What I learned from Faulkner's 'The Bear'

  When I was in my 20s, I would have told you that William Faulkner’s “The Bear” was perhaps the greatest short story written by an American.

But the world that Faulkner portrayed was racist. It was a society that exploited people, and turned to violence when the exploitation was questioned. Faulkner’s role in that way of life makes it unlikely that “The Bear” is going to be read by the local book club.

I can tell you what I admired about it.

The story is about a quest. Year after year, some men hunt a bear that is so smart and strong that it escapes. The bears been shot several times, and its tracks are distinctive because of its trap-mangled toes.

A boy who grows up hearing about the almost mythical bear finally grows old enough to tag along. One day, the boy followed the bear’s tracks, got lost and stopped at a fallen log …

seeing as he sat down on the log the crooked print, the warped indention in the wet ground which while he looked at it continued to fill with water until it was level full and the water began to overflow and the sides of the print began to dissolve away.

Faulkner could have written that the bear was very close and that the boy realized it. He could have written that the boy experienced wonder and fear.

But the details of the track — so fresh that it is still filling with water — let the reader know, without being told, just how close the bear must have been. Those details let the reader feel that wonder and fear. The art of the story is the difference between experiencing a character's feelings and being told about them.

Like the boy in the story, I grew up a little, as a reader and a writer, when I first read it. 

Yesterday’s note was on an essay about what we can and can’t talk about in discussing books. I don’t know what I think about that topic, and so this is an essay or trial run — a stab at it. As you might guess, the question has become one about short stories, rather than about books.

• Source: William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses; New York: Vintage Books, 1973, p. 208. And, yes, I’ve mentioned this passage before: “Or maybe look at a story by Faulkner,” Feb. 9, 2022.