BOOKS
FAULKNER AND CONTEMPORARIES
COLLECTED STORIES. By William Foulkner. Rondom House. $4.75.
THE DAY OF THE LOCUST. By Nothanael West. New Directions. $1.50.
THE DISENCHANTED. By Budd Schulberg. Rondom House. $3.50.
THE TWENTY-FIFTH HOUR. By
C.
Virgil GheGrghiu . Knopf. $3.50.
MAKE LIGHT O F IT. By William Corlos Williams. Rondom H ouse. $3.50.
Faulkner's
Collected Stories
form a continuous commentary
on the whole of his work. They do not make as clear a design as the
excerpts in the Viking
Portable Faulkner,
but because there are more
constants- locale, family, historical themes, character-in Faulkner's
writing than in that of any other American novelist, a collection of his
stories a ssembled on any principle is bound to give a fairly exact im–
pression of the range and quality of his work. You have here the old
Indian South, the South of the Civil War and earlier, the present-day
South, and a few excursions Faulkner has made to other American
regions and to Europe. The range of character is just as large, from
the Indian chiefs, through his main Southern families, to the pilots
and stunt fliers and students on a walking tour. Some of the stories
bear a direct relation to the novels, in which they appear as episodes_
Others are connected with the body of his work only through similarities
of style. But whatever the degree of connection, this is, in all but one
respect, the essential Faulkner whose work grows out of, turns round
and always comes back to the basic themes of blood, land, and the
fusion of the two
in
human character. The only aspect of his writing
of which this
c~llection
does not give an adequate impression is the
legend of the South that he has constructed, over and beyond the
Southern reality-and it is to this legend that I should like to devote
the space I have in this review to deal with Faulkner.
The paradox of William Faulkner is that the element of greatness in
his work is inseparable from his Southern qualities, but he does not
write well in his main concern with the South, its history and legend.
The virtues and defects of his writing are co-ordinate with two styles,
which are almost always mixed. One is simple and full of references to
nature; there is nothing to equal it in American writing today.
It
is in
