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.

Reading "Faulkner" in Mississippi...

While William Faulkner was not a perfect person, he had compassion, empathy and even sympathy for good people of whichever race; and he scorned evil and cruelty in anyone, regardless of race.

I read "Go Down, Moses", a group of stories and short novels from the early 1940's. The stories were published individually for nationwide distributions in magazines like Atlantic Monthly or Saturday Evening Post; later gathered together to loosely form the flow of a novel about the former slaves, servants and tenants of the McCaslin plantation (17 miles from Jefferson) and how their history influenced young Isaac McCaslin (direct heir to the property of his Grandfather) to renounce his inheritance and assume a modest role in town, living on a small stipend, till near 80. (Considered very old in 1940).

"The Bear" is one of Faulkner's most well regarded works; I don't know how you read that story without the context of the preceding tales in this book.

"Was" tells the love story of Tomey's Turl and his future wife, Tennie Beauchamp; the sad but hilarious way they got to be together, as slaves on neighboring plantations just prior to the Civil War.
Their descendants are important characters in subsequent stories.

Except for the tragedy of young Rider in "Pantaloon in Black". The excellent young worker is simply a tenant on the McCaslin place and has an important, well paying job at the sawmill, until grief becomes his undoing.

Great Book. It was dedicated to Caroline Barr, "Aunt Cally", Faulkner's own childhood nanny, whose house is shown above, along with the old kitchen building from Rowan Oak in Jefferson...no, Oxford MS. Aunt Cally lived to be fully 100 years old, died in 1940.

I also reread "The Reivers", Faulkner's swan song. This was made into a crappy movie in 1969 which I refused to see even then. Whoever thought tiny Steve McQueen should portray Six Foot Four Boon Hoganbeck? I know, box office.

Aunt Cally appears as Lucius Priest's nanny in the story, which is, after all, a reminiscence.

Having recently read "Where the Red Fern Grows", it was interesting the similarities between the two little boys in either story; both saving up to buy themselves some hunting dogs in 1905, and getting into a peck of trouble on the way.

A Day Spent in Oxford, MS: University town; home and inspiration to William Faulkner.

If you are a reader of the works of William Faulkner, to see the monument and town square of  real world Oxford is to be transported to 19th and early 20th Century "Jefferson", even with today's cars.
In "The Reivers", Grandfather's car was one of only two in town in 1905. Today, the square is packed with traffic.

During his life, some in the town did not wholly approve of Faulkner, especially due to a shocking little book called "Sanctuary"(shocking for the time, sadly; today the story is all to familiar from any days' news.) But his body of work is expansive and deep, his words ring true with tearful sadness all the way to rollicking humor--sometimes in the same sentence! This statue of Faulkner will keep you company with you sit next to him on the bench on the square.

Sanctuary...

...the controversial and sinister novel by William Faulkner that I read last summer. This place reminded me of a latter-day "Goodwin place"; I could envision the thug "Popeye" emerging from a thicket with a shot gun to shoo us all away. (we were respectfully on "our" side of the no trespassing fence...still). Of course, this is Missouri, not Mississippi; and the "junk yard guard dog" was a happy, tail wagging black lab.