Two Faulkner Novels

Faulkner's Home: Rowan Oak, Oxford, MS

If I plan to read all of William Faulkner's work, at near 70, I better get moving! Though his books are for "sipping", not "gulping"!

His prose is more like a poetry of his own; he had a quote distilled for nearly every situation in human life, I find.

I read "The Town-A novel of the Snopes Family" (it is Vol. 2--"The Hamlet" is the first). The Snopes's slithered up to Jefferson from Frenchman's Bend like a Biblical Plague or a mess of snakes. A Snopes man is a "Son of a Bitch's Son of a Bitch", this trait is not passed to the Snopes women, but from father to son. The narrator is a little boy not born yet when the first Snopes arrives. 

The best of the Snopes family, Wallstreet Panic, learns that not all people live like Snopes's; he drops his family affiliation.

One of the very worst concocts a nasty scheme to sell mules from Memphis in Jefferson--then defraud the railroad.

Faulkner's African American characters are always so strong and memorable: in this story, we meet "Old Hett", formerly the nurse maid to all of Jefferson's wealthier matrons, now aged between 70-100, she sleeps in the county rest home but spends her days dropping in to the homes of all her former charges, where she is given food and clothing. She dispenses clever and funny wisdom. She is a gem; who was the model for this character?

Critics aren't kind to "The Unvanquished"; it was not one of Faulkner's Modernist novels, rather it was assembled from stories he wrote for nationwide publication in weekly magazines (and I bet that is where my Grandmother discovered him), 

similar to "Go Down Moses".  But I liked it.

Narrated by the little boy who would become the Grandfather and bank owner in Sartoris, it tells of the farm life for Southern people, black and white, toward the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction. It is a more serious novel, with violence and suspense. 

Again, there is a strong African-American: Marengo (called Ringo) the young slave, playmate and friend of Bayard (our narrator). Even Bayard's father says Ringo is smarter than Bayard; there is no indication that Ringo is a mixed-race child, but he is with Bayard every step of the way--a few beats ahead of him, loyal, helpful, questioning, funny--yet with a dignity; he serves without subservience (genius of Faulkner to convey this).

Faulkner was too young to remember all he reveals in this novel, but he certainly knew many people of an age who had lived though the times. This is not Scarlett O'Hara's or Hollywood's idea of the Civil War/Reconstruction. Feel the sweat, smell the smoke, experience the fear and exhaustion and grief, see the fires, hear the guns and the cries as if in real time.