I"AULKNER AND THE SOUTH TODAY
For it is either this or the slow, painful workings of the mind; either
Faulkner's madness, large and self-sufficient, his stunning belief
in
his
imaginary world, or something we secretly believe to be. smaller: auto–
biographies, social observation, the neat situation, "the interesting but
not creative."
His limitations, his overwriting and obfuscation are apparent; it
is. easy enough, if reckless, for Clifton Fadiman to satirize one of his
most dazzling works ("One may sum up both substance and style by
saying that every person in
«Absalom, Absalom!"
comes to no good end,
and they all take a hell of a time coming even that far."), or to be
really dreary about him, as Maxwell Geismar is and hint at Fascism, the
great "hatred," and the threat to the body politic in Faulkner's love of
the past. But his six or seven superb novels insinuate themselves, no mat–
ter, and someone is always discovering that Faulkner is our greatest
living novelist and saying it with a chip on his shoulder, belligerently, as
though he expected to be booted out of the room. Indeed, Faulkner's rep–
utation is curiously incomplete, somehow not authorized and catalogued.
Like a patch of thrilling and famous scenery, almost everyone admires
him but no one has anything very thrilling or famous to say about him.
One does not know whether to be glad or sorry that even Faulkner,
the possessed, legendary writer, could not escape forever from the real
Mississippi. His new novel,
Intruder in the Dust,
is astonishing: it is
a tract, a polemic, even in its odd way a "novel of ideas." It is not what
we expected and in it Faulkner appears as a hermit, perfect and nec–
essary to our urban sentiments, who by chance picked up yesterday's
newspaper, became annoyed with the state of the world and ran down
from the hills to make a speech in the public square. It is less than his
previous work, but fascinating because of that work and because it re–
veals the desperation of his present condition, the possibility that his in–
spired madness has disintegrated, leaving him, like everyone else, hollow
and uncertain with the sickness and perplexity not of the past but of the
present. The sickness of
Intruder in the Dust,
the fear and despair, are
intimately connected with ,the future of Faulkner's career, a career which
demands that there be a South, not just a geographical section and an
accent, but a reasonably autonomous unit, a kind of family ready, and
even with a measure of geniality, to admit the existence of the people
next door and to cooperate in the necessary civic responsibilities, such
as the removal of garbage and the maintenance of .highways, but beyond
that unique and separate, not to be reproached, advised, or mourned
for the goings on behind the door.
The bare situation of the novel is brilliant: an old Negro, Luca.s
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