Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories (Reading Faulkner Series)

516 Pages·2006·1.77 MB·English

by  Theresa M. Towner

Reading Faulkner
Collected Stories
Reading Faulkner Series
Noel Polk, Series Editor
Reading Faulkner
Collected Stories
Glossary and Commentary by
Theresa M. Towner and James B. Carothers
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member
of the Association of American University Presses.
Copyright © 2006 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First edition 2006
(cid:1)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Towner, Theresa M.
Reading Faulkner. Collected stories : glossary and commentary / by
Theresa M. Towner and James B. Carothers.— 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Reading Faulkner series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57806-812-6 (alk. paper) — ISBN 1-57806-813-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Faulkner, William, 1897–1962—Criticism and interpretation.
2. Faulkner, William, 1897–1962—Language—Glossaries, etc.
3. Yoknapatawpha County (Imaginary place). 4. Southern States—In
literature. 5. Mississippi—In literature. 6. Short story. I. Title: Collected
stories. II. Carothers, James B. III. Title. IV. Series.
PS3511.A86Z97826 2006
813(cid:2).52—dc22 2005023608
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
CONTENTS
Series Preface vii
Introduction ix
How to Use This Book xiv
I. THE COUNTRY
“Barn Burning” 3
“Shingles for the Lord” 21
“The Tall Men” 29
“A Bear Hunt” 37
“Two Soldiers” 47
“Shall Not Perish” 54
II. THE VILLAGE
“A Rose for Emily” 63
“Hair” 74
“Centaur in Brass” 85
“Dry September” 98
“Death Drag” 107
“Elly” 113
“Uncle Willy” 120
“Mule in the Yard” 132
“That Will Be Fine” 140
“That Evening Sun” 150
III. THE WILDERNESS
“Red Leaves” 161
“A Justice” 179
“A Courtship” 191
“Lo!” 204
• v •
contents
IV. THE WASTELAND
“Ad Astra” 217
“Victory” 231
“Crevasse” 252
“Turnabout” 260
“All the Dead Pilots” 275
V. THE MIDDLE GROUND
“Wash” 293
“Honor” 300
“Dr. Martino” 313
“Fox Hunt” 322
“Pennsylvania Station” 333
“Artist at Home” 344
“The Brooch” 354
“My Grandmother Millard” 362
“Golden Land” 371
“There Was a Queen” 385
“Mountain Victory” 391
VI. BEYOND
“Beyond” 413
“Black Music” 421
“The Leg” 429
“Mistral” 440
“Divorce in Naples” 447
“Carcassonne” 460
Works Cited and Consulted 475
Index 499
• vi •
SERIES PREFACE
This volume is one of a series of glossaries of Faulkner’s novels which is
the brainchild of the late James Hinkle, who established its principles,
selected the authors, worked long hours with each of us in various
stages of planning and preparation, and then died before seeing any of
the volumes in print. The series derives from Jim’s hardcore commit-
ment to the principle that readers must understand each word in
Faulkner’s difficult novels at its most basic, literal level before hoping
to understand the works’ “larger” issues. In pursuit of this principle,
Jim, a non-Southerner, spent years of his scholarly life reading about
the South and things Southern, in order to learn all he could
about sharecropping, about hame strings, about mule fact and lore,
about the Civil War, about blockade running, duelling, slavery and
Reconstruction, Indian culture and history. When he had learned all
he could from published sources, he betook himself to county and city
archives to find what he could there. He was intrigued by Faulkner’s
names, for example, and over the years compiled a fascinating and
invaluable commentary on their etymologies, their cultural and histor-
ical backgrounds, and, not least, their pronunciations: Jim is the only
person I know of who listened to all of the tapes of Faulkner’s readings
and interviews at the University of Virginia, in order to hear how
Faulkner himself pronounced the names and words he wrote. In short,
for Jim, there was no detail too fine, no fact or supposition too arcane
to be of interest or potential significance for readers of Faulkner: he
took great pleasure in opening up the atoms of Faulkner’s world, and
in exploring the cosmos he found there.
It was my great fortune and pleasure to be Jim’s friend and col-
league for slightly more than a decade. In the late seventies, I managed
to tell him something he didn’t know; he smiled and we were friends for
life. Our friendship involved an ongoing competition to discover and
• vii •
series preface
pass on something the other didn’t know. I was mostly on the losing end
of this competition, though of course ultimately the winner because of
what I learned from him. It was extremely agreeable to me to supply
him with some arcana or other because of the sheer delight he took in
learning something—anything, no matter how large or small.
On numerous occasions before and after the inception of this
series, we spent hours with each other and with other Faulkner schol-
ars reading the novels aloud, pausing to parse out a difficult passage, to
look up a word we didn’t understand, to discuss historical and mytho-
logical allusions, to work through the visual details of a scene to make
sure we understood exactly what was happening, to complete Faulk-
ner’s interruptions, to fill in his gaps, and to be certain that we paid as
much attention to the unfamiliar passages as we did to the better-
known ones, not to let a single word escape our scrutiny; we also
paused quite frequently, to savor what we had just read. These readings
were a significant part of my education in Faulkner, and I’m forever
grateful to Jim for his friendship and his guidance.
This series, Reading Faulkner, grows out of these experiences in
reading Faulkner aloud, the effort to understand every nuance of
meaning contained in the words. The volumes in the series will try to
provide, for new readers and for old hands, a handy guide not just to
the novel’s allusions, chronologies, Southernisms, and difficult words,
but also to its more difficult passages.
Jim’s death in December 1990 was a great loss to Faulkner studies;
it was especially grievous to those of us embarked with him on this
series. Absent his guidance, the University Press of Mississippi asked
me to assume editorship of the series; I am happy to continue the work
he started. The volumes in the series will not be what they would have
been had Jim lived, but they all will bear his stamp and his spirit, and
they all will try to be worthy of his high standards. And they will all be
lovingly dedicated to his memory.
Noel Polk
• viii •
INTRODUCTION
Whether limping down the road with Sarty Snopes or falling through
darkness with Tom-Tom, whether gasping in the dust of Miss Emily
Grierson’s bedroom or retching on the outskirts of Jefferson with
Hawkshaw, whether chasing the mule in Mrs. Hait’s tiny yard or tracking
enemy aircraft over France, countless readers of William Faulkner have
first entered his world through one of the forty-two doors in Collected
Stories. He began his literary life as a poet and fabulist but, as he told an
interviewer in 1955, “I soon found I wasn’t a poet.” He offered himself as
an example of his lifelong insistence that “every novelist is a failed poet.
I think he tries to write poetry first, then finds he can’t. Then he tries the
short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry” (Lion in the
Garden 217). In that form, Faulkner achieved splendid success by any
measure save the strictly remunerative: he wrote over a hundred short
stories, published nearly all of them during his lifetime, and became one
of the most frequently anthologized writers in the genre.
Publishing short stories was one important way for Faulkner to pay
his bills, especially in the Depression era of the 1930s, when he was, as
he put it, “the sole, principal and partial support—food, shelter, heat,
clothes, medicine, kotex, school fees, toilet paper and picture shows—
of my mother ... [a] brother’s widow and child, a wife of my own and
two step children, my own child,” while he had “inherited my father’s
debts and his dependents, white and black without inheriting yet from
anyone one inch of land or one stick of furniture or one cent of
money; the only thing I ever got for nothing, after the first pair of long
pants I received (cost: $7.50) was the $300.00 O. Henry prize last year”
(Selected Letters 122–23). Desperate for money, he wrote as much as fast
as he could and begged his agents to flog it all: “I can use money right
now to beat hell”; “I hope to hell you can gouge somebody for a thou-
sand for GOLDEN LAND. That will give me two months to work at the
• ix •