American Literature 1880-1930 A C Ward English

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It is more difficult to speak with assurance of William Faulkner's novels, though these had been singled out for high praise by eminent critics in England and America. His excessive interest in abnormality makes it impossible to think of Soldiers' Pay, The Sound and the Fury, and Sanctuary in terms of literature or aesthetics, however much the author's passages ofbeautiful writing and his psychological penetration are admired. What is material for the pathologist is not necessarily ruled out as material for the novelist: one does not question Dostoevsky's genius on any such ground. But pathology in literature has to be justified according to aesthetic standards, not medical ones; and the pathological factor in William Faulkner's books is not transmuted. In Soldiers' Pay, the horror of Donald's mutilation (he was wounded while with the Air Service in France) and the horrific effectofit upon Cecily, never moves the reader from horror to pity; and other characters Januarius Jones particularly-increase this horror. The technical devices are also only dubiously justified, except in so far as the spasmodic narrative method and the few excursions into more or less symbolic dialogue aid the stabbing sensations ofslow pain left by the book. To the robust-nerved this protracted sensation may be acceptableevidence of Faulkner's genius, though he seems to fumble over things Hemingway would bring off with swiftness and certainty. At moments the clouds of misery are reft by Faulkner's flashes of beauty and light, or by such astonishing feats ofdescriptive and evocative power as the two pages recalling Donald's last flight above Ypres. But what Faulkner indicates in this and other books is a 'mooned land inevitable with

to-morrow and sweat, with sex and death and damnation'-almost the final words of Soldiers' Pay. Without some preliminary explanation of what the novelist is attempting to do, The Sound and the Fury would be almost insoluble; and, as it is, Richard Hughes's interpretation differs from that provided by the publishers. The former notes that 'the first seventy pages are told by a congenital imbecile'; the latter that the book displays 'completely the psychology ofa madman.' It is useless to quarrel with the experiment, since a prior objection must be made that the experiment is not successfully conducted. Often the conversations reported by the imbecile (or madman) are almost as lucid as ifset down by a sane person. For example: Father said, 'I admire Maury. He is invaluable to my own sense of racial superiority. I wouldn't swap Maury for a matched team. And do you know why, Quentin?'