A Companion to the American Short Story
Page 54
ner , 1933 .
Johnston , Kenneth G. The Tip of the Iceberg:
— — — . The Fifth Column and the First Forty - nine
Hemingway and the Short Story . Greenville, FL :
Stories . New York : Scribner , 1938 .
Penkevill , 1987 .
— — — . The Hemingway Reader . Ed. Charles
Montgomery , Constance Cappel. Hemingway in
P. Moore . New York : Scribner , 1953 .
Michigan . New York : Fleet , 1966 .
— — — . A Moveable Feast . New York : Scribner ,
Reynolds , Michael S. , ed. Critical Essays on Ernest
1964 .
Hemingway ’ s In Our Time . Boston : G. K. Hall ,
— — — . The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the
1983 .
Spanish Civil War . New York : Scribner , 1969 .
Smith , Paul . A Reader ’ s Guide to the Short Stories of
— — — . The Nick Adams Stories . New York : Scrib-
Ernest Hemingway . Boston : G. K. Hall , 1989 .
ner , 1972 .
Smith , Paul , ed. New Essays on Hemingway ’ s Short
— — — . Selected Letters 1917
–
1961 . Ed. Carlos
Fiction .
Cambridge :
Cambridge
University
Baker . New York : Scribner , 1981 .
Press , 1998 .
16
William Faulkner ’ s Short Stories
Hugh Ruppersburg
“ I ’ m a failed poet, ” Mississippi novelist William Faulkner told an interviewer in 1955.
“ Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry fi rst, fi nds he can ’ t and then tries the
short story which is the most demanding form after poetry. And failing at that, only
then does he take up novel writing. ” 1 Despite his claim that he valued poetry over
fi ction, and short stories over novels, Faulkner spent most of his time and energy
writing novels, and novels are the foundation of his reputation. Still, Faulkner wrote
a number of remarkable stories during his career, some among the fi nest English
language stories in the twentieth century. They include such often
-
anthologized
stories as “ A Rose for Emily ” (1930), “ Barn Burning ” (1939), and “ That Evening Sun ”
(1931). A number of lesser known but equally fi ne stories may also be named, “ Moun-
tain Victory ” (1932), “ Red Leaves ” (1930), and “ Pantaloon in Black ” (1940) among
them. These refl ect Faulkner ’ s literary art at its best. Even though he once said that
“ I never wrote a short story I liked, ” Faulkner was an accomplished writer of short
fi ction. 2
Faulkner ’ s stories can be considered in three different ways. First, they are works
to be read and studied on their own merits. Second, they are a crucial element of
Faulkner ’ s work as a novelist. Faulkner tended to write his novels in discrete chunks
of narrative. Rather than developing monovalent, linear plot lines, he used shifts in
narrative voice and chronology to build his stories. In “ A Rose for Emily, ” his best -
known story, an unnamed member of the community relates the life of Emily
Grierson. We know he is a community member because he refers to himself and the
community viewpoint with the collective “ we, ” and he often comments on what com-
munity members thought or believed. He begins the story with Emily ’ s funeral and
then moves back in time to describe the events of her life, especially those that account
for her curious standing in the town: her father ’ s death, her relationship with Homer
Barron, the reaction to the smell that briefl y envelops her house, her china - painting
lessons, and her resistance to property taxes. The important events of her life are told
in brief episodes. The story concludes by coming again to Emily ’ s death and then
William
Faulkner
245
moves forward to a macabre discovery made shortly after her funeral. The novel Light
in August (1932) is built in a similar but more complex fashion. Sometimes the nar-
rator appears to be a member of the community; sometimes a character; sometimes a
more objective authorial narrator. Each narrator ’ s story composes a different chunk of
narrative. The novel also develops at least three major plot strands involving three
major characters. Each character ’ s story is narrated in episodic fashion, interwoven
with, contrasted against, the stories of the other characters. The point is that although
Faulkner thought of himself as a novelist, he built many of his novels out of episodes
that bear a signifi cant resemblance to short stories.
It is not surprising that many of Faulkner ’ s novels began as stories. Faulkner said
that The Sound and the Fury began with a story he called “ Twilight. ” 3 Elements of
Light in August and Sanctuary both had their inception in a story called “ The Big
Shot,
”
which featured an early version of the character Gale Hightower.
“
Barn
Burning, ” with its primal image of the innocent boy turned away from the front
entrance to a grand Southern mansion, was initially intended as the opening chapter
of The Hamlet . All three of the novels in Faulkner ’ s Snopes trilogy are episodic, incor-
porating a number of previously published stories, such as “ The Hound ” (1931) and
“ Spotted Horses ” (1931), which became part of The Hamlet (1940), and “ Centaur in
Brass ” (1932) and “ A Mule in the Yard ” (1934), which were incorporated in The Town
(1957).
Third, and fi nally, following the examples of James Joyce ’ s Dubliners , Sherwood
Anderson ’ s Winesburg, Ohio , and Ernest Hemingway ’ s In Our Time , Faulkner organized
several of his collections of short fi ction so as to create thematically coherent units.
This is especially true in his fi rst story collection These 13 (1931) , and to a lesser extent
in Doctor Martino and Other Stories (1934) . In Go Down, Moses he built an intricately
structured novel out of a series of chapters originally written as stories. When the
publisher added the words “ and other stories ” to the novel ’ s title in its fi rst printing,
Faulkner expressed irritation, insisting that what he had written was a novel, not a
collection of stories. 4 The Unvanquished (1938) is also built from a sequence of stories
originally published in the Saturday Evening Post .
Faulkner published four volumes of short fi ction during his lifetime: These 13 ,
Doctor Martino and Other Stories , Knight ’ s Gambit (1949) , and Collected Stories of William
Faulkner (1950) . This list does not include The Big Woods (1955), which collected
previously published hunting stories, some of which Faulkner revised for the volume.
After his death, several volumes of early newspaper sketches appeared, but the most
signifi cant publication was
Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (1979) , which
included a number of previously unpublished stories as well as others that had been
published but never collected.
Faulkner ’ s short fi ction is an important aspect of his art, and an important avenue
toward a wider understanding of his work as a whole. In this discussion, I want to
examine several examples of Fa
ulkner ’ s best short fi ction. These stories were written
during the years 1931 to 1935, when Faulkner wrote most of best stories. (In fact,
Faulkner ’ s “ great ” period in short fi ction can be narrowed to the years 1930 to 1932.)
246
Hugh Ruppersburg
The stories I will discuss appeared in the 1950 volume Collected Stories of William
Faulkner , where Faulkner collected most of his short fi ction published up to that year,
including all the stories that appeared in These 13 and Doctor Martino and Other Stories .
A few truly great Faulkner stories are missing from Collected Stories because they were
published as parts of novels, primarily “ The Old People, ” “ The Bear, ” “ Pantaloon in
Black, ” and “ Delta Autumn, ” which were part of Go Down, Moses. I would argue that
“ The Bear ” is really a short novel, or novella, rather than a short story, 5 and that the
other stories in Go Down, Moses (with the exception of “ Pantaloon in Black, ” one of
Faulkner ’ s greatest stories) benefi t from the larger context the novel provides – they
work better as stories or chapters within the novel than as stories that stand alone.
The stories in Knight ’ s Gambit are also missing, but they are not among his best works
of short fi ction. With those exceptions, Collected Stories contains all his important short
fi ction and provides excellent testimony to the scope of his achievement in the genre.
The individual works in Collected Stories address the same social and natural world
that Faulkner portrayed in his novels, explore the same themes, and employ the same
literary strategies and devices. In general, they are more tightly and modestly focused
than the novels, somewhat less ambitious in style and theme, and, with a few notable
exceptions, less innovative. At the same time the stories offer a view of Faulkner ’ s
world that confi rms, deepens, and broadens the portrait offered in the novels. In par-
ticular, the stories in the fi rst two sections, “ The Country ” and “ The Village, ” provide
more information about and explorations into the location and time period of such
novels as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), and
Light in August (1932). The stories of “ The Wilderness ” section narrate the early
history of Yoknapatawpha County, focusing especially on the Indians who lived in
the region and from whom Thomas Sutpen bought his hundred square miles of land
( “ Sutpen ’ s Hundred ” ) in Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Although Faulkner alludes in
Absalom to some of the events in these stories, none of his longer works addresses the
Native American history of Yoknapatawpha in as much detail as these stories. Like-
wise, stories in “ The Wasteland ” section refl ect Faulkner ’ s interest in pilots and avia-
tion of the post – World - War I generation. That subject occupied an important place
in the early novels Soldiers ’ Pay (1926) and Sartoris (1929), 6 but in the stories of “ The
Wasteland ” as well as in such stories as “ Honor ” (included in “ The Middle Ground ”
section that follows “ The Wasteland ” ) Faulkner offers a glimpse into the importance
that aviators of the World War I generation had for him and his view of the modern
world. They provide context as well for the novel Pylon (1935), whose air show avia-
tors are presented as lost citizens of a contemporary Southern wasteland world. In
general, Faulkner ’ s short fi ction fi lls in missing spaces in his imagined narrative of
Yoknapatawpha County.
The opening section of stories, entitled “ The Country, ” addresses those characters
and situations in backwoods rural life that many people associate most closely with
Faulkner, especially in such novels as Light in August , As I Lay Dying , and The Hamlet .
Among these stories, “ Barn Burning, ” which opens the section, rises above the others
and stands as one of Faulkner ’ s best. Its image of an embittered older man and his
William
Faulkner
247
innocent son who are confronted by a black servant at the front door of a Southern
mansion is central to Faulkner ’ s work in the 1930s, and to his sense of social confl ict
in the South. The boy is overwhelmed by the image of the house: “ he saw the house
for the fi rst time and at that instant he forgot his father and the terror and despair
both … Hit ’ s big as a courthouse he thought quietly, with a surge of peace and joy
whose reason he could not have thought into words ” ( Collected Stories 10). The events
of “ Barn Burning ” are recast and retold in the opening pages of The Hamlet , for which
Faulkner initially intended the story as the fi rst chapter. In Absalom, Absalom! the
turning point in the main character Thomas Sutpen ’ s life comes when as a young boy
he sees a large, white - columned Southern mansion for the fi rst time and is turned
away from its front entrance by a black servant. A number of generally similar episodes
occur elsewhere in Faulkner ’ s work, but it is signifi cant that this image has its most
powerful representation in short story form.
The mansion in “ Barn Burning ” is not only a focus of social confl ict, but also of
social change. The boy ’ s father Abner has been accustomed to an individualistic,
frontier existence in a world where the frontier has all but vanished. He moves from
one sharecropping arrangement to another, leaving as soon as he becomes bored or
the landowner he works for makes some demand that he regards as unreasonable.
Abner insists on remaining unrepentant and unreconstructed. He resists all efforts to
make him conform, to civilize him. He is also fundamentally hostile to the upper - class
white Southerners who inhabit the grand houses that symbolize the material wealth
and success he will never have. The mansion confronts him with his own lack of
success, his poverty, his powerlessness. It also confronts him with an emblem of the
civilized and civilizing world – an agent of encroaching social gentility. Abner auto-
matically lashes out against agents of change and order. The efforts of the black servant
to keep him from entering Major De Spain ’ s house only ensure that he will seize the
fi rst opportunity to rebel. In fact, the black servant, who clearly looks down on the
lower - class white man, is the element in the story that conveys to Ab Snopes and his
son most clearly that they occupy the lowest rungs on the ladder of social class, privi-
lege, and power.
“ Barn Burning ” is written in the intense rhetorical style that characterized much
of Faulkner
’
s work during the major period of his career. Its narrator essentially
inhabits the consciousness of the main character, the boy named Colonel Sartoris
Snopes ( “ Sarty), describing what he sees, feels, and thinks. Although some of Faulkner ’ s
child narrators are characterized entirely by their innocence, Sarty has reached a transi-
tion point in his life. He is old enough to recognize his father for what he is, and
suffi ciently moved by the image of the grand white house to understand the values
and progress it signifi es. Two courtroom scenes in the story stand in contrast to
Abner ’ s brutal encounters with the man
who owns the white house, and with Abner ’ s
decision to burn down the barn, a symbol of order and of the agricultural economy
that has come to dominate the North Mississippi area where the story is set. Sarty is
torn between blood loyalty to his father and recognition that his father is a relic of a
distant past, a dead end. Ultimately, Sarty warns the owner of the white - columned
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Hugh Ruppersburg
house, Major De Spain, that his father plans to burn down his barn. The story ends
ambiguously: Abner has either been captured or shot to death by Major De Spain,
while Sarty has run away, bearing the guilt of his decision to betray his father and
ally himself, however obliquely, with what the grand white house represents. At the
same time he willingly confronts the future that lies before him (both the “ dark
woods ” and the “ liquid silver voices of the birds ” ): “ He went on down the hill, toward
the dark woods within which the liquid silver voices of the birds called unceasing –
the rapid and urgent beating of the urgent and quiring heart of the late spring night.
He did not look back ” (25).
Michael Millgate in The Achievement of William Faulkner suggests that the place-
ment of “ Barn Burning ” as the fi rst story in Collected Stories established “ patterns of
confl ict which echo throughout the volume – white vs. Negro, poor vs. rich, family
vs. outsiders – and … themes which also recur: the opposition between the emotional
ties of home and family and the urgent need for escape and self - determination, the
complexities of the father – son relationship, the tension between social values and
those which are primarily moral or aesthetic ” ( Achievement 270 – 1). Many of the basic
themes of Faulkner ’ s fi ction – class struggle, change, coming of age, order versus
disorder – are encapsulated in “ Barn Burning ” and appear in different and varied forms
throughout Collected Stories . Many of Faulkner ’ s stories center in some way on the
changes taking place in the American South during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. In “ Barn Burning ” the last vestiges of frontier are disappearing,
replaced by an agricultural economy and a political structure governed by courts and
laws. The desires of men such as Abner Snopes to live free and unmolested by codes