadia Fusini ci dice che Faulkner protesta con la casa editrice che, nella prima edizione, lo ha intitolato “Go down, Moses and other stories” e scrive: “è un romanzo. Se lo ristampate, intitolatelo Go down, Moses e basta; è con questo titolo che ve l’ho spedito otto anni fa”. Ma se la domanda fosse: è un libro? allora la risposta non può che essere: no, non è un libro. È un film. È un magnifico film … bianco e nero, anni ’50, quello che Faulkner ti mette sotto il naso. Ma non un qualsiasi film in bianco e nero; no, un film ammericano, di quelli che solo loro sanno fare. Con le musiche giuste, le facce giuste, le inquadrature giuste, essenziali, commoventi, profonde … così:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0CRAa... !
  Ancora Nadia Fusini: “per Faulkner il ‘nero’ è un uomo che ama la vita, ne ha l’istinto, ne sente il ritmo. È un popolo che, pur soggetto ad un trattamento disumano, ha fede e continua a credere nella salvezza”. Non è un caso forse che, sessant’anni dopo, Cormac McCarthy (è proprio un’eresia considerarlo il … nipotino di Steinbeck e Faulkner?), nel suo Sunset Limited, affidi al Nero il compito di salvare da se stesso il Bianco. E lo strumento usato dal Nero è proprio la Bibbia, il Libro per elezione degli antichi padroni del popolo nero americano.
  Questo, a proposito della condizione dei neri americani, quanto scriveva Walter White, Segretario della NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) a Sturges, regista di Sullivan's Travels (1941): “I want to congratulate and thank you for the church sequence in Sullivan's Travels. This is one of the most moving scenes I have seen in a moving picture for a long time. But I am particularly grateful to you, as are a number of my friends, both white and colored, for the dignified and decent treatment of Negroes in this scene. I was in Hollywood recently and am to return there soon for conferences with production heads, writers, directors, and actors and actresses in an effort to induce broader and more decent picturization of the Negro instead of limiting him to menial or comic roles. The sequence in Sullivan's Travels is a step in that direction and I want you to know how grateful we are”.
  Sono passati settant’anni dalla dedica a mammy Caroline ma, a ben vedere, è da credere che il vecchio Moses stia ancora litigando con il Pharaoh …
• 
  Sahar

  این کتاب یک داستان کامل نبود من که هیچ ارتباطی جز اسمها ندیدم
  وقتی که نقد های کتاب رو خوندم و دیدم هر کودوم رو باید یه داستان کوتاه دید خب حالم یکمی بهتر شد . چون هر فصل جداگانه خوب بود به غیر از فصل خرس که یهویی رفت تو یه فازی که اصلا خوشم نمیاد .
  در کل اصلااا فاکنرو دوست ندارم انگار یه ادم بیکار نشسته به نوشتن یه عالمه کاغذ داره و وقت
  ذهنشو رها کرده مینویسه و مینویسه براش هم هیچی مهم نیست
  اصلا و ابدا اهمیت نداره خواننده سرشته متن و داستان رو گم کنه
  فقط نوشتن براش اهمیت داشته خواسته ذهن شلوغش رو خالی کنه
  یک جاهایی از کتاب واقعن توصیف های بیربطی بود که من نمیدونم بقیه چطور تحملش کردن ولی من رو حسابی عصبانی کرد
  مثلا بین مکالمه ی دونفر یهو شروع کرد به توصیف تفنگ و فشنگها که فلان و فلان و فلان و .... حالا نگو کی بگووووو .....
  بنظرم توهین به وقت من بود .... من دارم کتاب رو میخونم که یک چیزی دستگیرم شه نمیدونم چطور بگم از چی عصبانی شدم فکر کنم هرکی کتاباشو میخونه این حال منو حس میکنم .
  وقتی یکی از دوستان گفت که از فاکنر پرسیدن مردم با دو یا سه بار خوندن کتابهات همچنان متوجه نمیشن ... و فاکنر جواب داده خب ۴ بار بخونن واقعا فهمیدم خودش قصدش از اینطور نوشتن رفتن توی اعصاب و بازی کردن با روان خوانندس .
  پس بجای ۱ بهش ۳ ستاره میدم چون توی این هدفش خیلی موفق بوده
• 
  Richard

  Among the most beautiful of Faulkner is the Faulkner that studies the relationships that mankind forges amongst itself and with the outside world. The relationships of race, of animal, of culture. In this book, Faulkner shows such a profound level of insight into how we cope with what we must and create what we need. The mosts famous section of this book, "The Bear," is just a wonder for how well it does what Faulkner messes up in works like
  Intruder in the Dust. Coming of age, the politics between races, the inevitability of time--this one section alone smacks out your teeth with the aging of a boy into manhood (and all the pains therein) in his quest to fell a mythically sized bear. But how the South can maintain its flat stereotype with Faulkner's work in print is beyond me. In this book alone, we see the intricate push-and-pulls between white and black (and how the two can never be truly separate), the need that all human beings have for each other and for the flora and fauna around them and how it all contributes to our own characters. Sorry for the philosophical bend to all of this, but so much has been written about the struggle to read Faulkner and the necessity of it, and this book only reminded me of why Faulkner MUST be read, if only to understand a little bit better what we like to ignore about our own dependency on everything around us.
• 
  Corey Woodcock

  Horror is my true love—it’s what got me into reading, and while I do stray from the genre proper sometimes, I always return to it. However, what I have noticed after reading so many horror books over the years, is that I start to see elements of it in books across many genres, including classics.
  
  Faulkner and many of his Southern contemporaries, like Shelby Foote, certainly had no qualms with getting horrifically dark. Sanctuary and As I Lay Dying are excellent examples of this. This is that kind of gritty, dark literature that gets your brain moving while also making you feel like you need to shower to wash it away. While Go Down, Moses may be a bit different, it still has all those gritty, Faulknerian elements that set him well apart from the pack.
  
  The more Faulkner I read, the more I fall in love. I often take a long break between his books, and enough time passes for me to become intimidated by his writing all over again; and then I start one, and immediately get whisked away to another time by his startlingly unique prose. I didn’t make it past the first page before I was happy to be nose-deep (which in my case, is quite deep sadly) into Faulkner. What we have here is more of a book of short stories, connected, than a proper novel, which I wasn’t aware of. Many of the usual Faulkner themes are addressed here, specifically race relations in the early 20th century South. Faulkner grew up in Mississippi in the era of Jim Crow, and this is always reflected in his books. Even by the standards of the South at the time, Mississippi in particular was like another world, and Faulkner’s works give a little glimpse into that world.
  
  I enjoyed this quite a bit nonetheless—my favorite stories were probably Was and The Bear. If you’re new to Faulkner, I wouldn’t start here as the book is just a tad uneven. Maybe Sanctuary, or if you’d like to jump right into the real deal, written in more bite-size chunks, then go for As I Lay Dying. And the most important piece of advice that I received when beginning my own journey with Faulkner, is to KEEP GOING! You will most likely acclimate to his general writing style and likely end up blown away by his work. Or at least, that’s what happened for me.
  
  Also, I kind of rate writers like Faulkner and Straub (RIP!!) on their own scale. Their writing is so good, always, so they can be difficult books to rate on a 5 star scale.
• 
  Neda

  برخیز ای موسی سومین کتابی است که از فاکنر خواندم و اگر اغراق نکرده باشم، از همان موقع شروع کتاب بیش از دو کتاب قبلی دوستش داشتم. فهمیدم که کتاب مجموعه داستان های کوتاهی بوده که فاکنر بعد از تصمیم به گردآوری آنها در کنار هم، اندک تغییراتی داده و آن را به صورت رمان درآورده است. از این رو، هر بخش کتاب را در قالب داستانی کوتاه دوست داشتم هر چند که به جز دلقک دغدار تمام بخش های دیگر به هم مربوط بودند و شخصیت‌های مشترکی، حداقل از یک دودمان، ماجرا را نقل می‌کردند. با پیش‌زمینه‌ای که از سبک جریان سیال ذهن فاکنر در کتاب‌های قبلی داشتم، برخیز ای موسی را به لحاظ روایتی خطی از یک دودمان ساده‌تر یافتم اما پر بیراه نگفته‌ام اگر بگویم پیچیدگی روابط و شخصیت‌ها گاه چنان مثل کلاف سردرگمی من خواننده را غرق خود میکرد که با خود می‌گفتم حل معمای یک رمان جنایی به مراتب ساده تر از کشف این روابط و به خاطر سپردن آنهاست.
  خود داستان فریادی است از ناعدالتی‌هایی که در حق سیاهان شده و این جماعت مظلوم ساده را به صمیمانه‌ترین و بی‌پیرایه‌ترین شکل به نمایش می‌گذارد. مردمی که علیرغم همه ظلم‌هایی که در طول تاریخ به آنها شده همچنان خوش قلب و نوع‌دوست هستند و همچنان در دستیابی به حقوق از دست رفته خود ناکام می مانند. لوکاس بوچام، سام فادرز و حتی خود اسحاق مکازلین از برجسته ترین این نمونه‌ها هستند. این نقل قول از زبان اسحاق شاید بهترین تصویر را از این قوم مورد ستم ارائه می‌دهد: «همه وقت و همه جا آدمای خوب هست. بیشتر آدمها همینجورن. بعضیا هم بد میارن، چون بیشتر آدمها لیاقتشون بیشتر از اون چیزیه که روزگار نصیبشون کرده.»
  
• 
  Murray

  Exceptional writing. If you only read one story in the collection read The Bear. Hemingway’s comment on the story: “That’s how good Faulkner once was.”
• 
  B. P. Rinehart

  
  Go Down, Moses by Homer Quincy Smith
  
  "Here, in Go Down, Moses, Faulkner comes most passionately to grips with the moral implications of slavery, the American land, process and materialism, tradition and moral identity--all major themes of the American novel. And it is in the fourth section [of The Bear]...that Faulkner makes his most extended effort to define the specific form of the American Negro's humanity and to get at the human values which were lost by both North and South during the Civil War. Even more important, it is here that Issac McCaslin demonstrates one way in which the individual American can assert his freedom from the bonds of history, tradition, and things and thus achieve moral identity. Whether we accept Issac McCaslin's solution or not, the problem is nevertheless basic to democratic man--as it was to
  Ahab and as it was to
  Huck Finn." -
  Ralph Ellison,
  Going to the Territory
  
  
  It is an understatement to say that a lot has changed since the last time I read anything by William Faulkner. When I finished
  Absalom, Absalom!, my grandfather was still recently dead, I was still in college (my college was still a college--it is a university now), the president of the United States was still a black man; I hadn't read half-as-much as I've read now. Well I'm far removed from that life and this place where I live is far removed. My understanding of literature and myself has increased ten-fold. I really was not sure how I was going to feel--especially after my turbulent experience with reading
  The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor in 2017. I've not reviewed that book yet, but safe to say that the experience of reading
  James Baldwin and
  Toni Morrison means my tolerance for white supremacist writing was not what it use to be. Despite this, my fidelity to
  Ralph Ellison (my "first teacher") meant I was going to read it (and eventually the follow-up
  Intruder in the Dust).
  
  Because I have discussed so much about Faulkner's style in my reviews of
  The Compsons and
  Sutpens that I will focus more on the substance in the novel/short-story collections in this review about the McCaslin/Beauchamp family. This book is a novel that is formatted as a short story collection. Most of the stories are short stories with two novellas included (with The Bear being the most famous story in this book). It is the family saga of a white family the McCaslin's and their African-American offspring who take (or are forced to take) the surname Beauchamp. This book--like Absalom, Absalom!--work off of the familiar southern gothic tropes. What distinguishes this book from that novel is that Faulkner comes as close as he probably ever did to outright saying that African-Americans were equal to white people. Before we applaud him, one must note that he took the most complex, melodramatic routes to get to expressing this point--but he was more forthcoming than any of his white modernist contemporaries. Some writers--like Ellison--praised him for this, while others--like Baldwin--were not impressed and felt he could have gone farther. Certainly this book showed that Faulkner knew that slavery and racism were wrong, but it also showed his moral cowardice when he has Issac McCaslin say, "maybe some day, but not yet!" to the idea of racial equality and miscegenation. Still, while I will criticize Faulkner for his racism, I will give him credit where it is due; I don't think I can love him as much as Ellison or hate him as much as Baldwin. There are few white writers in this current day who will be as frank and honest at how they truly feel about non-whites or themselves. Maybe we should listen to what Toni Morrison said in her
  Art of Fiction interview:

  What is exciting about American literature is that business of how writers say things under, beneath, and around their stories...Faulkner in Absalom, Absalom! spends the entire book tracing race and you can’t find it. No one can see it, even the character who is black can’t see it. I did this lecture for my students that took me forever, which was tracking all the moments of withheld, partial, or disinformation, when a racial fact or clue sort of comes out but doesn’t quite arrive. I just wanted to chart it. I listed its appearance, disguise, and disappearance on every page—I mean every phrase! Everything, and I delivered this thing to my class. They all fell asleep! But I was so fascinated, technically. Do you know how hard it is to withhold that kind of information but hinting, pointing all of the time? And then to reveal it in order to say that it is not the point anyway? It is technically just astonishing. As a reader you have been forced to hunt for a drop of black blood that means everything and nothing. The insanity of racism. So the structure is the argument. Not what this one says or that one says . . . it is the structure of the book, and you are there hunting this black thing that is nowhere to be found and yet makes all the difference. No one has done anything quite like that ever. So, when I critique, what I am saying is, I don’t care if Faulkner is a racist or not; I don’t personally care but I am fascinated by what it means to write like this.

  I guess that is a way to look at it--certainly better than anything I can find here in the land of the living. I'm glad the fact of reading this book in 2019 did not distract: one wonders between Faulkner and the current U.S. president which is the more infatuated with white patriarchal rule?
  
  "'Old man,' she said, 'have you lived so long and forgotten so much that you dont remember anything you ever knew or felt or even heard about love?'"
• 
  Francesco

  boh non so più cosa dire.... ma sono convinto che quel signore abbia scritto un qualche orrore, non può essere che ogni cosa che sia uscita da quella penna sia un capolavoro, dai su william dì la verità... hai scritto una schifezza? me ne basta una
  
  
  chi apprezza steinbeck non ha ancora letto faulkner.... qualcuno doveva dirlo
  
  
  PS... io ho letto questa opera tramite biblioteca... perché è fuori catalogo come al solito... si stampano tonnellate di merda e grammi di diamante
  
  altro PS... aveva ragione Faulkner questo libro non è una raccolta di racconti ma è una saga dentro la saga di Yoknapatawpha
  
  Faulkner come Marquez o meglio Marquez come Faulkner ha creato un mondo che non esiste (macondio) ma che ha la forza della realtà... secondo me Google dovrebbe inserire in maps sia Macondio che Yoknapatawpha
• 
  Flo

  Mai accesibil decât mi-l aminteam pe Faulkner. Am putut urmări relativ ușor 5 din cele 6 "povestiri" ( doua dintre ele depășesc 150 de pagini). Cred ca mi-a oferit mai mult decât mă așteptam de la o primă lectură.
• 
  J.M. Hushour

  Especially poignant now, "Moses" is a raggedy collection of connected, nested stories centered on a family lineage that mixes both white and black, free and slave (or ex-slave) and ultimately highlights the futility of them all against an unwavering wildness that can only be dealt with by destroying it.
  With the exception of Ike's sanction against the folly of thinking that one can possess anything that doesn't want to be possessed (whether land, the feral, or in love), this is a far more accessible work than, say, "The Sound and the Fury". Jumping back and forth through time we catch picture-imperfect glimpses of the tendrils of a plantation family that finally triumphs by eviscerating the ambiguity and sublimity of nature by turning in on itself. Fascinating and often surreal, with lengthy, run-on passages bereft of punctuation, much of this reads like a poem, a paean to the futility of displacing the wild.
• 
  Elizabeth (Alaska)

  This is an interesting collection of inter-connected stories which taken together is presented as a novel. Most reviewers seem to like "The Bear" the most, and as is often the case, I am an outlier. It was my least favorite. I labored and sighed reading it, the longest of the stories, not because of the confoundedness of the prose but because it wanders. It tells more than one story and I even wondered at one time if Faulkner had been drinking too much as he was known to do. For me the only thing it had going for it was the reminder of characters in some of Faulkner's other novels. Most notable was Boon Hogganbeck who is featured in
  The Reivers.
  
  The first story, "Was", takes place before the Civil War and lays the foundation for the relationships - especially blood relationships - between black and white in the south of Faulkner's fiction. One can both wince and smile in this story. There is a poker game, but, unlike most poker games where the high hand wins, in this poker game it is the losing hand that will take home the stakes.
  
  My favorite of the seven stories in this volume was "The Fire and the Hearth". To me, it spoke more eloquently of the connection between blacks and whites, but again, Faulkner does not deal as heavily as he can and often does. I think you could not even call it petty larceny when a man "borrows" a mule and exchanges it for a piece of machinery worth $300 which he wants very badly. The man has every intention of being able - overnight! - to get more than enough money to buy the mule back so that the true owner never knows it was missing. I thought this kind of thinking was much the same as Faulkner gives us in The Reivers.
  
  The shortest story is that of the title. In that story I was quick to note Gavin Stevens as the prosecuting attorney who is a main character in
  Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion. Had the collection continued with this kind of story and those in a more humorous vein, I would happily give the novel 5-stars. Unfortunately it does not. But there is enough good in the two stories I mention and others to have me give it 4-stars, though perhaps toward the bottom of that group.
• 
  Taka

  In love with Faulkner (4.5)—
  
  I didn't get him. When I read his As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury, and Absalom! Absalom! a few years ago. I liked Light in August, but I couldn't appreciate his style. And I guess for everything there is a season. Then I came back, and it happened to be in the right season, when my preoccupation was not storytelling but style and sentence rhythm. It has to do with my progress as a writer as I'm able to appreciate fiction for other than their plot.
  
  I relished, no reveled in, Faulkner's meandering sentences. I loved his themes of blood and curse, race and history. After reading this excellent collection of interrelated stories, I'm tempted to go back and reread his classics, especially Absalom! Absalom! since I don't think I was *there* yet.
  
  The stories included here are very accessible, though you probably need to look for the McCaslin family tree online and reference it (I copied into the book, and it helped tremendously).
  
  Overall, unique prose with great cadence, and gripping stories. (it gets 4.5 only because the collection wasn't as novelistic as I hoped, and the climax was felt rather flat).