Turkey Day Scene in this Novel

Note: I read this Faulkner novel aloud, assuming that Faulkner, from the story-telling South, wrote for the ear, not the eye. I read the exposition in my own accent, not a Southern one, deliberately, as if I were reading for an audience. I was unable to resist, however, reading conversations in what I thought were individually distinct voices. Reading aloud slowed me down, which greatly aided comprehension of Faulker’s involuted grammar and Gertrude Steinisms. Just hearing to my own voice gave me a more immersive experience, which, I think, is what reading Faulkner is all about. Reading aloud, I often just lost track of time. I'm now convinced aloud is the way to read Faulkner.

Sartoris - William Faulkner

Faulkner's first novel set in storybook Yoknapatawpha County was released in 1929. With memorable characters, descriptions powered by amazing metaphors, and the theme of the past’s coexistence with the present, it tells the story of the declining Sartoris (SAR-tris or SAR-da-ris) family, which sustains itself on the legacy of ancestor John Sartoris, colonel of the Confederate Army and unreconstructed white supremacist during Reconstruction. The legacy of heroism is a burden for sons and grandsons though they are born with rash and heedless Sartoris blood.

The story begins in about 1920, when Bayard (said “baird”) Sartoris has returned from fighting in the First World War. His twin brother John, to whom he was deeply attached, was killed in action. The trauma torments Bayard with anxiety attacks, since he saw his brother literally plummet to his death. Anxiety and survivor guilt drive him to tempting fate with thrill-seeking, especially by driving his car like a lunatic on back-country roads or impulsively breaking a stallion.  

His grandfather Old Bayard (whose younger self starred in The Unvanquished) and formidable Aunt Jenny advise him to settle down to little avail save a brief period when young Bayard connects with the rhythm of the earth through farming. Also of little help is his mixed up GF Narcissa who has an unhealthy and perhaps unnatural relationship with her brother Horace Benbow, a southern liberal humanist doomed to a futile existence in a cultural milieu where the arts and humanities are at an embryonic stage.

The novel deals with daredevil Bayard's path to a predictably tragic ending. As such, this is a story about fatality, the ancient notion of our helplessness in the face of a fate decreed by our fatal flaws. The fate of the short-lived Sartoris male is rooted in pride and recklessness, and we witness the consequences of that inescapable fate played out for the Civil War generation and its children and grandchildren. As the generation born in the 1840s and 1850s depart to meet their maker, we will see their sons and grandsons in search of a spectacular ending, leaving behind rueful women and real humdingers of stories.

The novel is not, however, a totally dark narrative, not focused on the melancholy transience of glory and reputation, the passing of the dashing male of the Jeb Stuart mold. The plot does not dazzle us readers with incredible events, in spectacular acts. It is simple, everyday, but it rests naturally in some characters so wonderfully achieved that each line calls to mind the vitality of our own experience, of life. When Aunt Jenny enters a scene, for instance, we smile and brace ourselves to get scolded, maybe for our own misdeeds, but likely for somebody else’s, so we just have to take it in good part. 

On the web it seems that As I Lay Dying is the novel Faulkner veterans advise nervous newbies to read as an intro to Faulkner, because of its unintimidating length and straightforward structure of a quest. But I’d argue the kaleidoscopic points of view are likely to disgruntle and dismay the uninitiated so it might be better to start with this one. 

The reasons are that it follows a conventional chronological order and has psychological and symbolic depth comparable with the later novels that sealed Faulkner’s place in the first-rank of American authors TS&TF, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August. Faulkner does use modernist techniques in Sartoris but they’re not relentlessly experimental: different characters with the same name, the nod to tropes of tragedy, spectral presences, setting a fictitious region based on real-life Northern Mississippi, extensive dialogue full of flashbacks and stories, different points of view, and hints teasingly given in passing at major events like marriages and deaths. Nothing here like that notoriously mind-bending first part, Benjy’s stream of consciousness in TS&TF or the fishy quality of Vardaman's Ma in As I Lay Dying.

To read Sartoris is to live with a handful of souls amidst their conflicts and their radiance. Or in a colorful episode in fact sleep on a corn-shuck mattress in the abode of the yeoman MacCallum family. Faulkner measures out character description so expertly that, without realizing it, we readers are collaborating in their ability to shine. The depth that he gives to the characters compels us to regret the major flaw of the novel: We readers wanted more details about undeveloped characters Narcissa and Horace Benbow; Simon the black servant; and creep and stalker Byron Snopes.

Glossary: Ever one for self-improvement, I present the list of words in this novel that I had to look up. I recommend the Cambridge Dictionary because it gives British and American pronunciations

moil – work hard, drudge. Sometimes used in the phrase 'toil and moil.'

viscid – wet and sticky. Writers have favorite words and this is one of Faulkner's.

rowel – spiked disk on a spur; to ~ means to urge on a horse using a rowel

jocund – cheerful and lighthearted

copse – a small group of trees

to shale – to take off the shell of

to lave – wash against or over something

martinet – strict disciplinarian

beetling - (of a rock or a person's eyebrows) prominent or overhanging.

casuist - a person who uses clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; a sophist.

arras - a rich tapestry, typically hung on the walls of a room or used to conceal an alcove

abnegate - renounce or reject (something desired or valuable)

usquebaugh - whiskey