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Reviews 147Evans Harrington and Anne J. Abadie, eds. The South
and Faulkner sYoknapatawpha: The Actual and the Apocryphal
(Jackson, Mississippi:Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1977, $3-95
paper). Pp. xii, 212.Joanne V. Creighton, William Faulkner s Craft
of Revision: The SnopesTrilogy, " The Unvanquished " and " Go Down,
Moses " (Detroit, Michi-gan : Wayne State Univ. Press, 1977,
$12.95). Pp- I^2-David Williams, Faulkner s Wom en: The Myth and
The M use (Montrealand London: McGill-Queen's Univ. Press, 1977,
n.p .). Pp. xviii, 268.Estella Schoenberg, Old Tales and Talking:
Quentin Com pson in WilliamFaulkner s " Absalom, Absalom! " and
Related Works (Jackson, Mississippi:Univ. Press of Mississippi,
1977, $7.95). Pp. xii, 156.Cleanth Brooks, William Faulkner: Toward
Yoknapatawpha and Beyond(New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale
Univ. Press. 1978, 12-60).Pp. xviii, 446.
Each of the books under review has what might be termed a "
second genera-tion " quality. David Williams 's Faulkner's Women
has the same main titleas the book by Sally Page published in 1972
and the critical " line " it developswas initiated at least as
early as Karl Zink's essay " Faulkner's Garde n: Wom anand the
Immem orial Earth " (1956). Joanne Creighton 's study of Faulk ner
'sre-use of materials follows in the wake of Edward M. Holmes's
Faulkner sTwice-Told Tales (1966) and similar essay-length
treatments. The initial groundpoint for the trajectory traced by
Estella Schoenberg in Old T ales and Talkingwas probably Malcolm
Cowley's observations in The Portable Faulkner (1946):Cowley
described Faulkner as " brooding over his own situation " and each
ofthe works, he said, " seems to reveal more than it states
explicitly and to havea subject bigger than itself." Cowley also
discussed Faulkner's Yoknapatawphanovels as constituting a " legend
of the South "; the very title of The South andFaulkner's
Yoknapatawpha: The Actual and the Apocryphal is reminiscent ofthat
thesis. And Cleanth Brooks's new book is, of course, the
long-awaited sequelto his The Yoknapatawpha Country of 1963. Yet it
would be a mistake to thinkthat because these works are second
generation they are not original. They are,in at least three
ways.
First, unlike almost all of the first generation of Faulkner
research andcriticism, they each present at least some totally new
primary material culled fromthe various manuscript collections or
from personal knowledge of Faulkner theman and writer. William
Faulkner s Craft of Revision is most notable in thisrespect: in it
Professor Creighton offers extended quotations from
unpublishedstories, such as " Father Abraham " (the first chronicle
of Flem Snopes's rise topower), from typescript versions of stories
like Go Down, Moses's " Delta-Autumn," and from magazine versions
of the stories used, for instance, in TheUnvanquished. Th e
proceedings of the 1976 Fau lkner and Y oknapatawpha Con-ference
held at the University of Mississippi, The South and Faulkner's
Yok-napatawpha, contains some brief but sharp memories of
Faulkner's step-grand-daughter, Victoria Fielden Black-in one of
which she had to think of the
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148 Journal of American Studiesgreat w riter as " Tha t dirty
old m an ! " - and some folksy but penetratingcomments by
Mississippi author Shelby Foote that testify to the profound
im-pression that the older writer made upon him. Toward Y
o\napatawpha andBeyond includes, among much else, many lines from
the unique hand-letteredcollection of largely unpublished sonnets
addressed to Helen Baird in To Helen:A Courtship. Even the books by
Professors Williams and Schoenberg, bothessentially works of
interpretation rather than research, contain such items:Faulkner's
Women offers interesting insights into the characterization of
Sanc-tuary's Temple Drake which are based at least partly on
Williams's ownexamination of the published text of the novel in
comparison with the supposedly more lurid unrevised galleys; and
Old Tales and Talking includes briefexcerpts from and insights
dependent upon manuscripts in the Rowan OakPapers, discovered in
1971, as well as from items in the various longer
establishedcollections.
Second, each of these books takes its chosen method of approach
at least astage further than the works of the first generation. A
few examples mustsuffice. David Williams's study, as its subtitle
indicates, may be categorized asmyth criticism, and he extends the
work of Richard P. Adams, Walter Brylow-ski and others in a number
of ways, including a most interesting application toFaulkner of the
writings of Erich Neumann on female archetypes.
ProfessorCreighton's book covers a much broader spectrum of texts
than previous workson Faulkner's revisions and, some rather odd
judgments apart (e.g. she some-times assumes magazine versions that
were obviously produced to publicize anexisting new novel to have
preceded that novel), she outstrips such works byrecording her
research findings in such an imaginative manner that she makessome
penetrating comments on all the works whose evolutions she
considers.Cleanth Brooks's book circles outwards from his earlier
treatment to encompassthe whole of the Faulkner canon. Not only
does he further elaborate some ofhis prominent positions for
instance that, in the creation of figures likeThomas Sutpen,
Faulkner was making a comment on " the American Dream "rather than
on the burden of Southern history but he also substantiates
veryfully ideas that were little more than notions earlier: one
such is Faulkner'sessential Romanticism. In The South and
Faulkner's Y objiapatawpha MichaelMillgate's " Fau lkner and
History " is overtly presented as an extended glosson his own
earlier essay " Th e Firmamen t of M an's H is to ry " (1972);
andDarwin T. Turner's piece on " Faulkner and Slavery," while
partly invalidatedby its presentation of Faulkner's characters'
views as if they were his own, isthe most trenchant comment to
appear so far on Faulkner's particular blend ofmoral magnanimity
and inherited, often unconscious, racism.
Third, each of these books possesses some particular merit quite
its own. Thisin itself is high praise really, because the sheer
quantity of secondary materialdevoted to Faulkner nowadays is so
overwhelming that even Faulkner specia-lists must select from the
mass what to read; in one typical recent year, 197576,there were
nine books and over ninety essays. (Fortunately, the annual
FaulknerIssue of the Mississippi Quarterly now contains a fairly
detailed " Survey ofResearch and Criticism " compiled by a panel of
specialists, and the first one,published in the summer of 1978 and
covering 197677, is " objective " enough
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Reviews 149to lighten a Faulkner reviewer's burden of
responsibility that weight aroundthe heart which could so easily
numb and, even, deaden his capacity forresponse.) The books will be
briefly discussed in rising order of importance.
In The South and Faulkner's Yo^napatawpha the most memorable
contribu-tion, apart from diose already cited, is the opening essay
by Daniel Aaron, " TheSouth in American History "; it is the best
short treatment of its subject that Ihave seen and when, in die
last few paragraphs, Faulkner is at last mentioned,Aaron can place
him, so to speak, with an acquired authority that quite trans-cends
the simplicity of his actual statement : " He created through m
emory andevocation of place a personal literature, yet one which
never escaped from societyand which incorporated an internal
history of a people that was at once sec-tional, national, and
universal." The book also contains an urbane comparisonby Louis
Rubin of two very different classics of 1936, Absalom, Absalom !
andMargaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.
The primary value of William Faulkner's Craft of Revision, as
one wouldobviously expect, resides in its documentation of certain
typical creative pro-cesses that were clearly important to
Faulkner, and Professor Creighton doesthis widi audioritative
clarity, especially in die case of the Snopes trilogy. Shealso
shows how Faulkner's revisions can sharpen up the foci of meaning
in agiven work; for example, although she always prefers to call Go
Down, Moses" a short story composite " ra ther dian die " novel "
Fau lkner thought it was,she admirably demonstrates how Faulkner's
additions, etc., to its variousconstituent stories contribute to
the book's unity, and to its brooding power.Faulkner's Women in
which " certain Faulknerian women are encoun-tered . . . in the
course of having become, in themselves, an answer to, andan
expression of die sacred Being, configuring for dieir human
community diemiraculous force of deity " - could so easily have
been a thesis-ridden book. Itdoes tend in that direction in diat
Professor Williams is obliged to invest aLena Grove or an Everbe
Corindiia, both goddesses to be sure, with a serious-ness
disproportionate to dieir places in die novels diey inhabit - but
he writesso well (he is also a novelist) diat die reader's
attention is fixed on whatever
happens to be die matter under discussion at die time. Thus it
is, say, diat theclinching arguments for Addie's monologue in As I
Lay Dying being locatedat diat point in the Bundren's journey when
diey have just crossed die riverare derived from classical
allusions: she should " speak out the moment her bodyhas crossed
die river; she has [crossed die Styx and] entered her own realm. .
. .The temporal context of Addie's speech dien seems less
indicative of irony thanof somediing quite as noumenal as the title
suggests."Professor Schoenberg's book records in deft and
penetrating prose die roleand meaning of Quentin Compson in all die
various fictions in which he
appears. She discusses Faulkner's need to have him commit
suicide and his needto resurrect him for certain stories. She
stresses Quentin's role as a narrator,indeed as an artist, and
hence she is concerned by die autobiographical elementsin his
personality; in diis and certain other respects, the central ideas
of OldTales and Talking overlap diose of John T. Irwin's Doubling
and Incest (1975).Her book is exhilarating and calls for a review
of its own because its funda-mental value resides in its detail; it
is the kind of study which demands eidier
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150 Journal of American Studiestotal acquiesence or a point by
point response. In its central chapters she pain-stakingly and
precisely builds the most radical case yet for viewing
Absalom,Absalom ! as a novel of conjecture, that is, as essentially
the story not of Sutpenbut of its creator, Quentin. It is the way
it is because Quentin is the way he is,and the way he is has been
determined largely by the events recorded in TheSound and the Fury,
which itself revolves around " the only thing in
literature,"Faulkner said, " which would ever move me very much."
Old Tales and Talkingis, in short, a fine study of the creative
process.
Professor Brooks's big book contains critical studies of all the
non-Yoknapa-tawpha novels. He is particularly good on Mosquitoes,
Pylon, and A Fable, andless interesting on The Wild Palms (after
Thomas McHaney's exhaustive studyof that book there is, perhaps,
not much to be said). He also provides commen-tary on several
sketches and stories, published and unpublished, Yoknapatawphaand
non-Yoknapatawpha, an essay on the general theme of " Time and
History,"and a wealth of Notes and Appendices on topics new and
old: in all of theseBrooks has original, profound and provocative
things to say, and their meritsalone would ensure this book a
prominent place in any library of essentialsecondary Faulkner
materials. But the central value of the book resides else-where, in
the detailed readings of the early poems and the tracing of
influences,especially Romantic influences, on the young Faulkner.
At times these sectionsare tedious the information could have been
provided in tabular form (as,indeed, much is, in the Notes), and
the significance of some of his sources forFaulkner is left
dangling. But the sheer wealth of information - which is, initself,
testimony to Professor Brooks's lifetime of attentive reading -
carries itsown reward: poetry and prose are seen whole, products of
the same intelligence,and arc characterized, if haltingly at times,
with as much accuracy as they areever likely to be, and certainly
with a reverential attention that lesser mindswould do well to
emulate.
All of these second generation books, then, testify to
Faulkner's continuingcapacity to delight and elude, a mysterious
richness that probably prescribes adescent of further studies not,
it is to be hoped, like the " sins " of the Bible,but as mixed
blessings, " unto the third and the fourth generations."University
of Exeter MICK GIDLEY
Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Blac\ Cleveland,(U
rbana: Un iv. of Illinois Press, 1976, $12.95 cloth, $4.50 paper).
Pp . xiv,
This is a major work in several areas. As a scholarly study of
the black ghetto,it complements and, in some ways, challenges the
work of Spear and Osofsky.Unlike writers in the troubled sixties,
Kusmer claims black perceptions hadchanged in the past forty years.
Even in die ghetto, the black experienced aconsiderable improvement
over his previous condition. Paradoxically, diere werepsychological
losses as well as gains, progress as well as poverty. These
condi-tions gave black professionals opportunities to break the old
white paternalism
