Is this novella worth talking about, considering it's really a part of the larger novel "Go Down, Moses"? Maybe. I'll start by saying it feels like a somewhat straightforward and pleasant five-chapter adolescent adventure story, except for Chapter 4 where, seemingly, Faulkner COMPLETELY LOSES HIS MIND. Fortunately, at this point the main character is kind of losing his mind as well, trying to justify walking away from a major inheritance, which he does by compressing all of his family's history, and southern racial history, and all of American history, and all of Earth's history, and all of mankind's existence, and all of God's intentions, into one singular thought (I suppose if this were simply a story about killing a legendary bear we wouldn't still be talking about it.) Needless to say, this chapter gave me a headache—apparently, a radical compression of time and experience involves a 60-page chapter made up of only 15 sentences (or so) and the identities of scores of characters, across generations, somehow being merged and confused (if you imagine that the wilderness, the bear's home, can be considered an everlasting cycle of chaos, birth, death, and destruction, all happening simultaneously, without reward or reason, the past never being past, then you can sort of see Faulkner's unique stylistic choices here.) Is it possible for one man to exit this endless morass of recycled sin, committed by every single person on earth, committed by every single family on earth, committed by every single race on earth? Well, you can say an awful lot of contradicting things about this story—loaded, intertwining symbols are pretty much ripe for the picking in this one—but it's noteworthy to me that our overthinking, idealistic main character in the end, despite plotting the only escape he could think of, achieves absolutely nothing but near paralysis (the symbol he becomes instead is also of note.) If anything, the problem with this story is that the characters feel so symbolic, it's difficult to relate to them as people, though I also suspect that was Faulkner's intent: "Don't focus on the people, focus on the enormous ideas! Gahd!" But! Is it a good read? Yeah. It is. It's a really good read, in fact. Especially if you like getting mad. Three stars.