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The Creator of Yoknapatawpha and its People Is Dead;
Future Students Will Receive
The Reivers
- Faulkner's Last:
UNIFORM
EDUCATIC
As Institutionallizati*
By ARTHUR KINNEY
FEW LIVING AMERICAN writers have
the breadth of vision that is Wil-
liam Faulkner's. In the decline and fall
of the Sartorises and the Compsons he
has been uncompromisingly tragic;,in
Sanctuary, he was deliberately sensation-
al and grotesque; while in The Hamlet,
he has apparently leaned back in the
single general store of Oxford, Mississippi,
put his feet up on the cracker barrel, and
spun some long, involved yarns which,
like the regionalist writers nearly a cen-
tury before him, come very close to being
folk legend.
His remarkable range has given us a
new county in Yoknapatawpha, infinite-
ly richer than the Wessex of Thomas
Hardy. For Faulkner's detail seems itself
infinite. He has shown us the priests and
the prostitutes, the hunters and the mer-
chants, the settlers .and the descendants,
the perverted and the insane, the town
and the country, the Negro, the poor
white, and the rich white, the Indians
and the half-Indians, and the horses,
dogs, mules, bears, and deer, each with
their own peculiar personality. He has
etched for us some memorable details:
Popeye's incredible rape; the idiot Benjy's
memory of the smell that was Caddy;
Joe Christmas's adventure with the tooth-
paste; the poor white on her way to a
horse sale, dressed in her going-to-meet-
in' clothes including a pair of dirty white
sneakers; and the dignified Lucas Beau-
champ cornered by a snarling pack of
white racists, remaining calm, impervious,
while a white boy and his ancient grand-
mother run desperately about the coun-
tryside in an attempt to save him.
Such a range has necessarily taken
many forms: short stories, novels, sketch-
es, dramas, and even poems. Faulkner's
writings spring from varied sources: there
is the Calvinism that shapes much of
Light in August, the allegory which is the
basis of A Fable, natural goodness.which,
nearly primitivistic, is a key to The Bear,
and determinism which relentlessly tracks
down Thomas Sutpen in Absalom, Absa-
lom! A concern with sociology has given
us Go Down, Moses; Freudian psychol-
ogy 'is very much a.part of the Quentin
section of The Sound and the Fury, while
Faulkner's own concern with present poli-
tical and social action nearly turns In-
truder in the Dust into an extended tract.
Such an appreciation of Faulkner's wide
literary embrace of the land and the peo-
ple he loves, and gropes to understand,
finds a new dimension in his latest novel,
The Reivers. For here, in a familiar set-
ting and with many familiar people, is
a brand-new Faulkner-a Faulkner ex-
pansive, relaxed, comic.
THE REIVERS (meaning plunderers) is
an utter delight for, despite the re-
laxed pace, it is not as episodic as The
Hamlet; it is one 'piece, and Faulkner is
in full control. It is minor Faulkner, but
it is more than an extended joke; The
Reivers is a comic rendition of the foibles
of human nature, and the twists and
turns of fate. There is, in this involved
story of theft, gambling, horseracing, and
horsetrading, all levels of shrewdness and
wisdom-what Mark Twain called "hoss-
sense" and real sense.r
The narrator, eleven-year-old Lucius
Priest (a new character in the Faulkner
canon) has the wisdom of conscience, of
traditional and society-bred morality.
Boon Hogganbeck, back again for the
first time since The Bear, has a passion-
ate desire to play top dog but has not the
skill to bring it about. Ned Williams Mc-
Caslin Jefferson Mississippi (as he gives
his name formally) is the simple Negro
coachman whose innate shrewdness turns
the most adverse of conditions to advan-
tage.
The white boy, the half-Indian, and the
slow-moving Negro seem an ill-asserted
trio of thieves, deserving of the most in-
credible adventures. They get them in
large number. The three begin by. steal-
ing the second automobile in Jefferson
for a wild four-day junket to Memphis.
(Lucius's grandfather has just died, and
while his family leaves for the funeral,
Boon, through a complicated and hilari-
ous system of double-dealing and double-
crossing, gets the precious automobile out
of the stable arid onto the road.) They
spend a night at Miss Reba's bordello
(already seen in Sanctuary), trade the
auto for a stolen race horse with a rec-
ord only of losses, decide to bet their sole
possession against the auto in an illegal
race so that they can redeem the car for
Lucius's father, and wind up sneaking
the stolen horse out of Memphis at four
a.m. in an unused boxcar they have man-
aged to add to a scheduled train for Par-
sham, Tennessee. But let Lucius tell it:
I realized that, strictly speaking,
we had no strategy; we had nothing
to plan for nor even with: a horse
whose very ownership was dubious
and even (unless Ned himself really
knew) unknown, of whose past we
knew only that he had consistently
run just exactly fast enough to fin-
ish second to the other horse in the
race; to be raced tomorrow, exactly
where I anyway didn't know, against
a horse none of us had seen and
whose very existence (as far as we
William Faulkner, 1897-1962
SOME WEEKS after this review was
written, at 9 a.m. on a Friday in
July, word came suddenly and sharp-
ly that William Faulkner was dead.
Death came "from natural causes,"
said the bulletin released from the
University of Virginia, where Faulkner
had for some years spent his winters
in reading, in discussing his works, and
(usually) in solitude.
Details, came word from the Uni-
versity, would follow later. The hours
passed before it was learned with cer-
tainty that he had died beside his wife
and childhood sweetheart Estelle-died
of a heart attack at 64, at home in
Oxford, Mississippi, the small town of
8,000 that had served as basis for the
Yoknapatawpha saga that had led
him from obscurity to the Nobel Prize
for literature.
The world of letters was saddened,
because a powerful voice in American
literature would no longer speak. In
the flurry of obituaries that followed,
Faulkner's own flippant remarks on
writing (I do it so I won't have to
work, he once told an interviewer)
were quoted and requoted. But the re-
marks were far more specious than
the works he left behind.
FAULKNER hated publicity; he was
irritated by people who wanted to
intrude upon his private life. When he
was first approached by a reporter, he
was astonished and frightened; the
works are in the public domain, he
replied; if you must write about me,
go tQ them. But, came the rejoinder, I
respect your works, and I will write a
good article; if you deny me, someone
who does not respect you will write
one. Faulkner gave in, but he followed
the interviews with a' scathing com-
ment on privacy and individuality pub-
lished by "Harper's Magazine."
Faulkner was intensely shy; he
drank before he met people; he re-
fused to come to the door (or, to Uni-
versity students last spring, to the
phone); for a while, he balked about
flying to Sweden to receive the Nobel
Prize.
Faulkner spoke, rather, in his works.
There he was not specious but deadly
serious. He could be funny, exaggerat-
ed, horrifying, tragic, but always he
was groping for some comment on hu-
manity. His works were often incon-
sistent: from novel to novel, char-
acters changed names; episodes chang-
ed; time sequences were destroyed and
replaced. His mind was never that or-
dered: it was never at rest. In his
major works-The Sound and the Fury,
DECLINE TO ACCEPT the end of
men . . . I believe that man will
not merely endure; he will prevail,"
Faulkner said in his now-famous No-
bel address, but he found it difficult
to go any farther. His conclusion, ad-
mittedly tentative, came in' "The
Bear," his most central statement on
the history of the South and the na-
ture of man. McCaslin Edmonds and
Ike McCaslin have just turned to the
Bible for answers about man's place
in the universe, and Ike comments:
"'There are some things He said
in the Book, and some things reported
of Him that He did not say. And I
know what you will say now: That if
truth is one thing to me and another
thing to you, how will we choose which
is truth? You don't need to choose. The
heart already knows. He didn't have
His Book written to be read by what
must elect and choose, but by the
heart, not by the wise of the earth
because they don't need it or maybe
the wise no longer have any. heart,
but by the 'doomed and lowly of the
earth who have nothing else to read
with but the heart'."
UNLIKE other popular American
writers who wrote only for money,
or other great ones who lived for the
public pose, Faulkner was the writer's
writer: he immersed himself complete-
ly into his writing, to "a life's work in
the agony and sweat of the human
spirit, not for the glory and least of
all for profit, but to create out of the
materials of the human spirit some-
thing which did not exist before." If
his final work, on the best-seller lists
at the time of his death, was relaxed
and expansive, he was still groping for
answers about truth and morality. As
he said of the Biblical writers, Faulk-
ner gained the power and the poetry
-the two hallmarks for which his
work will endure-because he, too, was
not afraid to be romantic; because he
wrote out of "the heart's driving com-
plexity."
Faulkner is dead; his works remain.
--A. K.
were concerned) had to be taken on
trust,
By the time Ned shows Lucius how to
ride a race horse without a saddle, the
town of Parsham is out in full force; be-
fore the meet finally ends, Lucius has
had to enter four races, and Ned has had
to bring about the outcome by a secret
he once tried on a racing mule.
YET THIS IS ONLY the central series
of incidents in a plot filled with inci-
dent; there, is, for example, the famous
automobile ride where Faulkner sings a
song of praise to the early auto, and
where Mother Priest "invented a kind
of shield on a handle like a big fan" be.-
cause Grandfather Priest' insisted on
chawing tobacco in the front seat. Or the
famous crossing of Hell Creek where the
reivers aie fleeced into paying six dollars
for the use of two mules in plow-gear to
pull them across the purposely deep mud-
hole (says the fleecer: "Mud's one of our
best crops up thisaway"). And there is a
dinner and a night spent at a dance-hall
referred to as Ballenbaugh's pleasure-
dome.
Nearly all the characters - ones we
have met before and ones we haven't-
contribute their share to the fun. Mr.
Buffaloe, operator of Jefferson's electric
plant, persuades the owner of an automo-
bile to leave it in his back yard for a
week, while the stranger journeys on to
Memphis, and then calmly takes it apart
to see how it runs. Mr. Binford, the lover
of Miss Reba, is caught spending money
on the races and leaves the bordello in
ruffled dignity to make his living digging
a ditch. Little Otis, who at age fifteen
claims he is only ten, peppers his malici-
ous activities with his commentary of
"Twenty three skidoo." And there is the
lazy Boon, a notoriously bad shot still
(he misses game in The Bear, you'll re-
member), still hired out and paid by any-
one and everyone.
Only a true comic sense could hold to-
gether such wild, numerous, disparate ele-
ments, and Faulkner's own manipulation
of complicated events is never too manip-
ulated to be obtrusive and ever too com-
plicated to figure out. Perhaps part of
this is because much of the novel basks
in the richness of Faulkner's own brand
of the Southern dialect, a brand steeped
in delightful prhaseology. Here, for exam-
ple, Miss Reba, sizing up the situation of
the reivers:
"Jesus," Miss Reba said. "A whore,
a pullman conductor and a Mississip-
pi swamp rat the size of a water tank
leading a race horse through Mem-
phis at midnight Sunday night, and
nobody will notice it?"
THE TONE OF DIALECT carries much
of the novel with a relaxed rhetoric
Faulkner has turned to before. The fa-
mous Faulkner lyricism-based on long
convolutions of words that, like thought
and conversation, stop, start, repeat, turn
inward, interrupt themselves-is displaced
often by the simple dialect of simple
folk caught up in but never out of con-
trol of a series of exploits with stolen
property. Faulkner's mastery of words
("heeling the chair back to the desk,"
"Judge Stevens was standing spraddled
on the hearth") ranges wide once again:
it includes the simple town Square of
Jefferson about which Boon perambulates
with the automobile, the city of Memphis
which you come slowly into while it dis-
solves to taste as, says Lucius, ice cream
dissolves in your mouth.
Faulkner's details make delightful the
most mechanical of processes: building
an auto, fording a river, linking a boxcar
to a train, even the intricacies of racing
a horse. He takes us to a saloon, a livery
stable, a bordello, a plantation home, a
jail, a racetrack, and a trainyard. And,
imbedded in the wild series of events
comes the homespun wisdom that is
Fauykner's trademark in stories of this
kind:
There are some things, some of
the hard facts of life, that you don't
forget, no matter how old you are.
There is a ditch, a chasm; as a boy
By MICHAEL OLINICK
IF YOU HAD ENROLLED at the Univer-
sity of Michigan 100 years ago, you
would have received the personal touch
of a small college. Had you been one of
the hardy lads to come to campus in 1862'
--coeds weren't allowed for another 25
years-a gang of sophomores lounging
near the brand new shoulder-high fence
which surrounded the campus would have
accosted you on registration day. After
establishing the fact of your matricula-
tion by posing as a credentials committee,
they would have tossed you over the fence
into the muddy road beyond it.
The personal touch has almost disap-
peared in the 1962 version of the Uni-
versity. David Boroff, in his recent visit
here to study the woman graduate stu-
dent, reported- that only once did one of
the thousands of passing students say
"hello" as they crossed the Diag. Stu-
dents complain about a "statistic," with-
out identity in a "community" of 25,000;
there are as many administrators bn this
campus as there are students in many col-
leges. A few students achieve recognition
and status by earning the golden pins of
honoraries but for most only the pink
slips secretly filled in by their house-
mothers and the rejection from dormitory
meal lines for uncreased pants are signs
that anyone cares about the lowly fresh-
man.
THE INSTITUTIONAL impersonality of
Michigan is destined to grow stronger
in the years ahead. On the academic side
of campus.life, programmed learning and
education by television will replace the
already infrequent meetings of professor
and student. Secure in their Haven Hall
tower, University scholars will no longer
even have to suffer the descent to coun-
sel their student charges. The punched
computer tape will replace the academic
counselor and if it should be a little less
personable, it will at least know a lot
more.
The Honors students may still have
an opportunity for independent study,
small classes and good professors, but the
dishonored majority will be unashamedly
offered "mass mediocrity." The philoso-
phy exam requiring little more than the
ability to make shiny black pencil marks
has already been institutionalized.
The concept of mass education which
you will receive at the University means
a cultural product impersonally directed
toward an anonymous consumer without
regard to his inner experience in using or
applying it.
r4H E FACTS found by the Faculty Sen-
ate Subcommittee on the Proper Role
of the University are these:
"We have researchers who shun teach-
ing.
"We have undergraduate teachers who,
though possibly familiar with research in
their field, do not themselves actively en-
gage in research.
"We even have tenure-level professors
who are presumed to teach graduate stu-
dents how to do research, but who do not
engage in research.
"The University is continually under
many pressures. to emphasize research
more, make more research appointments,
give time off for research, etc.
"The quality of undergraduate teach-
ing, especially in large introductory cours-
es, is criticized for a variety of reasons,
among which is the use of teaching fel-
lows and the refusal of professors to
teach undergraduate courses.
"The reputation of the University rests
as much if not more on its research and
scholarly productivity as on its teaching
excellence."
This article by Daily Editor
Michael Olinick is adapted from
a speech he delivered to Challenge
last semester. He is a senior ma-
joring in mathematics.
Will the institution smother his personal hopes?
TrHE SUBCOMMITTEE believes that
these realities conflict with the idealiz-
ed view that regards the student as more
important than research. "Research is the
derived product," they say, or least that's
what ought to be.
We do not have to look very far into
the future for the day when master's
degree programs are as rigid and as wat-
ery in content as today's undergraduate
menus. Perhaps the seminar is already
out-of-date because of its inefficiency and
high cost. We are told that society needs
a mass of new Ph.D.'s and maybe the
only way to get them is through mass
production.
In the non-academic sphere, the grow-
ing percentage of graduate students will
greatly change things. By 1985, perhaps
two-thirds of the University's students
will already have their baccalaureates, a
majority will be married and only a scant
handful will be less than 18 years old,
by then the new age barrier for booze and
the ballot. There will be little need in
continuing the University's already anti-
quated paternalistic policies nor will there
be much interest in "fighting 'em like
hell" for Michigan and Michigras.
TODAY, Student Government Council
and Daily editorial writers are greatly
concerned with issues of University re-
form, primarily centered around the Uni-
versity's attitudes toward undergradu-
ates. In the years ahead, students with
enough time or interest to go beyond the
classroom will be interested in national
and international issues. Thousands of
students, for example, little concerned
with traditional campus issues, partici-
pated in peace vigils and marches protest-
ing renewed atmospheric bomb tests last
year.
The impersonality of the future Uni-
versity will only be deepened by the fast-
er, more intensive tempo of higher educa-
tion that awaits us. The University will
soon begin year-round operation in an
attempt to maximize use of facilities and
impress the state Legislature by showing
what an efficient operation it can run. By
an arbitrary choice, this September's
freshmen are designated as the class of
'66; many will actually graduate in 1965
if the trimester calendar goes into opera-
tion on schedule. By the end of the dec-
ade, nearly everyone will earn a bache-
lor's degree three years after he leaves
high school; by 1980, this period will prob-
ably be reduced to 24 months. Each insti-
tution of higher learning will be able to
handle more students (I avoid the word
educate) simply because each one will
spend less time there.
As the period of time in which one is
supposed to master an academic disci-
pline lessens, the discipline itself will be
expanding at an exponential rate. The
amount of knowledge, already vast, will
increase many times over. Without going
into the problems of what effects the nec-
essary specialization will mean for the
social fabric, let us simply note that our
professors will assuredly know more and
more about less and less.
WHILE BEING FORCED to learn more
in a shorter period of time, every-
thing but the demands of a semester's
course work will be crowded out of the
student's life. In forecasting the death of
the so-called "student activities," waning
interest and lack of time are not inde-
pendent factors-each is dependent to an
extent on the other. Honors Council Di-
rector Otto Graf simplifies it this way:
"In the past, bright but unengaged minds
were forced to turn to a variety of extra-
curricular activities for satisfaction; now,
since the advent of the honors program,
they may turn to academics."
The acceleration of the college experi-
ence will have the full backing of the fed-
eral government. Locked in combat over
gross national product with the Moscow
version of Marxist-Leninism, the United
States will need more physicists, chem-
ists and engi
the Nixon-K
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Con
F
Absalom, Absalom!, Light in August,
The Hamlet, Go Down, Moses - he
strove continually for a theory of his-
tory, a theory of sociology, and a
theory of economics which could some-
how account for the burden of guilt
he felt in slavery, in the Civil War, in
our present relations with. the Negro.
He tried to account for industrialism,
for commercialism. In all these at-
tempts he failed, but he never stopped
trying.
Future students will receive educa
.
THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1962