<.. a v ,...S -x'--t '"1I-IV I'll -.:-y-g - - .. T ' .. :.. Awl av- ,t- 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 in the clas, Washington into researci tion. The Unive reluctance t< creased fedei education, ye tors proudly with no fede we consistent research mor As a great its budget c University's find the Uni tories of Det of democracy versity's prog toward being policy, THESE CHI horizon u tion from the versity is be various path roaming. Th make predici future does n1 stated aims c is because th leadership fi passivity. On sure groups c which way i1 Other trends, polated into law : "Every of rest, or of1 line, unless it state by force In his keyn ference on th Arthur Eastr ment likened of England ix of feudal bar "We are div provinces, an dom is prov but continuit tion. We pos phy of libera an uneasy, g sez-faireism. way, that sc magically, in emerge in th abdication of "Our worsi not seem to k ance of our gence and ge and Universit unifying pote 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