Reading Those Classics #8

Classic Short Stories set in The Wilderness. A collection of 42 stories, it won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1951. The stories were first published in weekly magazines such as The American Mercury, Forum, Harper’s Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner’s Magazine, and The Sewanee Review. Faulkner came up with the themed section headings, such The Country, The Village, etc.

The Collected Stories of William Faulkner

In the section called The Wilderness, not for Faulkner stuff about the noble redman living in accordance with nature. The artist dares greatly to imagine another orientation to life and cultural mores but driven by the same human cravings for property, power, wealth, status. The key word, I think, is imagine because as an artist he will make up stuff for whatever his artistic intention is and the experienced reader understands mythologizing when they see it.

Red Leaves. Set in the early 19^th century, the Indians include “the peculiar institution” when they condemn Euro-culture as without honor or decorum. But mouthing the worst cracker stereotypes about blacks, the Indians own slaves because they have an interest in the white man’s economy, which demands stealing labor from black people. Crazy not to go along to get along, obtain horses and pretty French slippers and avoid sweating, right? The bloated son of the recently dead chief symbolizes the degenerate state the Indians have allowed themselves to fall into. Anyway, age-old traditions that have not changed though everything else has changed demand that a dead chief take to the next world valued possessions.  That means his unnamed slave must be killed along with the prized horse and hunting dog. The Indians don’t have a grudge against the slave but as they are culture-bound they don’t dream of exempting him from this custom. Because it would be like, not meet, unlucky, crazy, not to follow the custom, right?

A Justice. This Russian nesting-doll story within a story within in yet another story starts with twelve-year-old Quentin Compson telling of a visit to his grandfather’s farm where the ancient carpenter Sam Fathers relates the story behind his name as told him by Herman Basket, co-star of Red Leaves. The story is an illustration of a corrupt patriarch Ikkemotubbe deciding whose child is whose and adding on to a house in the most wasteful way imaginable. It gives one to think that the default position for umpteen thousands of years was small bands of humans run by a strong man and his shit-headed henchmen.

A Courtship. This tall tale has elements of the comic and tragic. Herman Basket’s comely sister is an Indian Helen of Troy. Her beauty and remoteness inspire two contestants, one white and one Indian, for her hand (and the rest of her, unwashed though it is). They agree the beauty to the winner of contests of strength, endurance, and bravery. They both are disappointed in the end. They sour-grapeishly conclude that they are better men for the competition and the mutual respect it fostered. The white man says, "Perhaps there is just one wisdom for all men, no matter who speaks it" while the Indian replies "Aihee. At least, for all men one same heartbreak." In this story we see Ikkemotubbe while young, just a guy, before he became a corrupt strong man. Finally, this story gives heart to the quiet guys who get the best smart kind women, while the jocks and rich guys get women that give them hell.

Lo! A tall tale starring a wily Indian chief and President Jackson. The chief gets the better of Jackson, who ironically calls his adversaries, “poor innocent Indians.” The Indians are so other to federal officials that the feds are not even sure of the Indians’ names. No soft-pedaling about “the inevitability of the vanishing of the red man” because the ending of the story hints at the reality of history, thus giving a regretful edge to the comedy. Between 1776 and 1887, the USA federal government, a most powerful institution then and now, seized over 1.5 billion acres from America's indigenous people by treaty and executive order.