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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
89 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterpiece of Western fiction.,
By
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This review is from: The Big Sky (Paperback)
The Big Sky is not just a masterpiece, it's probably THE masterpiece of the genre of western frontier fiction. This is unusual because it deals with a moment in time that isn't really dealt with that much - the Rocky Mountain fur trade during its golden age of about 1820 - 1850. The cowboy era has been responsible for most of western film and literature, partly because the images and events that happen in that world are recognizable to us: the economic and social issues you always see dealt with in "cowboy" movies mirror our own experiences in many ways. The cowboy has also been said to be an image of freedom to Americans, when actually nothing was further from the truth. Cowboys were regular working stiffs, about as romantic as carpenters or plumbers in their own day. They didn't consider themselves "free", nor would they have spent much time thinking about it during their brutal 14 hour work day. They did what they did because they loved horses and riding and cattle and it was good honest work that paid a living wage, and there was a bit of swagger to it - people in town recognized cow hands for the tough-as-leather men they were, especially with their characteristic boots and hats and general flair for the dramatic that many had. But it was backbreaking work, and the entire cowboy heydey lasted less than 30 years.I said all that to say that "The Big Sky" really is about freedom, and really is about the West. It's about the true, wild, primitive west, before the plow, before roads, when there were still huge, intact Indian cultures in place with armies of horsemen and enormous herds of buffalo. So it's interesting to me that this genre is largely ignored, but I can see why - there are no set-piece plots just begging to be turned into movies - no "new sherriff in town" characters, because there are no sherriffs, and no towns other than a few trading posts. There is only the land and the sky and the interaction between a few incredibly brave white men and all those Indians. If you don't already know, this is the story of Boone Caudill and his friend Jim Deakins, and several important side characters, but it's basically Boone's book. He's driven west by an aching need for wildness and freedom, and is pushed out by a brutal father. He makes his way west to St. Louis, along the way befriending Deakins, in hopes of meeting his uncle Zeb who had become a trapper years earlier. The rest of the tail is complex and interlaced, and not a simplistic good guy/bad guy plot at all, and what stands out is the crystalline depictions of the people and places and over all, arching like the sky itself, is freedom. Freedom to roam at will in that beautiful country is the main character of this book. Freedom is the religion, the politics, the philosophy, the recreation - it is everything that is important. The trappers are there to trap - sure - but they're really there because this is a wild, free place, where they will not be hampered by rules, where they can be natural men. It sounds over romanticized, but it really did happen that way, and from what we know, that is truly the way they felt about their lives and why they endured the agonies of that existence. Despairing that new settlers are moving west and building farms and towns, Boone cries "Lord, Jim - remember the Tetons standing proud in the sun, and the Seeds Ke Dee...don't you remember her when she was all purty and new and not a man track on her save Injun?" This novel makes you sob like few I've ever read. The sense of loss, the closing of an age of the world, hangs in the air like mist. They are going to be the last to see something so precious, and for their pains they get to watch their world wither and die under the press of settlement. The movie "The Mountain Men" with Charleton Heston comes close to capturing a tiny bit of this book, and you can tell it's inspired in many ways by it, but no other book or film has ever come close to truly painting the world of the mountain man as has this novel. "Jeremiah Johnson" is another good film, with many fine touches. But if you want to follow the water up stream, back to its source in the mountains, then please, before you grow too old, read "The Big Sky" and open your heart to that time and place and the wild, brazen beauty of the America few Americans know ever existed.
42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great story--poetry in book form!,
This review is from: The Big Sky (Paperback)
Hi folks, my name's James Drury. I played The Virginian for nine years, as some of you may remember, and I had occasion to read many Western and to enjoy many of them come to life on the screen. None of them were much better than this book by A.B. Guthrie. This man writes with a power that is seldom seen anymore, a power and a flowing poetry that would be hard to beat. If you haven't read this book, please do yourself the favor. I promise you will not regret it. This one is not to be missed. A.B. Guthrie, with this book, has produced a story as ruggedly poetic as the best of Elmer Kelton, Kirby Jonas or Elmore Leonard--even Jack Schaefer.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Guthrie Captures the West and the End of an Era,
By
This review is from: The Big Sky (Paperback)
The Big Sky is the first in a series of great Western novels by A.B. Guthrie. The story begins in 1830 as young Boone Caudill escapes his Kentucky home for the plains and mountains of the west. He meets up with Jim Deakins, a pleasant country philosopher, early on his journey and finally the experienced mountain man Dick Summers on the keelboat trip up the Missouri.I enjoyed Deakins' theological disquisitions. "You can't beat God for bein' picky. No, sir. If he catches you playin' cards or sayin' one swear word...it's to hell with you forever and ever...Even thinkin' is mighty dangerous. As a man thinketh, that's how he is, and to hell with him ag'in. Why you reckon he gave us a thinker then?...God is some busybody." Guthrie takes us up the Missouri, a slow fight all the way, across the plains, into the mountains and back. He creates for the reader the palpable sense of the openness and wildness of the West. Yet the book steps back from fully romanticizing the end of the mountain man era. The story is often disturbing, not the least in Boone Caudill's quick and often brutal ways. Highest recommendation for anyone interested in the American West.
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